My Other Staple Reading: Philip K. Dick

Vladimir Nabokov and Philip K. Dick have each appeared many a time on this blog to date. Why stop now? Why stop when such a good thing is going?

I don't know, perhaps because it's hard for me to imagine "VALIS" being topped by anything else in what remains of my "to read" PKD reading. I've nursed on this book for the better part of the last several months, not so much because I couldn't focus on it (although as previously mentioned focusing on reading has been difficult of late), but instead because it's such a bizarre and fun romp to read, and I am one to savor such books.

But "romp" probably doesn't adequately describe the fact that this book is insane. As Ben commented on a previous post, PKD sort of lost his sense of . . . things . . . near the end of his life. It's also possible that instead of losing his mind he became a modern-day prophet, technologically oriented and so forth. One thing is for certain, whatever the case, something profoundly affected his fiction. Something gave us "VALIS."

So let's talk about what it gave us, then. "VALIS" is in a very superficial sense a story about a man, his friends, and his mortality. It's about mortality, also, in a more general way. I feel like when Jean Baudrillard was sussing through the offerings of simulacra and postmodernity in the novel, sure, yes, "Crash" by J.G. Ballard was a good choice, a great example of the synthesis and synesthesia of postmodern techno-simulacra that's possibly come to define our present way of life, but c'mon, Baudrillard: Philip K. Dick. I mean, c'mon.

"VALIS" is so much a synthesis of the age-old theological, ontological questions set against the backdrop of modern communications and greater media. The modern prophet would receive his call from God through a medium like a major motion picture, wouldn't (s)he? The modern prophet wouldn't know if he or she was crazy or sane, right? (We, the viewing public, would assume insanity, which I maintain is not an unreasonable thing to assume.)

The answer to all questions posed above: yes, yes absolutely. (I'm comfortable being categoric as those things go.) But would the prophet, the receiver of this information simultaneously be both "VALIS"' third person subject/object of narration, i.e. Horselover Fat (PKD's alter ego), and the narrator himself, i.e. Philip K. Dick? Um, yes again. We're introduced to Horselover Fat at the beginning of the "VALIS" through a presumably omniscient, third person narrator, but who in fact, it turns out, is Philip K. Dick himself. This meshes perfectly with the dichotomous nature of the tale -- e.g. reference to the rational and irrational creators of the universe abound.

This will sound stupid, I suspect, but one of the most satisfying qualities of "VALIS" is just how much esotericism fills its pages. I mean, there's religious references of all kinds, Gnosticism (the codices of Nag Hammadi are cited frequently), numerous eastern sects (Buddha and the like), countless nods to various other derivations of the Semitic religions, Zoroastrianism, and truly more than I could hope to identify or keep track of, even when PKD invokes them by name. Then there are references to philosophical schools and their preeminent thinkers. Goethe's Faust is mentioned, and how that work more or less engendered existentialism, revealing in it that humans are defined not by words but by deeds. From this seed came the outgrowth of man's awareness of and relationship to his absurd conditions -- to, in PKD's parlance, the unstable creator deity who begat a world that is not rational but irrational. Richard Wagner is referenced several times. Wagner's "Parsifal," his last opera, is taken to task in an amusing anecdote:

I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of heaven. "You have to let me in," he says, "I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?" And they answered, "Well, we read it and it makes no sense." SLAM.

SLAM, indeed, Wagner.

Others noted are Pascal, Spinoza and Schopenhauer. Immanuel Kant might as well have been cited by name with the introduction of Fat's friend Doug, a man Fat meets while he's institutionalized, following Fat's suicide attempt. Doug states his belief in two forms of knowledge that which is empirical and that which is occurring a priori -- i.e. knowledge that requires no experiential observation, et al, "that arises within your head." Certainly Kant isn't the inventor of a priori vs. a posterieri knowledge, but he is one of its greatest advocates, one who best advanced and infused this dichotomy in Western thought, of phenomenon (things experienced, or of the senses) and noumenon (thing-in-itself or Ding an sich).

All the while, an unnamed but monomaniacal search continues. It's a search for things, and each thing becomes a new singular focus. At one time it's a search for the cause of pain and of suffering. it's next the search for belief and a reason for doing so. It culminates with a search for the next coming of the deity variously referred to as Zebra, VALIS (which is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System), and eventually the reincarnation of St. Sophia (and thus Christ) with a computer for a brain (although she's only referred to as Sophia, this second coming, or whatever coming she is).

