Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo

I hadn't read my first complete book of fiction until I was twenty-one: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I read it all in one night, identifying so strongly with the adolescent alienation of Holden Caulfield that I wrote a letter to Salinger, asking permission to use his character in a novel I planned to write. He gave the most appropriate response he possibly could -- he completely ignored my request. His Zen silence was so eloquent that for years I would continue to cringe with embarrassment at how incredibly naïve I had been.

In 1953, publisher friend and mentor Lyle Stuart lent me the second novel I read, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, who had been an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. “I shall answer in my own words,” he testified. “Very many questions can be answered ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ only by a moron or a slave.”

As a result, he became a victim of the Hollywood blacklist and won an Academy Award for best screenplay under an assumed name. He finally used his own name in the screen credits for Spartacus.

Johnny Got His Gun, originally published in 1939, was about a soldier so severely wounded that, with the aid of modern medical technology, he remained alive but without the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste. He had nothing left except the sense of touch and his consciousness. The first half was how he came to realize his situation, and the second half was what he could do about it.

That book had such a tremendous impact on me, it served as my literary Bible. The gospel wasn’t about the antiwar stance so much as the urge to communicate. I was afraid that every book I read after that would be anti-climactic.

“There's a whole generation who never even heard of it,” I said to Lyle Stuart. “Why don't you publish a new edition?” Which he did.

He also lent me Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis. It was about a white man who discovered that he had “Negro blood.” Lyle felt so strongly about the race issue that when he had been courting a lovely redhead, smart and witty, he told her that he was “part Negro.” She passed the test and they got married.

Buy Johnny Got His Gun on Amazon

Middle Men (2009), by Paul Krassner

[Video Link] Speaking of his recent movie about the early years of the Internet porn industry, Middle Men, producer Christopher Mallick admits, "I think that it's based on a true story, but that doesn't mean it's all true." He should know. The main character -- Jack Harris, portrayed by the ever grimacing Luke Wilson -- is based on him.

Mallick in real life and Harris on screen both founded Paycom Billing Services, an Internet company that processes payments for porn sites. Money used to grow on trees, then it popped out of banks' brick walls, and now it's busy floating around in cyberspace. Until 1995, you weren't able to purchase anything online. But, thanks to a software code enabling secure transactions, Harris brags, "We could take a credit card from anywhere in the world and deliver a product to anywhere in the world. We can make a profit on every transaction. We're just the middle men." And now it's been estimated that porn is featured on nearly 40 percent of all Web sites.

In his cameo role as a powerful politician, Kelsey Grammer confronts Harris: "You peddle porn over the Internet."

"Well, Senator," he replies, holding up a sheet of paper, "this is your billing record: Naughty Secretary..."

The senator smirks and Harris continue to read other titles, then says, "You realize you've just attempted to blackmail a publicly elected state official -- and it worked. Can I count on your vote next year?"

"You got it."

That scene is not so far fetched, either. In his book, Family of Secrets, investigative journalist Russ Baker writes that there are powers behind the elected or selected that call a lot of the shots, and that presidents have much less power and independence than he had assumed: "Initiating reforms or standing up to powerful interests can invite retribution of a kind I had not imagined. Presidents are subject not only to pressure but also to entrapment, blackmail, and even, in one way or another, removal."

Standup comic Kevin Pollak plays the part of an agent for the FBI's Organized Crime Task Force. He persuades Harris to cooperate in the war on terror. It seems that, among the millions of consumers logging in to those porn sites for which Harris is a middle man, many happen to be Arab terrorists. Simply because, in the words of that FBI agent, "They're men." Technology makes it possible to exploit their horniness, so the moment they click on to one of those sites, the United States military can pinpoint and terminate them.

Back in real life, immediately after 9/11, CNN ran a list of the hijackers and people who had tickets and were suspected of being hijackers. "Back then," says Mallick, "we recorded it and I took it in to one of my partners and said, 'Let's run these names through our database.' He said, 'You're crazy.' 'Let's just see what happens.' We had a hit and it was a guy that subsequently was arrested. One of the hijackers who went down with the plane had bought a membership to a site with an online check.

"We traced the check to a bank in San Diego, called the FBI, who was down the hall from us, and said, 'We have a hit.' These guys are apparently sitting in an apartment, ordering pizza and porn on their way to meet Allah. Anyhow, they found the check, went the apartment, found the phone record, found the cell phone number that one of these guys was using. One of the would-be bombers in Chicago was holed up in the Hyatt in downtown Chicago and the FBI raided it, on CNN, and arrested this guy."

In Middle Men, there was an incident that was deleted from the big orgy party scene. It was removed because of concerns that the MPAA would give the flick an NC-17 rating instead of an R rating. In a scene which lasts for two minutes, Harris wanders around a huge mansion, passing by naked men and women drinking and dancing, but what would be omitted was when he opens a door, only to find a couple of women performing oral sex on a man. It was posted on a Web site, but soon taken down. Ironically, remaining on that clip is a commercial for the film itself.

Ultimately, then, Middle Men was intended for the eyes of Middle America. Mallick points out that "The same guy who's going to Toy Story 3 is also going to come to Middle Men." Well, at least there's one thing that those two films have in common. The moving force in each one is a Woody.

