I believe my work will lay the foundation for the Messianic age. A grandiose claim, but I’m not working alone. Most of the heavy lifting was done four centuries ago by Shakespeare, who spoke in earnest when he wrote
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Give me leave to speak my mind, and I will though and through cleanse the foul body of the infected world, if they will patiently receive my medicine.
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You’ve probably heard the conspiracy theory that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. The real story is quite interesting, and it has ramifications that extend far beyond the question of who wrote Romeo and Juliet.
Pregnancy portrait of Elizabeth I, Hampton Court Palace
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We go back to 1560. Elizabeth, queen of England, aged twenty-six, had gotten pregnant. This was a problem, not so much because of the “virgin queen” thing, but because the father was the most hated man in England. His name was Robert Dudley, and Elizabeth was madly in love with him. To give you some indication of why he was so unpopular, when Elizabeth became pregnant he naturally fancied the throne, but he happened to be already married. So he had his wife murdered, one of several homicides in the course of his career. The court ruled her death an accident, but everyone knew he was responsible; a marriage was out of the question, Elizabeth would have faced open rebellion from her subjects.
So when the blessed event arrived in January 1561, they bundled him up and handed him off to the neighbors, the Bacons, and said good luck. Someone called him Francis. An insulting and inauspicious beginning, but he was ideally placed for his education; Lady Anne Bacon was one of the most learned women in England. At some point, probably before he was sent to Cambridge at age twelve, Francis learned of his parentage. Talk about growing up fast: your mother is the queen, your father is a brazen killer, you might become king, and if you breathe a word about it to anyone, you are dead. That’s why we have Hamlet and Macbeth, plays about murderous climbers bent on the throne—it was Bacon’s truly outrageous fortune to have such a father. |
These events conspired to give Bacon an intense sense of purpose and responsibility at an early age. He took to reading as no person has done before or since, and he was already reading Ovid's Metamorphoses in Latin at age seven. When Macaulay said he had "the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men," this is what he meant. Bacon represents the summary and end of philosophy; it only remains to determine the extent of his pseudepigrapha, and interpret.
He began publishing upon leaving Cambridge in 1576, aged fifteen, with The Anatomie of the Minde, a small book of essays on Greek and Roman philosophy, and a book known as Anti-Machiavel, the most comprehensive rebuttal to Machiavelli ever undertaken. The last works we can confidently ascribe to him are the alchemy tracts that went out under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes in the early 1650s. This one features the same motto as his Novum Organum, from Daniel: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."
Bacon invented the first binary code, and was long regarded as the father of modern science. Voltaire called him "the father of the experimental philosophy," and Diderot wrote of the Encyclopédie "If we have come of it successfully, we shall owe most to the Chancellor Bacon." So the question of who wrote Shakespeare is of universal significance, even for those who never read a word, or who hated him. You will never see his equal upon the earth again, the circumstances of his development were uniquely tailored and cannot be replicated. "Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." In Bacon's case, all three are true.
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Me
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After about five minutes, writing about myself becomes exceedingly tiresome; add to that, the fact that I am extraordinarily lazy, and the prospect of writing autobiography looks bleak. Yet I guess you will want some account of me, and better I write it myself than leave it to gossips and insignificant babblers. They have always hounded me.
So then, I was born at 10:22 AM on September 19th, 1977, at St. John's Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. This is situated in a lovely place called the Country Club Plaza, several blocks of shops and restaurants done in a consistent Spanish style, with fountains, a park, and the Nelson Atkins Art Museum, which is not all that bad. My grandmother told me that when I was born there was a great storm, and on the Plaza a dentist and his family were drowned. I was the first of three boys, the others born two and four years later.
Before I was one the family moved to suburban St. Louis, Chesterfield. Everything one could desire, except culture and a coast. My first school was a Catholic Montessori school, Linda Vista, it was round. At the time, no other structures were visible except a nuns' convent up the hill, it was quite idyllic. It's now called the Goddard School.