Sophia, a two year old and product of immaculate conception, is the daughter of Eric and Linda Lampton, filmmakers responsible for the theatrical version of "VALIS" -- a movie which tells a tale of a dark world in which an evil ruler holds sway, Ferris F. Fremount (referenced as a stand-in for Richard Nixon). VALIS undoes Fremount's reign in the film, as it did in real life, or so is what's claimed by the Lamptons and Sophia. The Lamptons also claim to be immortals, members of the "Friends of God" Society, which is meant literally. They are immortal friends of him/her/it, God. There's also the deteriorating Mini, a man who is dying a slow death (of multiple myeloma) as a result of his experiments with lasers that are meant to reveal to him VALIS in its true form. Mini explains to Fat and Philip (who by the time in this story when the Friends of God Society is revealed is a functioning character in the story) that VALIS is living information. [I TOLD YOU THIS STORY IS CRAZY!] Ultimately revealed by Mini is that VALIS is our savior, meant to free us from our unreal maze world that's inherently irrational, or poisonous, toxic to humankind. This is at least partly because humankind did not originate on earth but on Albemuth, and VALIS is an artifact sent by those left behind to beam to us rational instruction . . . obviously. VALIS apparently looks like an old satellite. It's all very interesting.

Most of the "Friends of God" saga reads to the outsider, the reader, as the way in which people become immersed in a cult. It happens slowly, by subtle indoctrination, as with Scientology. Scientology doesn't reveal all the crazy truths that make up its origin story when at first you join, but slowly as you become more and more entrenched in the church's dogma. After that, Xenu makes a lot more sense, but I apologize for this digression; it's just one of the things I observed over the course of "VALIS."

There's also moments earlier in the story when it's revealed time and space are constructs of sorts (mechanisms of separation) and that all existence is happening simultaneously. That's not as strange as the cross-consciousness that results from it, i.e. Horselover Fat's thoughts begin to be penetrated by the thoughts of a man named Thomas, who is living in ancient Rome and who Fat says is smarter than himself, Fat. It leads to a lot of Ancient Rome's being superimposed over 1974's California. That would be kind of a mind fuck. I might parse this episode further but it's sort of exhausting just rehashing this much.

In fact, this might be a good place to stop. I feel as though "VALIS" is the kind of novel that begs for follow up reads, and follow up analysis, and follow up perplexity. I encourage you to check out other PKD before giving this one a go. It's less for the uninitiated, or rather it's worth waiting for.

An Update Post, More or Less

I'm a couple stories into A D Jameson's very recently released (i.e. this month) short story collection, "Amazing Adult Fantasy," available from Mutable Sound (a very cool Chicago area indie press). If you know of Jameson's writing from around these internets, either as a blogger on Big Other or just various fictions made available on web-based and print literary magazines' sites, you know he's not short on thoughtful and entertaining commentary and prose.

So far "Amazing Adult Fantasy" has blended references to my own favorite childhood pop culture icons, Oscar the Grouch, Indian(a) Jones, and Big Bird, with surrealist, humorous literary locales reminiscent of the stylings of writers like Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover and Curtis White. Of course where some of the preceding authors' works get a bit too disjointed for my tastes at times, narrative structure, though oft abstract, is retained in Jameson's fiction (which I hope encourages those of you who've been overly daunted by experimental writers in the past to maybe not give up on Jameson without first giving his writing an honest shot). There will no doubt be more to come on this subject as I continue to read "Amazing Adult Fantasy."

***

Meanwhile, I continue the challenge of reading "VALIS" by Philip K. Dick. I hope to finish this, his trippiest of trippy novels, before the month is out. I think it's hard to argue "VALIS" isn't also PKD's most ambitious work of fiction, likewise. Its features are much more relatable to the difficult structural turns of works by experimental, umbrella-termed postmodern writers than most science fiction authors I've ever encountered. It's also a visible departure from the more well-known stories that have made him a well-remembered author of the genre. This is all very much to say I encourage you to read "VALIS" (but after you've acquainted yourself with his earlier works). More to come on this once I've finished reading the novel, though.

