A Conversation with Peter Lamborn Wilson Arthur Versluis Peter Lamborn Wilson (b. 1945) is certainly among the most influential anarchist authors of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His books range in subject from heterodox aspects of Islamic tradition, to pirates, to the theme for which he is perhaps most well known, temporary autonomous zones. Under the name "Hakim Bey," he has published numerous provocative works, widely available on the internet, yet he is a strong critic of the web and of computer technology in general. We met on a sunny day in late August and sat in a park, conversing about his personal history, his current analysis in light of the history of the left and of contemporary anarchist perspectives, and the theses that guide his thinking today about the present and the future. It was a wide-ranging, sometimes surprising, sometimes arcane, and sometimes quite amusing conversation. Arthur Versluis [AV]: We're sitting in a park with Peter Lamborn Wilson. Oftentimes what we do in these conversations is think back chronologically, in terms of your childhood or your adolescence, because we wonder what led to the unusual course you took over the years. You were at Columbia—did you ever graduate? [End Page 139] Peter Lamborn Wilson [PLW]: No. AV: What do you want to say about your youthful period? PLW: The first thing that flashed into my mind when you asked what in childhood led to whatever it is I've become, I immediately thought comic books, or comics, anyway. That was one of my childhood ambitions, to be a comic artist. I never did it, but it obviously warped my mind, just as they've said. That's what they feared. The comics code—remember the comics code? AV: Sure. PLW: As far as that goes, I could just quickly get it out of the way by saying "the sixties." I was just the right age to be, as I like to say, a buck private in Generalissimo Leary's army of premature entheogenists. That was the sixties, and then I spent ten years in India and Iran. That's it in a nutshell. AV: I have questions about that. You were traveling in the East during the sixties. It wasn't Columbia alone. You were doing traveling during that period, weren't you? PLW: I dropped out of Columbia and then I was a conscientious objector for two years during the Vietnamese mess. Then I pretty much immediately, in a fit of disgust after '68—which I clearly saw had been the failure of the revolution—decided to give up politics and go to the Orient. AV: So you went to Iran at that point, then? PLW: No, I spent a certain amount of time in North Africa, Lebanon, and Turkey, and then I went to India and stayed there for two years. I was on my way back, and I came to Iran and realized what a great place it was and how many possibilities it had. One thing led to another, and I ended up staying seven years there. AV: That's an era and a group of people that I'm really quite interested in. It included Seyyed Hossein Nasr and who else? [End Page 140] PLW: Henry Corbin. AV: So you knew Henry Corbin? PLW: Yes, and Toshihiko Izutsu. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. AV: Sure. PLW: And William Chittick. AV: I didn't know William Chittick was there, too. PLW: He was one of the founders of our little academy there [ ]. AV: Did Frithjof Schuon ever have any relationship to that or not? PLW: He never was there, but Nasr had close connections with him, of course. AV: At that time. PLW: How much dirt are we going to dish here? I suppose it's all ancient history now. I'm saying he's [Nasr] still alive, so . . . AV: Yes, he is. PLW: I don't think it's a secret that a Sufi order was behind these connections. AV: No, that's published. That's available, public knowledge of Schuon's order and so on of the connections that they had...