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Title: Review of Revelation X Author: Bob Black Language: en Topics: Church of the SubGenius, review Source: Retrieved on 1 January 2010 from http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/black/sp001645.html][www.spunk.org]]. Proofread text from [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3901, retrieved on December 5, 2020. Notes: Commissioned by Steamshovel Press. The continued, albeit threadbare, persistence of the Church of the SubGenius I attribute to two factors. The first is the perennial renewal of the population of white male college students uncomfortable with girls. The second is that Doug Smith/“Ivan Stang” is no longer creative enough to come up with anything else, so it’s either keep milking SubGenius or get a day job.
Revelation X: The “Bob” Apochryphon: Hidden Teachings and
Deuterocanonical Texts of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs.
Translated by The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1994.
According to the last sentence of The Book of the SubGenius (hereafter:
BS): “You’ll never have to read another book.”
Not this one, anyway.
The Church of the One Joke just keeps going and going and going ...
nowhere. If you loved BS, you’ll like Revelation X, so you might as well
reread BS. If you liked BS, RX is a prescription for (as the greatest of
ex-SubGenii put it) less of more of the same. And more expensive, too.
The cost of Church membership, as of funeral arrangements, has risen
much faster than inflation, tripling in fifteen years. Back then you had
the feeling that SubGenius was on to something. Now you have the feeling
that SubGenius is up to something. Back then you had the feeling that
SubGenius had potential. Now you have the feeling that SubGenius had
potential.
RX is the fourth coffee-table book by Douglass St. Clair Smith, a.k.a.
“Rev. Ivan Stang,” all published by the notorious underground publisher
Simon & Schuster. For eight years now, time and time again, Stang has
hoodwinked this multi-national subsidiary of the Conspiracy, not only to
go out on a limb, but to try very hard to saw it off. For some strange
reason, luckily for the both of them, it never falls. SubGenius is like
the guy who, as John Crawford put it, couldn’t get himself arrested.
Ivan Stang: the Teflon revolutionary.
RX is full of — besides that which, to be full of, is that — what the
Church of the SubGenius thinks of the Conspiracy. But what does the
Conspiracy think of the Church of the SubGenius? If Simon & Schuster
isn’t part of the Conspiracy — any Conspiracy worth an upper-case “C” —
then there was no arms-for-hostages deal and furthermore, Lee Harvey
Oswald as a lone nut, acting alone, killed Kennedy, all by himself, just
as George Thorogood drinks alone, preferably by himself. (He probably
killed both Kennedys and slept with Mary Jo Kopechne.)
According to the press release (“Contact: Jennifer Swihart,
212-698-7643”) — or kill me — “Revelation X broadens the satire of
cults, religious extremism, and conspiracy theories promulgated by the
now notorious SubGenius Foundation.” You mean ... it was all just a
joke? A satire on villains it is so safe to despise that even “60
Minutes” rounds on them? And SubGenius is just an adult fantasy
role-playing game like Magic or Dungeons & Dragons, only not as
interactive?
How curious that the co-authors of the Conspiracy Lowdown cartoon
booklets of the mid-1970’s, Jay Kinney and Paul Mavrides, signed on
early with SubGenius (and at the same time distanced their other
project, Anarchy Comics, of which they never speak any more). Kinney,
who used to ridicule mystical cults, now hosts them in his slick rag
Gnosis. I gnow a scam when I psee one. Mavrides, who has never
repudiated the violent, crypto-Marxist Processed World cult he used to
contribute to, is the illustrator of RX and was co-illustrator of BS.
A working knowledge of conspiracy theory and radical ideology gives the
upwardly mobile hipster an important leg up in the business world. Stang
has a thorough grounding in the former but only a hit-and-miss,
increasingly dated acquaintance with the latter, as the radicals he used
to string along recoil from his ever more blatant, careerist shuckin’
‘n’ jivin’. In this he is (as so often — and so happily! — happens) the
victim of his own success. To the extent he’s reduced soi-disant
anarchists (Kinney, Mavrides, Trevor Blake, etc.) to mere Pipeheads he
has, in the argot of the intelligence community, “burned” them — blown
their cover — nullifed their utility as informants. These performers
have more customers and fans than they ever did, to be sure, but nobody
is telling them anything, so Stang can’t “run” these agents anymore.
The guy who is doing the running — on a hamster-wheel — and running
down, is the poor little rich kid Douglass St. Clair Smith himself.
(“Never trust a guy who has a last name for a first name, J.R. “Bob”
Dobbs once warned me.) He told his customers that all it took to be
creative was to send him $30, and they took him at his word (but usually
didn’t send the $30, a complaint reiterated well past the point of
tedium in RX). The scores of credits to collaborators at the beginning
of RX are meant to disguise the loneliness of the long-distance
“runner,” Smith. (Several are also fraudulent: tENTATIVELY, a
cONVENIENCE and Blaster Al Ackerman regard SubGenius with contempt.) He
complains in RX that for too many — for most — SubGenii, the Church is
just a jackoff. They aren’t even that self-starting. They expect him to
jerk them off, so he does, but his hand is getting tired. (Is my
metaphor sexist? Not nearly as much as the Church itself. Female
SubGenii are almost as rare as black SubGenii.) Smith made his bed and
now he has to sleep in it — alone. No wonder he sounds so cranky, so
peevish, so defensive. This Antabuse dry-drunk needs a drink, among
other things, in the worst way.
After 15 years, “Stang” can churn the stuff out according to the
formula, in any quantity. But as a husband, a father and a homeowner —
what’s with this shit in RX about extirpating normality? — what he’s
churning out is infant formula for retrograde young adults looking for
an easy escape from their all too accurate awareness that, for all the
resentments or theatrics of their so-fleeting youth, they’re just like
their parents. Doug Smith has the customers he deserves, and who could
wish a worse — or more fitting — retribution upon him than that?