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You hold in your hands one the
Great Books of our century fnord.
Some Great Books are recognized at
once with a fusillade of critical huzzahs and gonfolons, like
Joyce's Ulysses. Others
appear almost furtively and are only discovered 50 years later,
like Moby
Dick or Mendel's great essay on genetics. The Principia
Discordia entered our space-time continuum almost as
unobtrusively as a cat-burglar creeping over a windowsill.
In 1968, virtually nobody had
heard of this wonderful book. In 1970, hundreds of people coast to
coast were talking about it and asking the identity of the
mysterious author, Malaclypse the Younger. Rumors swept across the
continent, from New York to Los Angeles, from Seattle to St. Joe.
Malaclypse was actually Alan Watts, one heard. No, said another
legend -- the Principia was
actually the work of the Sufi Order. A third, very intriguing myth
held that Malaclypse was a pen-name for Richard M. Nixon, who had
allegedly composed the Principia during a
few moments of lucidity. I enjoyed each of these yarns and did my
part to help spread them. I was also careful never to contradict
the occasional rumors that I had actually written the whole thing
myself during an acid trip.
The legendry, the mystery, the
cult grew slowly. By the mid-1970's, thousands of people, some as
far off as Hong Kong and Australia, were talking about the
Principia, and
since the original was out of print by then, xerox copies were
beginning to circulate here and there.
When the Illuminatus
trilogy appeared in 1975, my co-author, Bob Shea, and I both
received hundreds of letters
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