So then, I was born at 10:22 AM on September 19th, 1977, at St. John's Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. This is situated in a lovely place called the Country Club Plaza, several blocks of shops and restaurants done in a consistent Spanish style, with fountains, a park, and the Nelson Atkins Art Museum, which is not all that bad. My grandmother told me that when I was born there was a great storm, and on the Plaza a dentist and his family were drowned. I was the first of three boys, the others born two and four years later.
Before I was one the family moved to suburban St. Louis, Chesterfield. Everything one could desire, except culture and a coast. My first school was a Catholic Montessori school, Linda Vista, it was round. At the time, no other structures were visible except a nuns' convent up the hill, it was quite idyllic. It's now called the Goddard School.
Something of a troublemaker, I attended five high schools. This included a military school, second semester sophomore year. They declined to entertain my attentions the following fall. These five schools were a large sample size with which to compare my aptitudes and potential; add to that, the fact that I consistently tested in the top 1% despite skipping every class I could, which was a lot back then, and smoking as much dope as possible. (For the record, though, it was not nearly as potent, or as accessible, as the weed today. I don't think it's good for developing kids to have constant access to high-powered cannabis.) I won't lie to you, honest reader, by the time I finished I felt like a god among men, and acted that way. I have no recollection whatsoever of the day I graduated high school, I walked across the stage but the whole day is an absolute blank, that's how drunk I was all day.
After high school I took a year off, something I recommend. Then I enlisted at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. You people on the coasts will probably not appreciate what a decent town Lawrence is. We were kings. To give you an example, during my freshman year, my friend's dad died and he inherited some money, not a lot but enough to have some fun. So I said to him, "Here's what we do. We go to San Francisco and buy five grams of LSD, a five jar (50,000 hits), and we put it on paper and mail it home." Which is exactly what we did. I can place this to the day, March 1997, because I saw two shows by Widespread Panic at the Warfield, I brought home the poster. I was getting fronted boxes of weed that cost me $40,000 at the same time, so my studies suffered, and I failed out.
I have an anecdote from around this time. I had acquired a fairly large amount of 5MEO DMT. This was before most people had heard of it, and when you described it to them before administration, they tended to get apprehensive and not hit the threshold required for an experience, so the stuff would be wasted. So I decided to get a five-foot bong, and make people draw up the chamber, catch their breath, and down the hatch. Problem solved.
One day this kid Blake comes by, we called him Blake the Flake because he was a cokehead, and he was a trust fund kid who could only pay you once a month. He sits down and asks if he can pack a bowl of schwag. We were pot snobs, we wouldn't put that stuff in our pipes, so I said "You can use that bong over there." The DMT bong. So he packs a bowl and takes a rip, and in a few seconds his eyes start to bug out. We all knew what happened, he got a big residue hit, and we were laughing so hard we couldn't even try to console him. I was rolling on the floor, it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. Blake had never even heard of DMT.
A few years later, I was working as a bartender at the Carriage Club on the Country Club Plaza. One night this guy is closing down the bar, we're talking and I mentioned that I lived in Lawrence and went to school there. He says, "Oh I have a son in Lawrence, his name is Blake, maybe you know him." I looked at his face and sure enough it was the father of Blake the Flake. I had completely forgotten the whole incident, but it came back in a flash and I chuckled and said, "I think I know him."
Another anecdote from around this time (2001) is worth relating, as it illustrates why I started to think I was under divine protection. I was attending the University of Missouri at Kansas City. A friend had sent me vials of liquid LSD with 100 drops in each. Another friend, who I only knew through someone else, suggested we drive to her friends' apartment in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and dispose of some there. So I packed a backpack and brought eight or ten vials, and she drove us down there. We get to her friends' apartment and within twenty minutes the door gets kicked in by the police.