***

I'm also beginning to read two books I've wanted to read for quite some time now, Alissa Nutting's "Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls" and Patrick Somerville's "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature." I'm reading both for bibliographing Nicole's "reading challenge." Wish me luck! There will must needs be more on the subject of this in the coming weeks.

So fear not, readers, while I seem like I'm neglecting this blog , the truth is quite the contrary, I'm striving more than ever before to deliver actual, meaningful content and commentary. Because what would be the point of barfing out whatever comes to my mind (i.e. barfing without clear focus).

(I can't really debate the logorrhea put forth here resembles a kind of word barfing, and for that I apologizes sooo muchs; I blame the Internet and the very nature of blogging, and conveniently not myself.)

I Think Therefore We Are: "A Scanner Darkly"

Philip K. Dick might be our most underrated writer of the last 100 years. Yes, honestly, I mean that. I've said before his prose is more workman-like than artisan, which has cost him points with the establishment, but it can't be enough to detract from his recognizable gifts, not least among which are the sprawling spaces his narratives travel. Because it could just as easily be said that he was our most insane writer, too -- in the most positive sense of the term (though I acknowledge "insane" connotes many negative things).

"A Scanner Darkly" is the last book of his I needed read before "VALIS" (one of the handful I've read to date (all of which are reviewed on this site), a list based in one part on someone else's recommendation and one part my own self-imposed reading requirements) -- which is now, finally, at long last, next, and which I'm extremely excited about (although I believe I've said that before; I worry now I won't be anything but disappointed, ah, but that's enough negativity!)

There is something nearer and dearer about this novel, separating it from the other, more sci-fi oriented works of PKD's collection I've read. Never have I encountered an author who seems more committed to allowing his work to flow on its own momentum and not from something contrived. Donald Barthelme may have articulated this notion of "Not-Knowing" best, of valuing the cultivation of uncertain aspects of the story from the vantage of writer as artist, free from the convolution of a pre-established conclusion and the plot points building to that (showcased with devices like foreshadowing), but no one I've read has adhered to this approach more devotedly than seems PKD.

And "A Scanner Darkly" tells the story of a motley group of bums and burn outs the likes of which I've never seen before. Think if The Whole Sick Crew of Thomas Pynchon's "V." were given a follow up, set somewhere ambiguous in the future. Which if "A Scanner Darkly" is anything in specific, it's got to be an epilogue to PKD's experiences with drugs and excess in the '60s. As PKD himself notes in the opening line to his "Author's Note" at the end of the novel, "This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did."

It's also a novel about losing yourself. Ok, so then you ask, well, to what exactly? Drug use is the simplest answer. I wouldn't say it's an incorrect answer, but I do think with Philip K. Dick, there's something lurking on the tip of tongues, said but not said, and going beyond illicit drug use and dependance. It's about the paranoia that comes from attempting to live a subculture lifestyle free from the opprobrium and castigation of the mainstream. It's also about how desperation and mistrust / betrayal are rampant within the parameters of such an environment, not forgetting the fact that drug use does tend to take people out of their right mind so-called. (I do hate to sound like some nuevo-hippie hellbent on questioning the sacrosanctity of society's cherished mores as concern drug use, but I think judiciousness requires that I remind people (myself included) not to take the tack of the normative underpinnings of that mainstream I mention.)

Some spoilage immediately forthcoming, depending on your point of view: There is certainly something to how Fred slowly moves away from recognizing that he is, in truth, Bob Arctor, a not-so-subtle but still deftly achieved effect by PKD. Of course saying what I've said in the previous sentence requires a little plot background, so spoiler alerts sounding sonorously, here goes: Bob Arctor dwells in a home with two other miscreants, Jim Barris and Ernie Luckman, all of whom are regarded among the dope-using derelicts of society, wasteoids and burn-outs. They're criminals society takes time only to wrest from freedom and put into prison, or possibly some derivation of a recovery program, but such programs are occluded and one's admission is not guaranteed.

It happens that Bob Arctor is addicted to a mysterious drug referred to only as "Substance D." So too is his alter-ego or alias, "Fred," because, as it happens, Bob Arctor is also an undercover police officer. Problem is, "Substance D" is a mind-altering substance, um, literally? It literally alters your mind? Basically that's true, and how it does this is, in a nutshell, by impelling the two hemispheres of one's brain into two distinct and altogether separate consciouses.

