Editing Robert Anton Wilson (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Robert Anton Wilson, 1977.jpg|left|thumb|Wilson at the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]], London, for the 10-hour stage version of ''[[Illuminatus!]]'' in 1977]]

Born Robert Edward Wilson in [[New York Methodist Hospital|Methodist Hospital]], in [[Brooklyn]], New York, he spent his first years in [[Flatbush]], and moved with his family to [[Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn|Gerritsen Beach]], in a [[lower middle class]] area, around the age of four or five, where they stayed until relocating to the then-socioeconomically analogous [[Park Slope, Brooklyn|South Slope]] section (in part to facilitate an easier high school commute for Wilson) when he was thirteen. He had [[polio]] as a child, and found generally effective treatment with the Kenny Method (created by [[Elizabeth Kenny]]) which the [[American Medical Association]] repudiated at that time. Polio's effects remained with Wilson throughout his life, usually manifesting as minor muscle [[spasm]]s causing him to occasionally use a cane, until 2000, when he experienced a major bout with [[post-polio syndrome]] that would continue until his death.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

He attended Catholic grammar schools before securing admission to the selective [[Brooklyn Technical High School]]. Removed from the Catholic influence at "Brooklyn Tech", Wilson became enamored of [[literary modernism]] (particularly [[Ezra Pound]] and [[James Joyce]]), the Western philosophical tradition, then-innovative historians such as [[Charles A. Beard]], science fiction (including the works of [[Olaf Stapledon]], [[Robert A. Heinlein]] and [[Theodore Sturgeon]]) and [[Alfred Korzybski]]'s interdisciplinary theory of [[general semantics]].<ref name="wordpress.com">{{cite web|url=https://setiishadim.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/robert-anton-wilson/|title=Robert Anton Wilson RIP|work=The Force Holocron|date=January 12, 2007}}</ref> He would later recall that the family was "living so well ... compared to the [[Great Depression in the United States|Depression]]" during this period "that I imagined we were [[lace-curtain Irish]] at last."<ref name="mises.org">{{cite web|url=https://mises.org/library/robert-anton-wilson|title=Mises Daily|work=Mises Institute|date=August 3, 2011}}</ref>

Following his graduation in 1950, Wilson was employed in a succession of jobs (including ambulance driver, engineering aide, salesman and medical orderly) and absorbed various philosophers and cultural practices (including [[bebop]], [[psychoanalysis]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Alfred Korzybski]], [[James Joyce]], [[Bertrand Russell]], [[Carl Jung]], [[Wilhelm Reich]], [[Leon Trotsky]], and [[Ayn Rand]], whom he later repudiated) while writing in his spare time. He studied [[electrical engineering]] and mathematics intermittently at the [[Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute]] from 1952 to 1957 before enrolling in an English education undergraduate program at [[New York University]] from 1957 to 1958 but did not complete a degree at either institution.<ref name="wordpress.com"/><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/obituaries/13wilson.html "Robert Anton Wilson, 74, Who Wrote Mind-Twisting Novels, Dies"], ''The New York Times'', January 13, 2007.</ref>

After having smoked [[Cannabis (drug)|cannabis]] for nearly a decade, Wilson first experimented with [[mescaline]] in [[Yellow Springs, Ohio]], on December 28, 1961.<ref name="wordpress.com"/> Wilson began to work as a freelance journalist and advertising copywriter in the late 1950s. He adopted his maternal grandfather's name, Anton, for his writings and told himself that he would save the "Edward" for when he wrote the [[Great American Novel]]. He later found that "Robert Anton Wilson" had become an established identity.

He assumed co-editorship of the [[Ralph Borsodi|School for Living]]'s [[Brookville, Ohio]]-based ''Balanced Living'' magazine in 1962 and briefly returned to New York as associate editor of [[Ralph Ginzburg]]'s quarterly magazine, called ''[[Fact (US magazine)|fact:]]'', before leaving for ''[[Playboy]]'', where he served as an associate editor from 1965 to 1971. According to Wilson, ''Playboy'' "paid me a higher salary than any other magazine at which I had worked and never expected me to become a [[Conformity|conformist]] or sell my soul in return. I enjoyed my years in the Bunny Empire. I only resigned when I reached 40 and felt I could not live with myself if I didn't make an effort to write full-time at last."<ref name="mises.org"/> Along with frequent collaborator [[Robert Shea]], Wilson edited the magazine's ''Playboy'' Forum, a letters section consisting of responses to the ''Playboy'' Philosophy editorial column. During this period, he covered [[Timothy Leary]] and [[Richard Alpert]]'s [[Millbrook, New York]]-based Castalia Foundation at the instigation of [[Alan Watts]] in ''[[The Realist]]'', cultivated important friendships with [[William S. Burroughs]] and [[Allen Ginsberg]], and lectured at the [[Free University of New York]] on 'Anarchist and Synergetic Politics' in 1965.<ref>
{{Cite journal
| last = Berke
| author-link = Joseph Berke
| first = Joseph
| title = The Free University of New York
| journal = Peace News
|date=October 29, 1965
| pages = 6–7
}} as reproduced in {{Cite web
 |last=Jakobsen
 |first=Jakob
 |title=Anti-University of London – Antihistory Tabloid
 |publisher=MayDay Rooms
 |location=London
 |year=2012
 |pages=6–7
 |url=http://maydayrooms.org/room-3-research/
 |url-status=dead
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121012141942/http://maydayrooms.org/room-3-research/
 |archive-date=October 12, 2012
}}</ref>

He received a BA, MA (1978) and PhD (1981) in [[psychology]] from Paideia University, which was an accredited university in California at the time he graduated in 1981 but later on became unaccredited and then closed.<ref name="archive">{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/bearsguidetoearn0000bear_d4j4|title=Bears' guide to earning degrees by distance learning|year=2001 |page=327|isbn=978-1580082020 |last1=Bear |first1=John |last2=Bear |first2=Mariah P. |last3=Bear |first3=Mariah |last4=Head |first4=Tom C. |publisher=Ten Speed Press }}</ref><ref>"Robert Anton Wilson." St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th ed. St. James Press, 1996.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. [[Farmington Hills, Michigan]].: Thomson Gale. 2007.</ref><ref>Martin van der Werf: "Lawsuit U." ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'', August 4, 2006.</ref> Wilson reworked his dissertation, and it found publication in 1983 as ''[[Prometheus Rising]]''.<ref name="theguardian.com">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jan/18/guardianobituaries.usa|title=Robert Anton Wilson|first=Michael|last=Carlson|date=January 17, 2007|access-date=June 15, 2017|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref>

Wilson married freelance writer and poet Arlen Riley in 1958.<ref name="theguardian.com"/> They had four children, including Christina Wilson Pearson and Patricia Luna Wilson. Luna was beaten to death in an apparent robbery in the store where she worked in 1976 at the age of 15, and became the first person to have her brain preserved by the [[American Cryonics Society]] (which was called the Bay Area Cryonics Society at the time).<ref>[http://www.cryonics.org/luna.html Patricia Luna Wilson] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060510045423/http://www.cryonics.org/luna.html |date=May 10, 2006 }} at cryonics.org.</ref> Arlen Riley Wilson died on May 22, 1999, following a series of strokes.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1992814,00.html|title=Obituary: Robert Anton Wilson|last=Carlson|first=Michael|work=The Guardian|date=January 18, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://users.lycaeum.org/~maverick/arlen-int.htm |title=The Beltane Celebration |work=lycaeum.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070209062331/http://users.lycaeum.org/~maverick/arlen-int.htm |archive-date=February 9, 2007 }}</ref>