I have read, now, all of Philip K. Dick's final works, his so-called "Valis" trilogy, although "Valis" should technically be capitalized, as it is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. It was also, apparently, a very real hallucination that sent a pink laser into Philip K. Dick's brain after he saw a fish necklace around a door-to-door proselytizer's neck. So you know all of this is going to be pretty much totally-****ing-insane.
But onwards. The first book in the trilogy is just "Valis." That's the classic of the bunch. I'll do that last. The second--which I just finished, as I have a habit of reading trilogies out of order, from J.R.R. Tolkien to William Gibson--is "The Divine Invasion," which reads more like an auto-therapeutic novel of ideas, specifically revolving around early Christianity, Gnosticism and the Kabbalah. The back cover explanation for it makes it sound more entertaining than it actually is: that God exists and has been living outside of our galaxy for the past two-thousand years, and that he's finally decided to come back and retake earth from Belial.
Most Dick books feature a good deal of weird theology, it's true; but whereas most strive to be funny and a little thrilling, "The Divine Invasion" is far more self-indulgent than anything I'd previously read by him; most of the book is a series of dialogues between God (now living as a child named Manny) and Athena/Zena/Diana or Elias Tate/the Old Testament Elijah. There's a more grounded narrative, focusing on Manny's adoptive parents in any one of a series of alternate realities, all of them banal and charmless. I was reminded of reading Aldous Huxley's "Island," which to me seemed like less of a novel and more a presentation of a sort of utopian ideal, didactic in purpose rather than artistic. There is more storytelling, in comparison, in "The Divine Invasion," but the whole thing feels--well, like Dick was traumatized, and writing a kind of pseudo-Christian allegory, except one without metaphor or subtlety, a working-out of themes and belief.
"The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" is better. The story is human: the only science fiction or fantasy element occurs in a sort of oblique way, out of sight, where what could be a reincarnation of friend is part of the mystery. However: it's been a while since I read that. I remember enjoying it, finding it moving, but ultimately--well, I didn't think it was forgettable while reading it, and I don't want to call it forgettable now; but I do forget the basic details, and so, I guess, technically it was a little forgettable.
"Valis," on the other hand, is not. When I first start to read it I had the same problems with it that I have with "The Divine Invasion": it's a crazy exposition of a gonzo theology, an amalgam of that same Gnostic/early-Christian-history stuff late-period Dick seemed to favor. I gave up on it that time. When I started to read it years later, I came at it with a different perspective, one that lends itself well to "Valis" but poorly to "The Divine Invasion": the central character of "Valis" is Horselover Fat, which is a ridiculous name but really just a transliteration of Philip K. Dick--Philip means Horse-lover, Dick means Fat, maybe in German, maybe not, I don't remember. And as "Valis" opens--early on--Fat is coming to grips with the death of a friend and starts to spiral into insanity, where many of the same ideas that Dick puts for in "The Divine Invasion" appear as an aspect of Fat's delusions. What comes across as self-serious, indulgent and humorless in "The Divine Invasion" becomes--at a remove, when viewed as a kind of temporary dementia brought on by grief--touchingly sincere, hilariously daft...you take Horselover Fat's fantasies seriously because, hopefully, you take Horselover Fat's grief seriously; and you take that seriously because hopefully you've already bought into that because you care about Horselover Fat, as a character, even with his ridiculous name.
Fat is a blatant Dick stand-in, but in an emotionally honest way. "The Divine Invasion" provides no human medium, so the reading experience is sort of like the difference between a crazy person ranting about the banned books of the Bible on a bus versus an embarrassed friend telling you about a crazy notion they've had.
This trilogy, by the way, is only loosely connected--words and phrases like VALIS and Black Iron Prison reappear throughout, but the characters don't, except sometimes in throw-away references, without any deeper ties than vague thematic links.
Philip K. Dick has a pretty solid reputation for a science fiction writer. I think "Valis" is one of his best books, maybe the best: the competition comes down to "A Scanner Darkly" and "The Man in the High Castle." Years ago I had a notion--while reading "Timothy Archer," no less--that science fiction writers write better contemporary fiction than most contemporary fiction writers do; I was thinking of both "Timothy Archer" as well as "Valis," which, if you consign yourself to the notion that all of the crazy stuff is in Fat's head, isn't really science fiction. This notion was backed up by William Gibson's past few books, which have taken place in the present and have brought Gibson's sci-fi focus to bear on today's technology. The way Gibson describes a real-life two-year old camera is in a different voice from most living novelists, and Gibson's genre background really gives him a unique point of view.
I don't know that that observation holds up much; I can't think of many other examples on either side. That issue isn't here or there, though, just some brain food for an anemic mind. Ultimately, what I think I'm trying to say is that if authorial intent doesn't matter--and in this case, it shouldn't, because I suspect that Dick's intentions would involve taking pink laser beam gods seriously--then "Valis" is a fantastic, moving read, where the bizarre exists only in the mind of a sympathetic griever, the same way that I only care about The Grand Inquisitor tale from "Brothers Karamazov" when I understand Ivan, who is telling it to Alyosha. Fables and ideas are important, and Philip K. Dick knew that, and most of the time, he remembered that the people who come up with them come first.