And while this internal reconfiguration is ongoing, Arctor as Fred meets with "Hank," his superior, for reassignment. Arctor's last mission was a bust, and the criminal whom he was responsible for arresting apparently escaped into the arms of a recovery program. Worth mentioning is that neither Hank nor Fred knows the other's true identity (this is because all undercover officers are veiled in a scramble suit (described by a Lion's Club M.C. as rendering an individual a "vague blur"), which is a a suit made up of multifaceted quartz lens and attached to a miniaturized computer that plays on loop from its hard drive the multiple visage components of a million and a half human images).

So what's revealed by Hank is that Fred's reassignment is himself, Arctor, i.e. Fred is to surveil Bob Arctor and determine if he's as involved in illegal drug sales and so forth, as an informant has alleged. All the elements of Kafka's "The Trial" set in some futuristic dystopia, with, as said, a touch of Pynchon's "V." and Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for good measure. The artificiality of our world is constantly regarded by the rampant consumerism manifest in ubiquitous advertisement, which several characters find themselves in varying degrees of conflict with. The narrator reaches its most pitched pathos, however, with the interplay extant between Arctor and Donna Hawthorne, a young drug dealer, who herself seems to have something more than just drugs and drug use to hide.

In the end I'd say what's most surprising is how cleanly PKD pulls off the mania of this narrative. It's truly a departure from everything I've read of his, heretofore. Whatever rules I might have thought existed in his narrative world, they're very much tossed to the side in "A Scanner Darkly." I shall remember this when tackling "VALIS" -- which I can only imagine what to expect from Horselover Fat in its pages.

Flowing a Tears My Policemen Says

Oh garsh, I hope you all are ready for another reeeview of Philip K. Dick, whom I have been reading like a firestorm eats trees with its fire. "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said," has perhaps the best title of all his novels, of his entire compendium and not just those I've read to date. And PKD is a writer who had many good titles, I think.

Now as for the content of this one, as much as I like the idea in general: in the not-too distant future (or past, if you're going by its setting in 1988), a well known and beloved TV personality and genetically superior human being (due to certain bioengineered alterations that gave him the classification "6," a status repeatedly mentioned throughout the story, in opposition to "ordinaries" or the average "little" people) named Jason Taverner, possessing 30 million fans and counting, awakens after being gruesomely attacked to discover neither signs of his injuries nor having any recollection of how he has gotten to where he is, a seedy motel room. He quickly learns that only a day has passed, so say the newspapers he can find; he therefore deduces that he has not been comatose, not for any significant length of time. He also apparently has no identity whatsoever, which he discovers to his great discomfiture as he further investigates his situation. In fact it's much worse; it's as if he has never existed at t'all. So as I say, as much as I like the idea in general, it just didn't cohere for me as well as PKD novels typically do.

Why?

This is an issue of plot mostly. Normally the abstraction of whatever impetus is destroying / driving mad a PKDian protagonist is cleanly (or satisfactorily at least) brought together -- as is usually the case with, for example, genre mystery novels. In fact, "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" might share the most similarities with mystery / detective novels of the PKD's I've yet read (although I've seen the film "Blade Runner" so I gather he had that bent), and that might also be where it runs afoul in my estimation, likewise. I felt that Taverner's situation deserved a ton of very clear explication that established how such a thing could happen in a plausible enough way, i.e. the very malleable rules of sci-fi and PKD himself are stretched (fine) but remain unbroken in bringing the narrative full circle.

But that's not how Taverner's plight is explained. Instead [SPOILAGE ALERT! Lots of Spoilers from this point onward (Though I shouldn't need to say it; these were obviously forthcoming)] Taverner and everyone else who dwells in the first world is, by process of a drug-induced fantasy in which a user can literally re-imagine every other living person's perception (at great physical detriment to him or herself), transported to a new state of consciousness, in which Taverner's being a common man is at its crux. The drug user was motivated to do so by her desire to meet Taverner in real life, himself unbound by the trappings of fame. Yes, this effect is a mind fuck, but I can't escape the fact that there is no drug in the world (or any other) that is capable of more than destruction of a single consciousness.

