In the late 1950s, two high school chums-Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley- witnessed a revelatory vision in a Southern California bowling alley which led to the founding of Discordianism, an apparent "spoof" religion based on the worship of Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord. Subsequently, Hill and Thornley adopted the Discordian alter egos of Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst and then set forth to enlighten the world-or at least tickle a few funny bones along the way. What evolved, in the years to follow, was the formation of the Discordian Society and the dictation of the holy writ, Principia Discordia.
Although Greg Hill was Principia Discordia's principal architect, Kerry Thornley would soon become the more famous of the two Discordian founders for reasons seemingly unrelated to Eris worship. Just the same, the Goddess works in mysterious ways
In the spring of 1959, Thornley-then serving in the Marines-was stationed at El Toro Military Base, located near Santa Ana, California, and it was there that he became acquainted with the future alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, none other than Lee Harvey Oswald. This association later led some to suspect- such as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison-that Thornley had been a participant in JFK's assassination. (Surely Eris had her five-fingered hand in all this!)
Thornley spent three months with Oswald at El Toro before he was transferred to Atsugi Air Base in June 1959. During his boat trip to Japan, Kerry started work on a novel called The Idle Warriors, the theme of which concerned the disillusionment of a young Marine as the result of overseas duty. The protagonist of Thornley's work-in-progress was a composite character based on several Marines he'd known during the period, including Oswald.
In October 1959, Thornley learned that Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union. This event immediately influenced a change of direction for the plot Warriors, and from that point forward the protagonist would be re-shaped with Oswald as the main character (Johnny Shellburn) who defects due to his dissatisfaction serving with the Marines in the Far East. So, in essence, Thornley was writing a novel about Oswald more than three years before the Kennedy assassination!
Aucun commentaire:
Publier un commentaire