Philip K. Dick's Our Friends From Frolix 8 (#1970Club)

    "You're married, too, you have a wife, and you have two children. Is your respon--" Again his tongue failed to function properly. "Where's your first loyalty? To them? Or to political action?"

    "Toward men in general."

In the year 2135, Nick Appleton works at a lower class job, as a tire-regroover. On this future earth, your status is set by a supposedly meritocratic exam you take as a young teen. But when his boy Bobby, whom Nick knows is bright, fails the exam, Nick begins to question the whole system.

What is the system? There's a world dictator, picked from one of two parties, the New Men and the Unusuals. Willis Gram, an Unusual, is the current world dictator. New Men are those that have tested brilliant; Unusuals have uncommon powers: they're precogs, telepaths, telekinetic. (Gram is a telepath.) Ordinary people are known as Old Men. There's a rebel movement, known as the Undermen. And we learn, on the fifth page of our story, that yes indeed, those supposedly meritocratic tests are rigged.

Some years ago, Thors Provoni flew off into space to find a powerful alien to help him overthrow this corrupt system and now he's on his way back. With an alien? So he claims. Should your loyalty be to your wife, child, that pretty girl you just met, your party, the corrupt but functioning system, the oppressed, the human race (maybe) under attack by aliens?

Now this novel isn't, as far as I can see, on anybody's list of best Philip K. Dick novels, and well, it shouldn't be... 😉 But I was surprised how good it was. It does come from the middle of a major period for Dick. The flawed or corrupt characters represent most of those choices about loyalty, and even the worst choices are somehow given space to feel true for a moment. It's true, though, that Dick's prose rarely rises above functional, and in this one, maybe not at all. The ending is a little rushed. Still, a pretty fun read.

Yesterday's Macanudo strip. Timely!

Sure it may all take place in 2135, but in its heart of hearts, it's a 1970 novel. Drug dealers, souped-up cars, and is that Bob Dylan guy really any good?

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K. Dick

"The book you hold in your hands is a very peculiar book. In it I have tried to depict the life of Philip K. Dick from the inside, in other words, with the same freedom and empathy--indeed with the same truth--with which he depicted his own characters."

Emmanuel Carrère's 'biography' of Philip K. Dick came out in French in 1993, thus nine years after Dick's death, and was translated into English by Timothy Bent in 2004. 

Inside the head of Philip K. Dick is a fascinating, but pretty unstable place to be.

It's not a very conventional biography, even though Carrère seems to have done a lot of the work of conventional biography--interviewing friends and lovers, visiting locations, reading letters, reading earlier biographers, and above all, reading the work of Dick himself. But Carrère doesn't footnote or cite, and except for the occasional moment where he mentions talking with one of Dick's friends, it's unclear where he has gotten information. Worse (or different) he's clearly deducing ideas--and says as much--about Dick's life and mental state from the novels. A terrible no-no, of course, but so what? It works.

The facts are there: Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in December of 1928. He had a twin sister who died young--of hunger. It was the Depression, but the boy survives and the girl dies. It's no wonder Dick was tormented by this his whole life. The family moves to California when he's still a child, but his parents divorce and he's raised by his mother. He goes to Berkeley High School, and then to Cal-Berkeley for a year, but drops out. He works in a record store on Telegraph Avenue. He meets Anthony Boucher and starts writing science fiction stories. He marries--and marries--and marries: five times in all. 

Dick had a reputation as a druggy, which was both true and not: he took LSD once, in 1964, was terrified by it and never did it again. He smoked marijuana occasionally, but mostly socially, and not, it seems that much. But he did both Benzedrine and Valium--prescription drugs--to stimulate his writing, and wind down afterwards. A lot. But then so did W. H. Auden.

He was difficult to live with: needy and clinging, but also a know-it-all. (Well, he really did know a lot.) Bad in social situations, but with deep friendships at times. Pretty seriously agoraphobic. He wrote to (barely) pay his bills, too much and too fast, but still some of the books are pretty great. He may have had some religious experiences, or it may have been the drugs. He never said for sure, and may not have fully decided himself. The drugs (probably) did for him in the end. He died in 1984, after a series of strokes, at the age of 53.

But Carrère's handling of the facts, while seemingly fine, is not what makes the book so interesting.

"One day, a new young woman rode into his life, on the back of a Harley-Davidson driven by a guy covered in tattoos. 'Donna,' like almost everyone else who appears in this chapter, has been extrapolated from a character in A Scanner Darkly...The real Donna had another name--as did others I write of here--which she has asked not to be used in print."

"Another time, Phil became convinced that Donna was a narc. He confronted her. She replied that she understood why he would think that. In their world it was the kind of thing that was entirely possible."

"Another time, sitting down to drink a cup of coffee that someone had made for him, Phil couldn't let go of the idea of how easily it could have been laced with a potent strain of acid that would set an unstoppable film rolling in his head, a film that would last his entire life."

"Another time, Phil convinced himself that the house was under twenty-four hour surveillance. He knew the phone was tapped, and even if it wasn't, basic prudence dictated that one act as though it were."

These cuts are from one chapter and is very much the world of A Scanner Darkly. Is it fair to mix the life with the works? Maybe not entirely and maybe you would want--or want also--a different sort of biography. But this was fascinating, and it is a very phildickian thing to do.

Could you read the book if you didn't already know Philip Dick pretty well? I'm not so sure about that. As a general rule I only read author biographies for authors I've read a substantial amount of the work. That might be an especially good rule here, I suspect.

