THE PRANKSTER AND THE CONSPIRACY
ADAM GORIGHTLY
$16.95
Paperback
290 pages
Paraview Press
P.O. Box 416
Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113-0416
www.paraview.com

Anyone who has researched the Kennedy assassination knows the name Kerry Thornley. Likewise, anyone who has been involved with the underground press or the high-weirdness of Discordian-Illuminatus-Zenarchy knows the name Kerry Thornley. But if you ask any of these individuals, “Who is Kerry Thornley?” more than likely a puzzled look will cross their faces in regard to this enigmatic figure. This is why Adam Gorigthly’s The Prankster and the Conspiracy is such a valuable offering.

What is most intriguing about Gorightly’s book is that he shows how Kerry Thornley became such an integral part of the counterculture in a long-gone era before Internet chat rooms, mass e-mails, and instant messaging. Combining a 1960s wanderlust with frequent appearances in a host of zines and other fringe publications, Thornley came to define the freewheeling prankster archetype in the tradition of Neal Cassady (On the Road), Alfred E. Neumann (Mad magazine), Randall P. McMurphy (from Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Paul Krassner (The Realist), Lenny Bruce, and Lester Bangs (Creem).

In this role as a lord of chaos and purveyor of alternative thought, Thornley’s path crossed with many of the luminaries who laid the foundation for what we do today in both the conspiracy research field and the small press. This is where Gorightly’s writing shines the brightest. While guiding us along the wildness of Thornley’s roller coaster life, we’re introduced to a wide array of fellow riders like Robert Anton Wilson, Lee Harvey Oswald, super-spook E. Howard Hunt, sleaze-freak David Ferrie, New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison, and filmmaker Oliver Stone. Gorightly brings this cast of characters to life as he did in The Shadow Over Santa Susana, which is by far the best book ever written on the craziness surrounding Charles Manson and his Family.

The highlight of The Prankster and the Conspiracy, though, undoubtedly involves the circumstances leading up to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the subsequent cover-up which is still going on today. As we learn by chapter two, not only did Kerry Thornley know Lee Harvey Oswald while serving in the Marines, he may have also unknowingly served as an Oswald “double,” or even as an alternate “lone nut killer” had the plans for Oswald fallen through. To make matters even freakier, Thornley may have been subjected to the nightmares of MK-ULTRA while in the service, including microchip implants and/or mind control experiments (in addition to hypno-brainwashing following his release).

It is this type of subject matter that makes The Prankster and the Conspiracy such a compelling read, and why Adam Gorightly – crackpot historian of the highest order – is so well-suited to catalogue it. So, if you want to take a peek at that which lurks around the periphery of our world, it’s all here – quack religion, shadowy politics, mental deterioration/madness, and a zest for BEING where freedom of expression and living life on one’s own terms sure as hell beats the dog shit out of a heavily-conditioned, politically correct lock-step yuppie world that is created for those who would stare robotically every night at “Survivor, “Joe Millionaire,” and “American Idol.” Too bad Kerry ain’t around to see this absurdity; he would have gotten a kick of it (especially since he was living Reality TV instead of simply watching it)!