I was sure I had been set up. I had left my backpack in the car, but I had a gram or so of weed in my pocket. During the commotion, I leaned over to the girl who drove and said: "Just say we got dropped off. We didn't drive." So that's what we told them. But then they ran the plates on the cars in the lot, and the girl's name was Neiswonger. I'm not kidding, she's still around, that's her name. So the police politely asked her for the keys, and at this time I was carted off for the weed in my pocket.
So I'm sitting in the can thinking my life is over. Cape Girardeau, ladies and gentlemen, is not the place you want to get caught with 1,000 hits of acid. It's where Rush Limbaugh was from. They would regard you, an intruder, with a jaundiced eye. It would be ten years, minimum.
So I'm sitting in my cell for half an hour, and they bring in Ms. Neiswonger. I'm peering through the small square window, and she sees me, and looks to see if anyone is looking at her. Then she raises her hands (she was cuffed in front) and gives me the thumbs up. "It's OK," she mouths. "They didn't know what it was."
Turns out, just bad timing. I got the stuff back. Bonus, when I tried to clear the weed charge a few years later, they said they had nothing on me. From then on, I knew I was enjoying divine protection, and if I was already insufferable, it made me all the more so. I tell these stories not to boast, but because I'm going somewhere with this, be patient. If you ask why I would take such risks, first, I knew I could not be touched, and second, we believed in it. I considered myself part of a spiritual aristocracy when I was seventeen.
In 2002 I lived in Greenwich Village for several months. Soon after I arrived I was very excited to see Jerry Garcia's Tiger guitar up close when it was shown before it was auctioned. For me, it's the most sacred relic of the 20th century. If I can borrow it, I will die a happy man.
I have an anecdote from around this time. I had acquired a fairly large amount of 5MEO DMT. This was before most people had heard of it, and when you described it to them before administration, they tended to get apprehensive and not hit the threshold required for an experience, so the stuff would be wasted. So I decided to get a five-foot bong, and make people draw up the chamber, catch their breath, and down the hatch. Problem solved.
One day this kid Blake comes by, we called him Blake the Flake because he was a cokehead, and he was a trust fund kid who could only pay you once a month. He sits down and asks if he can pack a bowl of schwag. We were pot snobs, we wouldn't put that stuff in our pipes, so I said "You can use that bong over there." The DMT bong. So he packs a bowl and takes a rip, and in a few seconds his eyes start to bug out. We all knew what happened, he got a big residue hit, and we were laughing so hard we couldn't even try to console him. I was rolling on the floor, it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. Blake had never even heard of DMT.
A few years later, I was working as a bartender at the Carriage Club on the Country Club Plaza. One night this guy is closing down the bar, we're talking and I mentioned that I lived in Lawrence and went to school there. He says, "Oh I have a son in Lawrence, his name is Blake, maybe you know him." I looked at his face and sure enough it was the father of Blake the Flake. I had completely forgotten the whole incident, but it came back in a flash and I chuckled and said, "I think I know him."
Another anecdote from around this time (2001) is worth relating, as it illustrates why I started to think I was under divine protection. I was attending the University of Missouri at Kansas City. A friend had sent me vials of liquid LSD with 100 drops in each. Another friend, who I only knew through someone else, suggested we drive to her friends' apartment in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and dispose of some there. So I packed a backpack and brought eight or ten vials, and she drove us down there. We get to her friends' apartment and within twenty minutes the door gets kicked in by the police.
I was sure I had been set up. I had left my backpack in the car, but I had a gram or so of weed in my pocket. During the commotion, I leaned over to the girl who drove and said: "Just say we got dropped off. We didn't drive." So that's what we told them. But then they ran the plates on the cars in the lot, and the girl's name was Neiswonger. I'm not kidding, she's still around, that's her name. So the police politely asked her for the keys, and at this time I was carted off for the weed in my pocket.
So I'm sitting in the can thinking my life is over. Cape Girardeau, ladies and gentlemen, is not the place you want to get caught with 1,000 hits of acid. It's where Rush Limbaugh was from. They would regard you, an intruder, with a jaundiced eye. It would be ten years, minimum.