The books Carrère looks at in depth:

• Eye in the Sky
• Time Out Of Joint
• The Man in the High Castle
• Martian Time-Slip
• Now Wait For Last Year
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 
• Ubik
• Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
• A Scanner Darkly
• Valis
• The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer
• The Exegesis

Of the novels in the list I've read all but Time Out of Joint, and now I want to read that one. It's a good list, and if one wanted to read that many, I might say just go with that. I haven't read the Exegesis, Dick's millions-of-words meditation on the nature of divine experience, nor am I likely to, but I have the volume of selections, and it sits next to Leopardi's Zibaldone, that shelf of things I dip into once in a while when the mood strikes.

I don't know where I first heard of the book. I got hold of it after I read Deus Irae recently, but the library didn't deliver it fast enough for me to use in writing that post. It wouldn't have mattered. Carrère mentions Deus Irae, but in passing and only slightingly, which is probably about all it deserves.

But Carrère is pretty celebrated these days. There's biographies, novels, memoirs. A few days ago it was announced he won this year's Princess of Asturias award for literature. He's been on the list for the Neustadt prize a couple of times. These things are often considered signposts for a trip to Stockholm. Could the biographer of Philip Dick actually win the Nobel prize?

Who knows? Anyway, it was the first Carrère I've read. It was pretty good. It won't be the last.

Are you a fan of Philip Dick? Or Emmanuel Carrère?

PKD & Zelazny & Moorcock (#1976Club)

 

It's the start of Kaggsy & Simon's 1976 club! 

Deus Irae

Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny teamed up to write this post-apocalyptic tale of a quest to find (or at least see) god. 

Carleton Lufteufel (air-devil) was the head of a U.S. war agency from 1983; in a conflict with the Chinese he dropped the 'gob', the great objectless bomb, and the atmosphere was destroyed. The Krankheit (sickness) followed, and those few humans who do survive are at higher risk for genetic mutations and can barely scrape up enough food to eat. Intelligent lizards and bugs and leftover robot A.I.s have taken over some of the space once occupied by humans.

And in the process Carleton Lufteufel became a god.

The process to becoming nor the powers Lufteufel has as god are particularly specified, but there is a new religion, the Servants of Wrath, devoted to his worship. Tibor McMasters, born without limbs but still a notable painter, is tasked with painting a church mural (a 'murch') to exalt his worship. McMasters declares he can only paint this mural properly once he's seen his god, but since Lufteufel is still out there somewhere it ought to be possible. He sets out on a 'Pilg', a pilgrimage to see his god, in a cart drawn by a cow, across the ruined and desolate country.

Pete Sands, on the verge of converting to Christianity, which still exists in our post-apocalyptic world, has been taking drugs to see the Christian God, a technique his spiritual adviser disapproves of. Pete Sands follows McMasters on his quest, either to help or hinder or both, since he likes McMasters personally, but doesn't like the new religion.

Do all pilgrimage narratives suggest Pilgrim's Progress? I've been reading Bunyan lately, and it feels like there are similarities, but maybe it's just the similarity between like objects. I couldn't point you to a particular point of reference. (Though maybe the use of allegorical names?)

Lufteufel meets up with the pair by design, under the name of Schuld (guilt), and arranges his own death, and the world feels a certain lightening. 

Hmm. Why someone who blew up the planet might feel guilty I can understand; why this particular death--even though it is the death of the human embodiment of a divinity--should make the world better, I'm not sure I do.

I know PKD pretty well, but Zelazny hardly at all. Wikipedia tells me that man become god and/or god become man is an important Zelazny motif. Drugs to see God and the use of German are definitely PKD contributions. I find PKD a pretty great writer, but too much production and carelessness mar a lot of his work. This one, for whatever reason, didn't entirely convince. Still, it was fun.

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate

This is the second of the original Elric novels by Michael Moorcock, though two of the (three) stories had appeared before and were then rewritten for the novel. 

I reread the first in the series Elric of Melniboné to get into the proper space. Elric ("It is the colour of bleached skull, his flesh;...") is the albino emperor number four hundred and somety-something of the decadent kingdom of Melniboné. Sickly and doomed. Humanoid, but not human. At the end of the first, he's just recovered after an attempted usurpation by his cousin Yyrkoon and he's acquired his sword Stormbringer. Nevertheless he decides to leave Yyrkoon on the throne as regent, and go off on a wanderjahr.

In the first adventure he sails into the future and is tied into the Moorcock eternal champion mythos, united with Corum, Hawkmoon, and Erekosë to defeat a brother/sister pair of evil sorcerers.  I thought this the weakest of the three.

In the second he comes across a figure from Melnibonéan legend Saxif D'Aan, who, across the centuries, has been pursuing the one girl he loved, the girl he killed in a fit of jealousy. Now in the present Saxif D'Aan has found a lookalike. Is there a way to right this ancient wrong?

In the final tale, Elric with a few companions journeys up a river through a jungle to ruins that may mark the origins of the Melnibonéan race. Seeking his past. Our Elric is a melancholy hero and unhappy with his role as emperor. Are these his roots? If he learns them, what will it do? Is this a journey to the heart of darkness or the heart of light? He does find a Kurtz, but maybe no real answers.

And in this his sentient sword Stormbringer first reveals its treacherous nature.

I knew, but had half-forgotten how good these were. Have I just committed myself to rereading the whole series? Maybe...

"You feign cynicism, yet I think I've rarely met a man so much in need of a little cynicism," Count Smiorgan tells Elric at the end of the third story.

Oh, and drugs. Elric is only kept alive by his sorcerous drugs, at least until he acquires Stormbringer. Well, it is 1976... 😉

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