Peter Lamborn Wilson first entered my mind three decades ago when he broadcast weekly over the local Pacifica radio station, well after midnight, two-hour monologues on various subjects. What caught my attention was not only his verbal facility and his greater learning but the depth and originality of his anarchism. As he synthesized the classical curriculum of Manhattan’s Columbia College (before he dropped out) with certain exotic interests and experience, he thought like no other American intellectual. As PLW was he commonly known.
His interests included Sufi traditions, Islamic art, pirates, radical religions, peaceful secession, angels, American anarchism, and much else. Under the pseudonym of Hakim Bey he published T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991), his single most influential text, a paean to chaos, that has had surprising influences, as the strongest books do as they make their way in the world. Some of these effects are identified in a Wikipedia entry solely on T.A.Z. Influence notwithstanding, nearly all PLW books have come from not from money-minded commercial publishers but from smaller presses whose governing editorial principle is not profit but love.
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