So I'm sitting in my cell for half an hour, and they bring in Ms. Neiswonger. I'm peering through the small square window, and she sees me, and looks to see if anyone is looking at her. Then she raises her hands (she was cuffed in front) and gives me the thumbs up. "It's OK," she mouths. "They didn't know what it was."
Turns out, just bad timing. I got the stuff back. Bonus, when I tried to clear the weed charge a few years later, they said they had nothing on me. From then on, I knew I was enjoying divine protection, and if I was already insufferable, it made me all the more so. I tell these stories not to boast, but because I'm going somewhere with this, be patient. If you ask why I would take such risks, first, I knew I could not be touched, and second, we believed in it. I considered myself part of a spiritual aristocracy when I was seventeen.
In 2002 I lived in Greenwich Village for several months. Soon after I arrived I was very excited to see Jerry Garcia's Tiger guitar up close when it was shown before it was auctioned. For me, it's the most sacred relic of the 20th century. If I can borrow it, I will die a happy man.
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An anecdote from New York. I answered an ad for lead guitar in a Grateful Dead cover band called Rooster, and went and tried out. The next day, they called and asked if I could play a gig the following day, a birthday party in upstate New York. I said, "Are you sure? It's short notice." "Yeah."
So we drove upstate, the location was beautiful. They recorded the gig, and it turned out I played adequately, but at the time I was stressed out and thinking it wasn't going well. They had an open bar, and I didn't drink until we were finished playing, but then I hit the whiskey. I passed out in the van on the way back, they had to drag me into the drummer's house and put me on the couch. Later I vomited all over the bathroom, evidently hitting everything but the toilet, or so I was told. Then, when the drummer was downstairs washing the towels he used to clean the bathroom, he saw liquid dripping through the ceiling. I had peed all over the floor, and then climbed into his bed and passed out.
I got fired.
After New York, I decided to transfer my ambitions from music to literature. I could play a bit, but I can't sing Happy Birthday, and lots of players were way ahead of me. Even in New York I did a lot more reading than practicing. I admired, even venerated, Henry Miller, and adopted his strategy, in the sense that I was willing to endure a period of hardship in order to develop, hopefully attaining something durable and worthwhile. I had a lot of confidence. So I laid in bed reading books. My family, in their simplicity, put this down to pure sloth. Little did they know.
In 2003 I started having visionary experiences, even when sober. This is partly why I had to give some background. The brain develops until the age of twenty-five or so, and from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five I had a lot of psychedelics. Like, taking ten hits of acid and then doing DMT or ketamine. But by 2003 I had quit the drug game and become solitary, reading a great deal. "Blessed are the solitary and elect, for you will find the kingdom, for you are from it, and to it will you return."
I also became dissatisfied with myself, so I read a lot of spiritual literature. I read Krishnamurti and Vivikenanda and Suzuki, the Eastern guys and their Western proponents like Alan Watts, I read the Sufis, Rumi and Hafez and Attar and Omar Khayam. I read Hildegard and Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross, I read the Theosophists and the Transcendentalists and everything I could get my hands on. I particularly liked Gurdjieff.
What I liked about Gurdjieff is that he was harsh; this was no Oprah Winfrey stuff. I have an idea about Mr. Gurdjieff. I believe he was the incarnation of Lucifer, doing his best to atone. First, he told us so, naming his book Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. In his other book, he has a character call him "black devil." Gurdjieff was from the Caucasus, which, you will recall, is where Prometheus was strung up, he being homonymous with Lucifer. And Gurdjieff had the will of ten men, it was truly superhuman. That's where I think his teaching is flawed, too much emphasis on the will, and not grace. But he was not in a state of grace, he knew who he was. Here he is, get a look, tell me that's not Lucifer.
