Review: The Walls Came Tumbling Down

The Walls Came Tumbling Down by Robert Anton Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Robert Anton Wilson wrote this film script in the late '90's while settling into a new environment (Los Angeles) and recovering from a collapsed film deal. Wilson waited nearly a decade before publishing it. This is not one of Wilson's better works. Wilson's books of philosophy and social criticism shine with brilliance, wit and a clarifying debunking. Praise of these points festoons the covers here, but it is not The Walls Came Tumbling Down that earner that lauding. In the story Michael, an academic scientist, is so barraged with hallucinations and the paranormal that his entire reality is upset for reality only to emerge as a world run by a controlling shadow government with an extraterrestrial treaty. The quick scene changes and short dialogues threaten to unseat even the reader. The Golgotha imagery, folk hallucinogens and parallel universe theorization is a grab bag of alternate reality models that may have been advanced in the late '80's. However, it now reads as predictable, unexciting and not revealing at all. Certainly a necessary addition to the library of the Wilson completists, but a better entry point into his wisdom can be found in Reality is What you can get Away With or Prometheus Rising.



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