Here’s a confession: I’ve never made it through the Illuminatus trilogy, despite trying several times, despite it being a canonical text (or maybe symptom) of the conspiracy prone, paranoid culture that led also to Gravity’s Rainbow and, say, Dick Cheney. Now its co-author, cult hero Robert Anton Wilson, is apparently sick and poor, and close to being evicted.

That’s really not what you ever want to hear when you’re a writer. But here’s where the Internet comes in. A plea for funds, rent money and then some, is going around the Net, led by uberblog Boing Boing. A day later, it looks like he’s in better shape. Go Internet. This is where the community flexes its muscles for good, instead of just hype.