dude!!! MASKS OF THE ILLUMINATI

I totally agree. It took me only several days to read it the first time, but because it is such a large book it was difficult for me to get many of my friends to even pick it up. I've know people who couldn't get past the first two or three pages, one asking "what kind of fucked-up books are you into?"

Funny story about my copy. I had purchased the first, red-cover "omnibus" version from a used bookstore in Dayton, OH in the early 90s and carried it with me to NYC where I was living in an "anarcho-communist" commune in a squatted 6 story, fire-gutted apt building. I had loned it to a good friend who was reading it while I was back home in Dayton for a while. Unfortunately, as happens in experimental societies, careless idividuals run amok. So while I was away, the squat "somehow" burned down and collapsed. Everything I left was destroyed. So you can imagine how strange it was, when sometime later, my fellow squatter who had borrowed my book-- handed it back to me waterlogged and soot covered, telling me he had scaled the three stories of the collapsed structure after the fire was put out and tried to rumage for anything that had survived in his apartment!! My ILLUMINATUS! was one of the few items he could find. I still have it and it looks like it has been to hell and back. Because of the water damage the pages were swollen, and once it was dried out the book became almost twice as big as it used to be. It is one of my prized posessions. I just finished reading it for the third time and loned it to another friend who loves it. Hopefully I'll get it back this time with a little less crazyness.

by "bard" do you mean poet? i am not quite sure what you're saying, sorry.