They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying,
Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Isaiah 14:16
Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? Isaiah 14:16
Where was I? 2003. I was having visionary experiences even when sober. I informed my family and a couple close friends that, although on the surface I appeared to be just an extraordinarily beautiful, talented, intelligent, spiritual, but still nonetheless mortal human, I was in fact the man from Nazareth. Of course they all said I had lost it.
Over the winter of 2003-4, I had access to relatively cheap, very pure White Fluff LSD ($1 a hit, still expensive for me). So I was regularly taking 20-25 hits to "see what I could see." One time, I was sitting in a yogic position, channeling energy up into my head, and as I exerted all my force I had an overwhelming thought, as if from outside, "I want to see God." It didn't happen.
Meeting God
A few weeks later, a friend said "Listen, I can't get any weed, let's go to Columbus, Ohio and get an ounce." This was a long drive from St. Louis, where we were, and I didn't want to go, but he persuaded me. We arrived and got a room, room 1107 at the Renaissance Hotel downtown. Our mutual friend came to meet us, I took two hits of Fluff and we went out to dinner at a nice steakhouse downtown. The guy who drove, knowing I would be up all night, got a room at a different hotel, and after dinner I took fifteen more hits of Fluff.
I was on my usual vision quest, and at one point I was standing next to a chair, and I looked at the chair and a voice said "Sit in this chair if you would be God." I had said I wanted to see God, not be God, but I took this glibly as "would you like to merge with God?" So I shrugged and sat in the chair, and was hit with something like a bolt of lighting. Very intense electrical pain, it dropped me to the floor instantly, I was screaming. My consciousness was flooded with images of suffering from around the planet. This lasted less than ten seconds, and it stopped.
I got up and laid on the bed, and my consciousness was pulled out of my body and high above the earth, and it was communicated to me that God was going to "raise Cain," wreak serious havoc. I stood up and started arguing, saying (or rather yelling) "They are not ready yet - take me." There was more said, but I don't recall all of it.
The neighbors had alerted the front desk, and there was a knock at the door. They asked me to come downstairs, and I obliged. By the time we got down there, the police were in the lobby, so I did what any reasonable person on seventeen hits of White Fluff would do. I disrobed right there in the lobby.
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His disciples said: On what day will you be revealed to us, and on what day shall we see you? Jesus said: When you unclothe yourselves and are not ashamed, and take your garments and lay them beneath your feet like the little children and trample on them, then you will see the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid.
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The police, who in all likelihood were unfamiliar with this teaching, communicated their disapproval in the form of two taser darts, which were nothing compared to the shock I'd just received upstairs, but they dropped me. Still naked, they quite literally threw me in a cell with no running water, and I had to wash the mace out of my eyes with toilet water. I was ecstatic.
Now the interesting thing about this is that thirteen years later, I happened to be at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous (I know, you are shocked) in St. Louis. During intermission I struck up a conversation with an older guy, he had a thick Boston accent so I said "You're from Boston?" He said, "Yeah, but I live in Columbus, Ohio." I chuckled and said I got arrested at the Renaissance Hotel there. And he said he owned the building before it was turned into a hotel. He was long sober and well respected in AA, he had no reason to lie. His first name is Pete and the surname is Irish and begins with M, something like McCallister or McConnell. So, someone could check the public records and see if the building really did belong to him, and we could get confirmation of my claim.
Now the interesting thing about this is that thirteen years later, I happened to be at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous (I know, you are shocked) in St. Louis. During intermission I struck up a conversation with an older guy, he had a thick Boston accent so I said "You're from Boston?" He said, "Yeah, but I live in Columbus, Ohio." I chuckled and said I got arrested at the Renaissance Hotel there. And he said he owned the building before it was turned into a hotel. He was long sober and well respected in AA, he had no reason to lie. His first name is Pete and the surname is Irish and begins with M, something like McCallister or McConnell. So, someone could check the public records and see if the building really did belong to him, and we could get confirmation of my claim.
