The Crying Clown Celebration: A Certain Flair for Death

"Fitzgerald Baker may well have been conceived in an act of erotic terrorism. That was what his mother had told him and it can be verified that Felix Pendragon initiated her into the League of Erotic Terrorists. However, she was also known to sacrifice truth for entertainment in most of what she said." With these words, Phillip Wendell, lifestyle crisis counselor, relates to the reader the initial phase of the counseling of Fitzgerald Baker whose crisis was triggered by viewing Roald Vallen's documentary, The Crying Clown Rites. The painful initiation of youth into manhood, the bizarre clown makeup and the hunt that ended in a thrill kill were disturbing parts of the film to Fitz, a disenchanted architect in his thirties who is tired of the lifestyle of transient personalities and throwaway relationships. Baker-the great grandson of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe-believes that maturity has evaded him and he fears both assassination and suicide because both run rampant in his ancestry. The film about the secret rites of the Jackson Hole Enclave bring these fears to the surface. Phillip takes Fitz on a Candide-like journey through the psychiatric cults and treatments of the late twenty-second century. This strange journey culminates when Phillip uses hypnodrug psychodrama to recreate in Fitz's mind the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas with Fitz over-identifying with the victim. "The best psychological science-fiction novel since The Demolished Man...the tension mounts and mounts...I couldn't put it down...it might do your head as much good as an Encounter Group with the Marx Brothers!" Robert Anton Wilson, Coauthor of the Illuminatus Trilogy