(New-related-thought update (10/23/10): I mean, put another way, I just can't shake the feeling that PKD could have done better with this one. I just think his imaginative prowess wasn't made full use of, that with a little more creative oomph I would have enjoyed "Flow My Tears" all so much better.

So now I ask . . .

Am I grounding myself in narrative rigidity, rigidity by which the boundaries of fiction can't or shouldn't be withheld? Might I take the transference of one and all from the tangible hallucination (or whatever it can be called) of the user in a different light? Is it perhaps meant to showcase, I dunno, say that there is a solipsism to this, that in effect a new world was conjured from the old, and that in no way can it be perceived that any of these characters are the literal incarnations of their previous' dimension's selves but rather wholly new, a new world has been created? Yes, that's possible but a lot to extract from what's offered in the text, despite the depth of detail PKD provides for explanation of the drug's effect.

Of course the woman who uses the drug is ultimately killed by it. Her intense two-day long bender had her expending a preternatural amount of energy that fatally sapped her of her life force. And in a sense Taverner is blamed for this, as he finally meets the woman and is at the scene when she finally succumbs to her fate. Once she is gone, Taverner's fame begins slowly to return to the minds of the world's population (one wonders at this, why did Taverner escape forgetting who he was (i.e. famous) right along with the rest of humanity at narrative's outset -- a less interesting plot turn, perhaps).

What's most interesting about the preceding is how little it seems to factor into the story's bigger questions. All the while, in an atypical portrayal of a police-state villain, General Felix Buckman is following the exploits of Jason Taverner. He is made aware of all of Taverner's attempts to procure some form of identity so Taverner can thus avoid being sent to a forced labor camp (facilities put in place as a means of incarcerating the population of students who were apparently responsible for an uprising that led to a second civil war; they lose, ostensibly, and are left to hidden dwellings beneath the university campuses, but none of this factors into the plot terribly much).

Buckman eventually decides it's necessary to pin the crime of murder to Taverner (for plot reasons I'll avoid getting into because at this point it would be, like, why read the book yourself? Which is something I want to compel you to do, i.e. read it for yourself). But he wrestles with his conscience constantly, making him a far cry from O'Brien of "1984" fame. In debating the matter with himself Buckman finally decides that Taverner was doomed before the whole thing got its start, from the moment he was brought to the attention of the state, as he says in the following quote:

And I could never explain it to you, Buckman thought. Except to say: don't ever come to the attention of the authorities. Don't ever interest us. Don't make us want to know more about you.

It's a prescient thought. One that I would say is entirely relevant to contemporary America, especially when you consider Taverner's celebrity status. The even more remarkable detail is that, ultimately, Taverner is not convicted of the crime. He gets off scot free, in fact. Although it's never said, one wonders if this is because of his celebrity. If a lesser man had been accused, a non-celebrity without Taverner's good bioengineered grooming, would he have been so fortunate? Makes you wonder, but not terribly hard. Leads you rather quickly to the conclusion that no, the lesser man would not have been as fortunate.

So don't come to the state's attention, sure, but if you do you'd better be famous. I think that pretty much distills the story to its most essential element. Maybe you don't have to read it anymore, after all!

Good night, for now...

Horselover Fat Returns "The Game-Players of Titan"-Style

Horselover Fat is Philip K. Dick's alter-ego in "VALIS," which is not completely unlike Kilgore Trout ... if Kurt Vonnegut had written about Kilgore Trout after many, many years of sustained and hard drug use. As for "VALIS," well, I haven't gotten to "VALIS" yet, still a few more novels by Philip K. Dick to read until I'm fully prepared for its ass-kicking narrative (they say), but I continue to look forward to reading it.

Presently, I've just finished "The Game-Players of Titan." One thing I like -- and I'm a man known for his liking things -- is there's not much use in guessing where a Philip K. Dick story is headed. He can change it up on you at a moment's caprice (it seems capricious for its irregularity). Maybe it's more planned than I know. But from what I've heard said, "The Game-Players of Titan" is anything but a clearly and finely contrived novel. So let's see if I might determine more, by finding out more about it, and thus knowing more. (It's a fairly simple process.)

