The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture

This is a fantastic book, but it left me kind of sad. Prior to reading this, everything I knew about Thornley was filtered through Robert Anton Wilson, and it was all positive (or at least all humorous). This book made me acutely aware that Wilson's Thornley is not unlike Plato's Socrates - an idealized character who reveals more about his biographer than his or her actual self. Unlike Wilson, Gorightly declines the invitation to treat Thornley as a discordian saint/superhero. He depicts a man who was a philosophical and comic genius, but also a raving lunatic (and -perhaps more importantly- an unhappy one).More alarmingly, Gorightly recounts allegations that Thornley commited acts of sexual abuse against children. Gorightly's case here is pretty slim, and basically amounts to two instances of hearsay, but the allegation changes the character of this story substantially. It is disheartening to learn that the man who you thought was a bodhisattva may just have been a homeless, schizophrenic, child molester with very good PR. (Of course, the same could be said of Socrates...)Of course, none of this should detract from the appeal of the book, which is very well-written and downright fascinating. Especially interesting are the parts about "brother-in-law," the shadowy CIA/neo-nazi/cowboy who Thornley came to believe had brainwashed him into assisting Lee Harvey Oswald. Did he exist? Was he really E. Howard Hunt? Was Thornley insane, brainwashed by the CIA, or both? With this discussion Gorightly masterfully brings the reader to the threshold of Chapel Perilous and, by the end of the book, the reader may question his or her own sanity.As the title suggests, The "Prankster and the Conspiracy" is primarily about the nexus between Thornley and the Kennedy assassination, and does not purport to be a full biography of Thornley the man. Still, it is remarkably insightful into his personal character and is based on information from people who were close to him.This is also maybe the first book to be written about Discordianism (rather than simply being a discordian holy text) which purports to be historically accurate. Anyone interested in Our Lady of Chaos will be interested to hear the backstory to Thornley and Hill's revelations...

Even the reported (main) founder of the Dystopian movement had a hard time dealing with the fact that chaos cannot be controlled. Instead, perhaps, Kerry Thornley made the best he could of it. He had great creativity, was in all the wrong places at the wrong time, had what comes across as a caustic temperment, and had a major impact on the counter-culture that reached around the world and into the future now. Kerry did not have a boring life, nor is any part of this account of his life in any way boring. It's a fascinating read, and written well (which makes it more so a pleasure) by Adam Golightly.

This was a well written good read. Not specifically for conspiracy theory types, it was entertaining and informative all the way through.

good read.

If there ever was a perennial scapegoat of the 60's counterculture it would have to be Kerry Thornley, one of the founding members of the patently anarchist Discordian Society. With a kind of insurrectionary bravado, he took it upon himself to sponge up the sordid projections of the Military Industrial Mafia Complex as well those from the plethora of intelligence revenants who trailed and taunted him for years, under various disturbing guises. He managed to keep ahead of the archetypal game by purging himself, from time to time, through various prankster like stunts, self published underground 'zines and the writing of fiction. However the Fool ended up occupying the Hanged Man's place in a Tarot deck that had been stacked against him from day one. As a result of such discouraging and divinatory odds, his self imposed role as Sin Eater freely dining at the table of the conspiracy funeral banquet is what probably turned him upside down and killed him in the end. In Adam Gorightly's The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, a most intriguing and vivid portrait of this essential and vital anarchist spirit is effectively painted. Kerry freely ranged about in the JFK/MLK/RFK assassination matrixes like a conspiratorial version of Diogenes, the ancient Greek who loved to mock the philosophers and statesmen of his day. In this case, KT was mocking the real assassins at large without anyone really knowing it, since he was drawing so much attention to himself. The author suggests that KT may very well have been an MKULTRA prodigy along with Lee Harvey Oswald himself since they were both in the marines together and stationed in Japan prior to 1963. Maybe KT's Discordian strategy was an attempt to break free of his handlers. It seems that both he and Oswald ended up being double crossed, the latter by some very real forces at work, namely in the form of a mind controlled entity named Jack Ruby, and KT by his ever snowballing delusions which genuinely got out of hand as the author so convincingly points out, thanks to his wide ranging, unbiased, thorough research and interviews with key players such as Robert Anton Wilson. Gorightly maintains a wonderful balance between compelling factoids surrounding the JFK hit, its aftermath and Thornley's proximity to it all and the elusive yet intriguing metaphysics of the Discordian Society he helped to create and promote. It certainly makes for a compelling and very hard to put down book, I can assure you of that. If you are looking to get a bead on the Thornley universe and how you may obtain a key enabling you to enter into it, The Prankster and the Conspiracy will certainly do it for you. In spite of Thornley's Discordian extremism, mass consumption of LSD and being a target of intelligence forces, within and without, up to the time of his death, I tend to think that it was his early dabblings into Ayn Rand's so called 'Objectivism' that ultimately cracked him in the end. Aynny's I've-got-the-Hots-for-Capitalism philosophy served to malignantly magnetize the ever mutating vortex of KT's psyche and attracted some kind of negative free market investment forces into its realm. No amount of Discordian meme subterfuge could have de-railed the Rand dogma (or catma) from rapidly self replicating within the brain of this errant pixie who seemed to be able to defy everything else and get away with it. Not even the electronic dissolution of memory could neutralize these Objectivist toxins within him, no matter how many times his handlers kept pushing the button to keep him raving. I realize that I'm merely speculating in a possibly communist/socialist manner, but Gorightly's fertile biography is triggering my synapses to bridge so rapidly that I cannot help but entertain such cabals. Your own synapses will be triggered/bridged (and entertained too) when you order your own copy of this excellent proto- biography of an anarchist archetype gone delightfully awry. While reading the final chapters of this sad, wonderful, tragic, inspiring/electrifying book, I flashed that the `evil' Goddess Eris, who brought a well known apple to a banquet on Mount Olympus celebrating the wedding of King Peleus and the Sea Nymph Thetis, decided to jump ahead a few thousand years into the 1960's and toss another solid, golden fruit into the chaos heart of a Discordian party, a fruit upon which was engraved, 'Who is the most paranoid of all?' No telling what kind of Trojan war her question would have caused if she had chosen to roll it into the mix at the time. Who amongst the group would have fought for the title? Fortunately Gorightly`s keen portrayal of Kerry Thornley gives us a sufficient starting place where we can all freely witness the scapegoat himself stepping forth from the shadowed margins and taking the full honors of the title, in the limelight.

When I first read the ‘Illuminatus!’ trilogy back in the early 80s, I assumed that Discordianism was a fictional religion invented by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea for the books. As I read more Wilson I discovered Discordianism was real, and later on I even found a copy of Principia Discordia in the (now long-gone) wonderful Compendium Books in Camden.I bought ‘The Idle Warriors’ and ‘Zenarchy’ when these were finally published in the early 90s, and even wrote to Thornley once in the mid 90s, receiving a letter back enclosing a John Dillinger Died For You Society membership card and credit card.Adam Gorightly has interviewed many of the people who knew Thornley best, including fellow Discordians, work/military colleagues and family members, and brings their stories together to give as detailed an account of the life (lives?) of Kerry Thornley as we’re likely to get. He doesn’t shy away from the less-comfortable aspects of Thornley’s personality and deals frankly with his later descent into paranoia.If you have more than a passing interest in the works of Robert Anton Wilson, Discordianism, 60s counterculture or, of course the Kennedy assassination then this book is a must-read. Now I’m off to read Gorightly’s second Thornley book: ‘Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and Garrison's JFK Investigation’.