Bob Dobbs’ Diaries: Nov. 30/1985 (Toronto)

Bob Marshall: Have you read any books by Robert Anton Wilson?

Dobbs: Yes, The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Marshall: He seems to have the same intense interest in Finnegans Wake as you?

Dobbs: Yes, but his approach to physics is the opposite of Joyce's. Wilson's a nominalist who is very influenced by his quantum physics pals in San Francisco--guys like Saul- Paul Sirag, Fred Wolf, and Jack Sarfatti. They basically argue over the names of Satan. But Joyce viewed language as the real constituent of matter and bet on the propensity for us to become our names. Wilson's friends wrestle within the arena built by the Bohr-Bohm polarity. Joyce spars with Einstein over which medium is the message--Joyce doesn't agree with Einstein on where the arena is located and what time the fight should take place. Joyce countered Einstein's E=MC2 formula with his own 1132 formula.

Marshall: That pipe-smoking guy in The Book of the SubGenius you showed me seems to be modeled on Wilson's Hagbard Celine.

Dobbs: Yes, your intuition is correct because Doug Smith had read Wilson's books before he met me. When he and Philo encountered me they thought they had met the real Hagbard. The result of the alchemy between the two images is J. R. “Bob” Dobbs--Finn the Eskimo.

Marshall: The All-Canadian Boy!

Dobbs (laughing): Yes--you, my Pygmalion.

Marshall: You wish!

Dobbs: By the way, why is Wilson on your mind?

Marshall: I thought of him after I performed with Rosi Fan Tutti. It's the whole thing about presenting my information in the counterculture milieu. It was a little disconcerting and it reminded me of his audience when I saw him speak here in Toronto.

Dobbs: Small is beautiful!

Bob and Dobbs turned off Yonge Street and aimed for the CKLN radio station on the Ryerson Polytechnic Institute campus.