...And I return from my frustrating, not terribly well-conceived Internet surf of "The Game-Players of Titan." Simple process? Not so much as it first seemed. Most of what I found was criticism wanting only to tear down "The Game-Players" in favor of other PKD novels or simply provide plot synopsis, which is useful to those people who haven't read the novel and want it ruined -- but not useful to me and my purposes.

Maybe I'm lazy and "not good" at surfing the web, but I was expecting something more substantial in terms of biographical information about the high profile PKD's work behind his work. What factors of note led to the conception of "The Game-Players of Titan"? Rumor has it he created the novel on a very short schedule, some three or four days, stopping each night and resuming the next day with renewed effort and a slightly shifted direction. Even if that's not how "The Game-Players of Titan" came to be, it is how it feels it came to be. There is something fascinating about the way the story stops and leaps forward throughout various points of the narrative. Pete Garden, the main character or central focus, is a very different man by the novel's completion. Or so it seemed to me.

In fact, the novel doesn't seem to get going until these twists, or leaps, in narrative take their first turn. To plot rehash so you have a basis for understanding everything after, the story concerns several characters living in a post-apocalyptic Earth, ravaged by the damaging effects and after effects of a Hinkel Radiation created by Bernhardt Hinkel whose weapon was acquired by the Red Chinese and via satellite used against the United States. However, the entire world lost because the Hinkel Radiation waves couldn't be contained and decimated all life on Earth.

Where we begin is in a world that has about two million or so inhabitants and of those inhabitants, for reasons no doubt related to the radiation (and / or possibly something more nefarious), only select combinations of individuals are able to produce viable offspring. (They thus constantly rotate spouses in hopes of finding a partner with whom this is possible.) Meanwhile, aliens from Saturn's moon, Titan, have intervened and enticed the remaining human population to gamble for control of huge tracts of land, say in city-size increments. For example, Pete Garden has just lost Berkley, CA, to his great dismay, as the story opens. These property holders are then referred to as bindmen. Apparently the Titanians themselves are huge proponents of the power of chance, which impels their decision to foist gambling on humans as their preferred and curious method of reconstruction.

Humorously and inscrutably, the game Earthlings are set against each other nightly to play in the battle for global supremacy is fairly simple, and sounded to me like a combination of the Candyland and Monopoly. I think perhaps PKD purposely made the game rather unexciting, because its a hilariously banal anchor in the screaming chaos of the narrative revolving around it.

Is there murder? Yes. Precognition? yuh-huh! Telepathy? A fair bit. Aliens from Saturn's moon, Titan, who are also called vugs and who materialize in strange places? And how!

I read in one review that this is not a PKD to start your PKD journey with, that it is "for completists" only. I suppose you might be better served beginning any of those they suggest, having read two of three and starting on the third, but skip it if you're not a "completist"? Perish the thought! As said, this novel is great for its inscrutability and chaos, its failure to be completely straightforward. And if you ask me, all things considered I'd say it ties together fairly well at the end (I have but one real point of confusion, which might be adequately well cleared up and is only a minor complaint, anyway).

"The Game-Players of Titan" is for readers who enjoy PKD, period. Suck on that, Infinity Plus!

Beware of Men Up There in High Castles

So it's official, I'm hooked on Philip K. Dick. I could easily have made a jejune, churlish remark there, meant facetiously of course, but then I wouldn't be able to excoriate myself with the use of all these descriptive and reproving "words of the day" I've learned recently and compiled here. Hence, my disinclination to do so, plus how incomparably draconian must one get for the purpose of arousing some droll, mirthful rise from his readership? So is why I refuse to say: I'm hooked on Dick, although I could have easily said that and engendered a pun of very lewd alternative meaning. I could very well have followed it up by saying I'm thoroughly enjoying Balzac likewise, although I haven't read "Eugenie Grandet," which is the only work of his in my possession, and I've never read anything by him heretofore, what's more. Whence, pardon my untruth for the facile endeavor of being risible and jocund as I have been, although in that endeavor I have contradicted, nay thwarted, my stated original purpose, which I claimed was to be neither of those things, to eschew those things in fact for the sake of decorum and civility. Or rather, I said I did so for the fact that then I wouldn't be able to excoriate myself with words, which in truth I have done. So all is well, actually.

Trekking ever onward . . .

