Clark Kent and His Supermen

Rock band in the The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. They appear throughout, including in the first novel, The Eye in the Pyramid (1975).

In Chicago, one hour earlier on the clock but the same instant, the phone booth closed, a rock group called Clark Kent and His Supermen began a re­vival of "Rock Around the Clock": their leader, a tall black man with a master's degree in anthropology, had been known as El Hajj Starkerlee Mohammed during a militant phase a few years earlier, and his birth certificate said Robert Pearson on it. He was observing his audience and noted that that bearded young white cat, Simon, was with a black woman as usual- a fetish Pearson-Moham­med-Kent could understand by reverse psychology, since he preferred white chicks himself. Simon, for once, was not entranced by the music; instead, be was deep in con­versation with the girl and drawing a diagram of a pyra­mid on the table to explain what he meant. "Crown Point," Pearson heard him say over the music. And listen­ing to "Rock Around the Clock" ten years earlier, George Dorn had decided to let his hair grow long, smoke dope and become a musician. He had succeeded in two of those ambitions.

Leader Robert Pearson reappeared in Wilson's 1979 Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy:

He pressed a button and another black man entered the room. This was Robert Pearson by birth, Robert Pearson, Ph.D., according to the anthropology department at U.C.-Berkeley, El Hajj Stackerlee Mohammed during a militant period in the sixties, Clark Kent (with his Supermen) during his commercial rock music years, and now Robert Pearson again.

External Links

• Trilogy on Google Books