In 2005 I discovered this. Imagine my good fortune, dear reader: not yet twenty-eight and my whole life was set, I was on velvet. Or so I thought. Reasoning with myself that, after all, librarians are devoted to knowledge, I persuaded myself that they shouldn't mind if I just sort of surgically remove thousands of pages from library art books. It's for a good cause. But the marketplace of ideas was not ready for me, and eventually I grew concerned that if the librarians should happen to notice that their art books have been decimated, they might not see it my way after all, and I could get in trouble. So I threw everything away, and only recently resumed the work.
There's a touch of irony here, I actually had to do summer school for ninth grade geometry, having passed with a D, but this was inadequate for my father. The teacher was ancient and I had better things to do.
When I first took up this research, it opened a level of inner consciousness above the astral, the original celestial angelic realm. A whole different spectrum than the astral, with which I was very familiar. This only lasted briefly, less than two weeks, and interestingly when I resumed this work recently (July 2023) the same thing happened, I saw the celestial level, but only a handful of times.
Something like another discovery occurred in 2005 when I came to this passage in an old (1690) alchemy book called The Aphorisms of Urbigerus:
When I first took up this research, it opened a level of inner consciousness above the astral, the original celestial angelic realm. A whole different spectrum than the astral, with which I was very familiar. This only lasted briefly, less than two weeks, and interestingly when I resumed this work recently (July 2023) the same thing happened, I saw the celestial level, but only a handful of times.
Something like another discovery occurred in 2005 when I came to this passage in an old (1690) alchemy book called The Aphorisms of Urbigerus:
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Our true and real Matter is only a vapor... This Green Dragon is the natural Gold of the Philosophers, exceedingly different from the vulgar, which is corporeal and dead... but ours is spiritual, and living... Our Gold is called Natural, because it is not to be made by Art, and since it is known to none, but the true Disciples of Hermes, who understand how to separate it from its original Lump, tis also called Philosophical; and if God had not been so gracious, as to create this first Chaos to our hand, all our Skill and Art in the Construction of the great Elixir would be in vain.
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I said to myself, well damme, he's talking about cannabis here. My interest in alchemy derived from the artwork in seventeenth century alchemy books, reminiscent of psychedelic experience. Yes, it is possible to see even the celestial level with cannabis alone, but it requires study and sacrifice, and solitude, things people generally shun.
At any rate, I found that alchemical language was invented to conceal discussion of drug-based mystical experience. Evidently this was already fairly well known among the cognoscenti. Here's Terence McKenna lying about it in Food of the Gods:
At any rate, I found that alchemical language was invented to conceal discussion of drug-based mystical experience. Evidently this was already fairly well known among the cognoscenti. Here's Terence McKenna lying about it in Food of the Gods:
We now know McKenna took orders from the CIA, so they must have told him to do this. I'm a free agent, I have no obligation to anyone for my knowledge. I did it on my own, so I can do with it what I like.
I might as well say something about the universities. I attended three but never got far, I usually dropped my classes after a couple months. I wasn't trying to get a degree, I had enough confidence that I felt I didn't need one. So I have no clue about the nature of academia from an insider's perspective. But it appears that the people who go to the trouble of obtaining a PhD have a certain loyalty to their profession that transcends their loyalty to the truth. If their profession demands they lie about who wrote Shakespeare, if that is what's done, that is what they do. If their profession demands they canonize Machiavelli, and bury the most comprehensive rebuttal ever written against this evil, wretched viper—written by Shakespeare himself—that is what they do. I would not have believed it without seeing it myself, but that is what they have done. Trahison des clercs, indeed.