Most likely your daily newspaper didn't acknowledge the death of Robert Anton Wilson on January 11, 2007. He was 74. The prolific author and countercultural icon had been suffering from post-polio syndrome. Caregivers read all of his late wife Arlen's poetry to him at his bedside and e-mailed me that "He was quite cheered up by the time we left. He definitely needed to die. His body was turning on him in ways that would not allow him to rest."

In his final blog entry on January 6, Wilson wrote: "I don't see how to take death seriously. I look forward without dogmatic optimism, but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying." Actually, it was expected that he would die seven months earlier. On June 19, 2006, he sent this haiku (with one syllable missing) to his electronic cabal:

Well what do you know?
Another day has passed
and I'm still not not.

We originally became friends in 1959, when his first published article graced the cover of The Realist. It was titled "The Semantics of God," and he suggested that "The Believer had better face himself and ask squarely: Do I literally believe that 'God' has a penis? If the answer is no, then it seems only logical to drop the ridiculous practice of referring to 'God' as 'he.'" Wilson then began writing a regular column, "Negative Thinking."

In 1964, I ran another front-cover story by him, "Timothy Leary and His Psychological H-Bomb," which began: "The future may decide that the two greatest thinkers of the 20th Century were Albert Einstein, who showed how to create atomic fission in the physical world, and Timothy Leary, who showed how to create atomic fission in the psychological world. The latter discovery may be more important than the former; there are some reasons for thinking that it was made necessary by the former. Leary may have shown how our habits of thought can be changed."

Wilson took that notion as his personal marching orders, altering the consciousness of countless grateful readers of his 35 books -- from Sex, Drugs & Magick to Everything Is Under Control: An Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories -- all written with the aid of that good old creative fuel, marijuana. He once told me about his creative process: "It's rather obsessive-compulsive, I think. I write the first draft straight, then rewrite stoned, then rewrite straight again, then rewrite stoned again, and so on, until I'm absolutely delighted with every sentence, or irate editors start reminding me about deadlines -- whichever comes first."

He became a pothead in 1955, but a few years before his death he told the audience at a Prophets Conference, "I haven't smoked pot in about twelve... hours, and I want you to know it's great to be clean." He enjoyed peppering his presentations at such distinguished New Age events with "motherfuckers" and "cocksuckers," and was disinvited from participating in future Prophet Conferences because, said the organizers, "What we feel to be important to your insights are being lost to the audience when packaged in hard and harsh language."

Maybe Logic: a documentary about Robert Anton Wilson

Wilson once described his writings as "intellectual comedy." He told an Internet database, Contemporary Authors: "If my books do what I intend, they should leave the reader feeling that the universe is capable of doing something totally shocking and unexpected in the next five minutes. I am trying to show that life without certainty can be exhilarating, liberating, a great adventure." He called his philosophy "Maybe Logic," which became the title of a documentary about him (above).

Stephen Gaskin, founder of The Farm commune, writes, "I had the good fortune to visit with Robert at his house and meet his wife. When I saw the beautiful relationship between them, I understood why the sex scenes in his books are so nicely written that they stand out above everyone else's sex scenes that I've read. One of my next encounters with him was standing on the sidewalk of a cold November day in Amsterdam waiting for a taxi.

"He didn't have enough of a coat, and he was standing in the cold with his collar turned up and his hands stuck in his pockets. It was a while after his wife had died and he looked quite forlorn. We collected him up, put a warm coat on him, and put a joint in his mouth. It was a real hoot to get to be friends with one of my very favorite writers. His book, Illuminatus, is a benchmark in science-fiction and contemporary paranoia."

Wilson wrote his own obituary in an autobiography, Cosmic Trigger, Volume 3:

"According to reliable sources, I died on February 22, 1994 -- George Washington's birthday. I felt nothing special or shocking at the time, and believed that I still sat at my word processor working on a novel called Bride of Illuminatus. At lunch-time, however, when I checked my voice mail, I found that Tim Leary and a dozen friends had already called to ask to speak to me, or -- if they still believed in Reliable Sources -- to offer support and condolences to my grieving family. I quickly gathered that the news of my tragic end had appeared on the Internet: 'Noted science-fiction author Robert Anton Wilson was found dead in his home yesterday, apparently the victim of a heart attack. [He] was noted for his libertarian viewpoints, love of technology and off the wall humor. Mr. Wilson is survived by his wife and two children.'"

R. U. Sirius, co-author of Counterculture Through the Ages, writes, "Robert Anton Wilson enjoyed his first death so much, he decided to try it again. As the result of medical expenses and problems with the IRS, he found himself in a financial squeeze towards the end of his life. Word went out and the Internet community responded by sending him $68,000 within the first couple of days.

"This allowed him to die with the comfort, grace and dignity that he deserved. He taught us all that 'the universe contains a maybe.' So maybe there is an afterlife, and maybe Bob's consciousness is hovering around all of us who were touched by his words and his presence all these years. And if that's the case, I'm sure he'd like to see you do something strange and irreverent -- and yet beautiful -- in his honor."

Fnord