But of the author appearing in the former position of the preceding paragraph, I can say only praising things. (Well, I could possibly say more negatively critical things but I prefer to speak praise first, which drastically outweighs my negative criticism of his work.) "The Man in the High Castle" can only be called a seminal novel of the sub genre of science fiction thus known as: alternative histories. In the novel and indeed its alternative history, the Nazis and Japanese have triumphed over the Allies in World War II, and the globe is split amongst the Axis victors, with the smallest portion offered to Italy, the France of this paradoxical universe.

The story follows multiple characters, the most important of which are: a store owner named Robert Childan specializing in the sale of antique Americana; Frank Frink, a secret Jew and a skilled craftsman who fashions reproductions of period pieces valuable to the Japanese, then after he quits that profession, jewelry of his own contrivance; Juliana Frink, estranged and divorced from her husband, Frank, she wanders the Rocky Mountain buffer searching for a new life, and in so doing, meets and begins to trust an assassin traveling incognito; Nobusuke Tagomi, a trade commissioner who takes on one of the more important roles of the story, in my opinion; and Mr. Baynes, a Swedish salesperson of an industrial plastics corporation who may not be entirely what he seems.

There is also a story within the story called "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" -- also an alternative history novel, which even more paradoxically posits what the world might be like had the Allies won the war. Wikipedia, in a section on its "The Man in the High Castle" page, notes that the Allies' victory in "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" is hardly congruent with the way in which the Allies were victorious in WWII in our historical sense. That is, Russia ends up playing a very minimal role, FDR is not assassinated as he is in "The Man in the High Castle" but survives through his first two terms and then is succeeded by another Democrat, Rexford Tugwell, who stewards the United States through the remainder of the war, and Great Britain returns to its place of preeminence as the world's lone hegemonic superpower.

Nobusuke Tagomi, to focus on one character, epitomizes several of the chief themes of the story. One is, the preference with which Dick opts to present the Japanese. Despite the bellicose nature of their imperialism and recorded treatment of POWs and even opposing populations' civilians during our WWII, the Japanese are -- not surprisingly -- viewed as the lesser of the two extant evils. And to express one quasi-misgiving, this idea is taken to the further extent of a kind of overcompensation on Dick's part in which the Japanese are set upon a pedestal. And though repeatedly tempered by showcases of their human frailty, the Japanese are depicted very often in the light of an awkward veneration for their culture by both the novel's characters and, ostensibly, Dick himself, as exhibited with the frequent nods to the Japanese's Buddhist traditions and their appreciation for that which transcends tangibility, objects possessing auras, the Tao, and so forth. It seemed, to me, at times, a smidgen patronizing, is all I'm saying.

Still, Tagomi's epiphany with respect to this idea, to the religion of the Japanese, is a key moment in the story. Childan learns from a Japanese customer that the jewelry Frink and his partner are producing, while less than pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint, possesses "Wu" -- a Chinese term expressing a supernal sort of knowledge or wisdom, or so says the novel (I've done no independent research). Childan's first impulse is to capitalize on this monetarily, but then he begins to realize his customer is putting him to a test: is American culture just the same vitiated and enterprising consequentialist system that defines Nazi Germany and elsewhere? Or can it appreciate a thing in itself -- can its artists, in effect, produce true art? He realizes this and, apparently desiring something more substantial for the American way of life, rescinds his claim that Frink would be willing to churn out these objects and in whatever way Japanese customers prefer. I think it's possible this is an outcome Dick would have preferred was the case in our America, which seems to have taken Childan's original tack, and produced for what's beside the point, what's to be selfishly gained.

Meanwhile, Tagomi has just killed two German agents sent to, apparently, take Baynes into custody for reasons I will avoid discussing here, and so visits Childan's store with his life in a state of, to put it mildly, disorder. Childan shows Tagomi Frink's jewelry, which Tagomi is indifferent to at first, finding he does not know what, if anything, he believes. But then, hoping that perhaps it could make things suddenly manifest to him, Tagomi buys one small, silver piece, on the condition that he may return it if it doesn't produce the desired effect. It produces an effect, and though not necessarily desired, it brings things into perspective for Tagomi -- gives him a glimpse of a world in which the United States had defeated Japan. It's unclear whether this is as the outcome of the "Grasshopper Lies Heavy" laid out, or whether it's the history we know, or if it was a place altogether different. But that's arbitrary, ultimately, to the fact that Tagomi understands better how easily synthesized these things are. How, then, ostensibly mutually exclusive ideas can exist side by side, in paradox, yes, but also not entirely illogically.