If their profession demands they adopt Marxism, that is what they do. No one believed a word Marx wrote, least of all Marx himself. Can you imagine anything more insane than a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Don't misunderstand me, I like the poor a lot better than the people on the golf course where I grew up, and I lived for seven years in group homes with people who had the clothes on their backs and little else. But nobody took the idea of a dictatorship of factory workers seriously. Moreover, in the 1880s two scholars went through Capital and checked the citations; it turned out Marx was pathologically dishonest. He would cite the English government's statistical "blue books" (or any other source) completely contrary to what they actually said. This is discussed in Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals, There is no excuse or innocent explanation for Marxism, it was malicious from the start.
I might as well say something about the universities. I attended three but never got far, I usually dropped my classes after a couple months. I wasn't trying to get a degree, I had enough confidence that I felt I didn't need one. So I have no clue about the nature of academia from an insider's perspective. But it appears that the people who go to the trouble of obtaining a PhD have a certain loyalty to their profession that transcends their loyalty to the truth. If their profession demands they lie about who wrote Shakespeare, if that is what's done, that is what they do. If their profession demands they canonize Machiavelli, and bury the most comprehensive rebuttal ever written against this evil, wretched viper—written by Shakespeare himself—that is what they do. I would not have believed it without seeing it myself, but that is what they have done. Trahison des clercs, indeed.
If their profession demands they adopt Marxism, that is what they do. No one believed a word Marx wrote, least of all Marx himself. Can you imagine anything more insane than a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Don't misunderstand me, I like the poor a lot better than the people on the golf course where I grew up, and I lived for seven years in group homes with people who had the clothes on their backs and little else. But nobody took the idea of a dictatorship of factory workers seriously. Moreover, in the 1880s two scholars went through Capital and checked the citations; it turned out Marx was pathologically dishonest. He would cite the English government's statistical "blue books" (or any other source) completely contrary to what they actually said. This is discussed in Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals, There is no excuse or innocent explanation for Marxism, it was malicious from the start.
Book recommendations
You might wonder, after all that reading, and as a junior member of the literary profession, what are your favorite books? For pleasure, I like humor, particularly Mikhail Zoshchenko and P.G. Wodehouse. Gogol is my favorite narrator, a narrator sui generis, completely original. My desert island book is The Anatomy of Melancholy. My favorite novel is A Confederacy of Dunces, it's about me, I'm Ignatius teaching geometry and theology. Eliot's Confidential Clerk is also about me. Four Quartets by Eliot is my favorite poem, I think it's the best poem in the English language and the most significant twentieth-century literary work, in any language. I will include a couple by Henry Miller as well. There are so many, Don Quixote is essential, you need the original 1612 English version, it's actually the original, the Spanish is a translation. Believe it or not. Generally speaking, with translations I strongly prefer older editions, usually the first, but there are plenty of exceptions.
Ignatius Reilly: God's satire on me
“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”
“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”
“'Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.”
“You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.”
“Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty."
“I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me."
"What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education."
"Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library.”
“'Clean, hard-working, dependable, quiet type.' Good God! What kind of monster is this that they want? I am afraid that I could never work for a concern with a worldview like that.”
“In other words, you want to become totally bourgeois. You people have all been brainwashed. I imagine that you'd like to become a success or something equally vile.”
"The world will someday get me on some ludicrous pretext; I simply await the day that they drag me to some air-conditioned dungeon and leave me there beneath the fluorescent lights and soundproofed ceiling to pay the price for scorning all that they hold dear within their little latex hearts.”
“Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.”
This had been a very productive morning, he thought. He had not accomplished so much in weeks. Looking at the Big Chief tablets that made a rug of Indian headdresses around the bed, Ignatius thought smugly that on their yellowed pages and wide-ruled lines were the seeds of a magnificent study in comparative history. Very disordered, of course. But one day he would assume the task of editing these fragments of his mentality into a jigsaw puzzle of a very grand design; the completed puzzle would show to literate men the disaster course that history had been taking for the past four centuries. In the five years that he had dedicated to this work, he had produced an average of only six paragraphs monthly. He could not even remember what he had written in some of the tablets, and he realized that several were filled principally with doodling. However, Ignatius thought calmly, Rome was not built in a day.