THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES…THE TRUTH HAS SET ME FREE!

By BRICE TAYLOR (Brice Taylor Trust; 1999)

With touchy-feely memoirs all the rage these days, here’s my pick for memoir of the moment, a book you’re advised to read in place of NAKED or RUNNING WITH SCISSORS.  It’s THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES…THE TRUTH HAS SET ME FREE! by Brice Taylor, a profoundly insane reminiscence adequately summed up by its own ungainly subtitle: “The memoirs of Bob Hope’s and Henry Kissinger’s mind-controlled slave…Used as a presidential sex toy and personal computer.”

This large format paperback has become a veritable legend on the conspiracy book circuit, and it’s not difficult to understand why.  THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES is by no means the first allegedly nonfiction account of a mind-control survivor (Cathy O’Brien & Mark Phillips’ TRANCE-FORMATION OF AMERICA and Taylor’s own STARSHINE beat it to the punch), nor the last (subsequent like-minded books include SECRET WEAPONS by Cheryl Hersha and UNSHACKLED by Kathleen Sullivan), but it IS very likely the stand-out.

I’m not saying, however, that it’s especially well written or convincing.  From a literary standpoint the book is disjointed and filled with a much higher-than-average amount of typos, while the content might safely be described as hard to believe.

 To whit: Brice Taylor (real name Susan Ford) claims to have been brainwashed as a child by Henry Kissinger and Bob Hope.  Both were apparently acting under the control of “The Council,” a band of well-connected men looking to take over the world.  Taylor/Ford was systematically abused in a concerted effort to create multiple personalities within her, each with a different Council-directed purpose.  In this way she was utilized as a human computer, with carefully chosen code words/phrases/gestures used to summon different personalities, each with its own set of implanted memories.

It all began, Taylor claims, when she was two months old, and her father molested her.  He of course was directed by The Council, and would take his daughter to be manhandled at Disneyland each year—with the abuse orchestrated by Walt Disney himself!  Later Bob Hope and Henry Kissinger got into the act, each working to solidify Taylor’s status as a Council slave.  Her first assignment was boning JFK, at least until the Council had him killed (allegedly to intimidate his mob buddies).

There were more presidential shenanigans to follow; this gal claims to have banged every U.S. president after JFK (though not Carter) and nearly every celebrity you can think of.  It wasn’t until the nineties, Taylor claims, that she was able to break free of the Council’s evil clutches and recover the “memories” that comprise this book.

You’ll have to forgive me for disbelieving the many, many outrageous claims Taylor makes herein.  To conclusively detail all this book’s outrages would take a novella length review—examples include an early episode in which Taylor was forced as a teenager to eat her own aborted fetus; later she was apparently beaten by Frank Sinatra, hunted MOST DANGEROUS GAME-style by George Bush Sr., encouraged to befriend Lady Di (in a Council-backed effort at destabilizing the monarchy) and cast in dolphin porn(!) for the edification of Sly Stallone.

Obviously this book contains more than its share of sick thrills.  It will also be catnip for you conspiracy nuts (did I mention that according to Brice Taylor the Council is secretly controlling us from a base on the moon?).  I’d argue that ultimately, however, it’s most fascinating as a study of the inner workings of madness.

Consider: schizophrenics often base their delusions on famous figures, as Miss Taylor does here.  Insisting on nonexistent connections is another symptom—note the myriad “triggers” Taylor says were hard-wired into her by the Council, from popular movies to TV programs to breakfast cereals.  Then there’s the belief all conspiracy-minded people share that anyone who questions their claims is part of the conspiracy.  This includes much of Taylor’s family, specifically those relatives who don’t believe everything she says.

This latter group also apparently includes TRANCE-FORMATION authors Cathy O’Brien and Mark Phillips, the latter an ex-CIA agent with whom Taylor shacked up in the early nineties, and who had the temerity to suggest she might be crazy.  Taylor takes this to mean that Phillips is still an agency member.  He for his part has launched a counteroffensive against Taylor, claiming (in the ‘04 book ACCESS DENIED) that she plagiarized the present volume from a fictional account by somebody else.

Whatever the truth about THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES, it’s lunacy of an extremely high order.  Only the hardiest readers, however, will want to take a crack at Brice Taylor’s dense, highly detailed 312 pages.  No review can possibly do this jam-packed book justice; it is quite simply a mind-blower, in every sense of the term!