I liked this book. Read it. Read it and see what you think. Then tell me what you think. Or if you have already read it, tell me what you think. Let's discuss!

Philip K. Dick, How is it That I've Just Finally Gotten to Reading You???!!?

Funny how a writer can be at your periphery for years (such was the case with Nabokov for me), and once you finally get to their work you are stunned by how you had ever managed to dodge reading them before then. Philip K. Dick has proven in my first reading of him to be that kind of writer. Most everyone has heard of him, and he has a huge following, but he's easy enough to ignore as a genre science fiction writer.

Perhaps this commonplace dismissal is best described by Kurt Vonnegut, who once said of his own label as a science fiction writer, "I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'science fiction' ever since [the novel "Player Piano"], and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal." And I agree with Vonnegut's assertion and consider its truth a shame, because while I can see how a lot of science fiction doesn't demonstrate the mastery of prose that you find in more turgid canonical works, it still often demonstrates a uniqueness of insight, of explicating the magical mysteries of our human condition and wondering who we are, that to me always matters more than artful and mellifluous composition / an author's meditative dexterity.

But, while not Nabokov, Philip K. Dick was above the median writing abilities of, even other widely read, science fiction novelists if you ask me. He has a straightforward way of expressing his narratives, but this always feels natural enough. There's no stilted or affected quality to it.

Moreover, I read on the back cover of my copy of "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (which is the novel of his I read, likewise) an endorsement of his stating, "Dick [was] many authors: a poor man's Pynchon, an oracular postmodern, a rich product of the changing counterculture." In particular I'm struck by the parallel to Pynchon, which is apt, actually. I hate to refer to Dick as a "poor man's" anything, but still Thomas Pynchon is a worthy comparison. This is especially true as goes each writer's deftness with absurd puns meant as satirical stand-ins for the kinds of needful-things products that define American consumerism.

In "Palmer Eldritch" what we are presented with is a world of unreality. The people of earth live under the auspices of the UN (become a kind of world government), and given the unsustainable population explosion, said people are frequently conscripted to live in the less hospitable terrains of other planets and so forth in our solar system (Mars and the moon, most notably). So to escape the monotony of existence in these desolate places the colonists take mind-altering substances. They're illegal, yes, but more or less tolerated by the UN because of the otherwise intolerable conditions of the colonies. "Can-D" is the drug of choice at the story's outset, sold covertly by the forces of Leo Bulero, owner of P.P. Layouts, which manufactures, among other things, human-like dolls in which takers of "Can-D" will assume conscious control during their fantasy, drug-induced moments. This in itself is a very trippy idea, certainly, but the story only becomes more so as the plot thickens -- a readily apparent defining characteristic of Dick's work.

The story centers primarily on Barney Mayerson, a precog under the employ of Bulero and P.P. Layouts. Mayerson is exceptionally skilled at precognition. His job requires that he look into the future and see what trends will become popular, and then allow for P.P. Layouts to capitalize on them by purchasing exclusive rights (a kind of question-begging proposition in itself, although not quite because Mayerson checks to see if products are hits or misses rather than what is verifiably trendy, cornering that market in advance).

Cue the return of Palmer Eldritch, a wealthy industrialist and space navigator who returns to our solar system after a decade of traversing other regions of space, most notably the Prox system, crash landing on Pluto. More importantly it's what Palmer Eldritch has brought back with him, a new drug called "Chew-Z." What ensues is a battle between Bulero and Eldritch for rights to the drug market in our system. "Chew-Z" promises to be much more than "Can-D" ever could, of fact which Eldritch demonstrates to both Bulero and Mayerson in separate moments. What it also seems to be is much more than just a drug, a means of living forever, if only seemingly within the illusion of the drug's escape.

More than anything, both the characters in the story and the reader are left to wonder what is reality after a certain while into the narrative. Which brings to mind, if "Inception" wasn't inspired somewhat by the works of Philip K. Dick I'll eat every shoe I've ever owned.

(Disclaimer: Matt Rowan will not actually eat shoes belonging to himself or anyone else if proven incorrect in the preceding assertion.)