Luther Blissett: taking revenge on stupidity

April 2, 2004 3:14 PM

Amid rumors of a ritual suicide, it seems Luther Blissett has gone back underground, but out of the shadows Wu Ming emerges! Best of all, Q is available among several free downloads under Omnia Sunt Communia.
posted by roboto (9 comments total)

After reading all the love for Foucault's Pendulum in the Grand Prior Chevalier Vs Osama thread, it reminded me of Luther Blissett who I desperately and unsuccessfully tried to find a couple years ago. I'll be incommunicado studying, please only contact me for top order cabal business.
posted by roboto at 3:28 PM on April 2, 2004

Is this one of those things you'd have to already know about to know about?
posted by nicwolff at 3:57 PM on April 2, 2004

Context, anyone?
posted by squirrel at 4:14 PM on April 2, 2004

A former Watford and England footballer is at the centre of a literary mystery in Italy involving the novelist Umberto Eco and a group of anarchists. The group use the collective identity "Luther Blissett" to hide their identity. Blissett played - briefly -for AC Milan, but scored only five times in 30 games for the club in 1982, earning him the nickname "Luther Missit" and giving rise to the gibe that Milan had bought "the wrong black Watford player". (The "right" player would have been John Barnes.) In March 1997 four young Italians accused of travelling on a train without a ticket all answered "Luther Blissett" when asked for their names in court. It emerged that the loosely organised group of self-styled anarchists had been struck by Blissett in Italy. In his latest incarnation, "Luther Blissett" has written Q, a 650-page novel set in Renaissance times, with a mixture of real and imaginary characters. It is full of historical and literary allusions in the manner of Eco, author of The Name of the Rose. Described as "a saga of good and evil", the novel is set against a background of espionage, the Inquisition's ruthless struggle to root out heresy, Martin Luther and the
Reformation, holy wars and peasant uprisings. - The Times, 9th March 1999
posted by roboto at 4:57 PM on April 2, 2004

roboto thanks for the links...

Q is Umberto Eco on methamphetamine, the kind of historical novel that is really about history both past and current. I found the book difficult to put down.

More on Luther Blisset and Q from the Guardian...

They're like the Residents, only broader in scope...
posted by talos at 5:19 PM on April 2, 2004

Is this one of those things you'd have to already know about to know about?

Said the Pentagon correspondent to Rumsfeld. But a fair question. Correct me if I'm wrong: Blisset and Wu Ming are the pen names of a collective of anonymous Italian writers who produce peculiar novels, essays, and the like through the Wu Ming Foundation. They are, in other words, uncompromising dot-communists. That's the great thing about Italy: it still has real fire-breathing radicals. So now you're clued!
posted by hairyeyeball at 9:18 PM on April 2, 2004

just briefly scanned Q, but looks wicked cool.
posted by juv3nal at 10:47 PM on April 2, 2004

Not coincidentally, given their politics, you can download their books off of the site if you don't want to pay for the paper versions.
posted by Spacelegoman at 11:13 PM on April 2, 2004

given their politics, you can download their books

Well, if you surmise the ideas "copyleft" and "Omnia Sunt Communia" are forward thinking along the lines of the EFF's and our own BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow, as well as those kids at the cornerstone, the CreativeCommons, well maybe we have something that is free as in thinking and beer to talk about.
posted by roboto at 5:11 AM on April 3, 2004