That cat is terrified.
For the uninitiated: Philip K. Dick was a science fiction novelist from the nineteen-fifties to the eighties when he died, and is the mind behind the stories later adapted into movies like "Total Recall," "Minority Report," and "Blade Runner." His earlier books are chock-a-block with humor and mindscrews and generally uneven wackiness, sort of like if Jorge Luis Borges stretched his stories to two-hundred pages and included a lot more in the way of drugs and robots. Later in life, Dick did indeed have some crazy sort of vision, and it made his books in most cases better, a little more psychologically grounded (in terms of characters, if not in terms of plot) and it is my opinion, regarding said vision, that no matter how long the explanation it will not make a whole lot of sense to a sane person, so just stick with what I wrote earlier: pink laser, fish, meaning of the universe. Or something. But onwards. The first book in the trilogy is just "Valis." That's the classic of the bunch. I'll do that last. The second--which I just finished, as I have a habit of reading trilogies out of order, from J.R.R. Tolkien to William Gibson--is "The Divine Invasion," which reads more like an auto-therapeutic novel of ideas, specifically revolving around early Christianity, Gnosticism and the Kabbalah. The back cover explanation for it makes it sound more entertaining than it actually is: that God exists and has been living outside of our galaxy for the past two-thousand years, and that he's finally decided to come back and retake earth from Belial.
Alas, the book doesn't feature any CG dragonflies.
Most Dick books feature a good deal of weird theology, it's true; but whereas most strive to be funny and a little thrilling, "The Divine Invasion" is far more self-indulgent than anything I'd previously read by him; most of the book is a series of dialogues between God (now living as a child named Manny) and Athena/Zena/Diana or Elias Tate/the Old Testament Elijah. There's a more grounded narrative, focusing on Manny's adoptive parents in any one of a series of alternate realities, all of them banal and charmless. I was reminded of reading Aldous Huxley's "Island," which to me seemed like less of a novel and more a presentation of a sort of utopian ideal, didactic in purpose rather than artistic. There is more storytelling, in comparison, in "The Divine Invasion," but the whole thing feels--well, like Dick was traumatized, and writing a kind of pseudo-Christian allegory, except one without metaphor or subtlety, a working-out of themes and belief.
"The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" is better. The story is human: the only science fiction or fantasy element occurs in a sort of oblique way, out of sight, where what could be a reincarnation of friend is part of the mystery. However: it's been a while since I read that. I remember enjoying it, finding it moving, but ultimately--well, I didn't think it was forgettable while reading it, and I don't want to call it forgettable now; but I do forget the basic details, and so, I guess, technically it was a little forgettable.
"Valis," on the other hand, is not. When I first start to read it I had the same problems with it that I have with "The Divine Invasion": it's a crazy exposition of a gonzo theology, an amalgam of that same Gnostic/early-Christian-history stuff late-period Dick seemed to favor. I gave up on it that time. When I started to read it years later, I came at it with a different perspective, one that lends itself well to "Valis" but poorly to "The Divine Invasion": the central character of "Valis" is Horselover Fat, which is a ridiculous name but really just a transliteration of Philip K. Dick--Philip means Horse-lover, Dick means Fat, maybe in German, maybe not, I don't remember. And as "Valis" opens--early on--Fat is coming to grips with the death of a friend and starts to spiral into insanity, where many of the same ideas that Dick puts for in "The Divine Invasion" appear as an aspect of Fat's delusions. What comes across as self-serious, indulgent and humorless in "The Divine Invasion" becomes--at a remove, when viewed as a kind of temporary dementia brought on by grief--touchingly sincere, hilariously daft...you take Horselover Fat's fantasies seriously because, hopefully, you take Horselover Fat's grief seriously; and you take that seriously because hopefully you've already bought into that because you care about Horselover Fat, as a character, even with his ridiculous name.
Fat is a blatant Dick stand-in, but in an emotionally honest way. "The Divine Invasion" provides no human medium, so the reading experience is sort of like the difference between a crazy person ranting about the banned books of the Bible on a bus versus an embarrassed friend telling you about a crazy notion they've had.
This trilogy, by the way, is only loosely connected--words and phrases like VALIS and Black Iron Prison reappear throughout, but the characters don't, except sometimes in throw-away references, without any deeper ties than vague thematic links.
Philip K. Dick has a pretty solid reputation for a science fiction writer. I think "Valis" is one of his best books, maybe the best: the competition comes down to "A Scanner Darkly" and "The Man in the High Castle." Years ago I had a notion--while reading "Timothy Archer," no less--that science fiction writers write better contemporary fiction than most contemporary fiction writers do; I was thinking of both "Timothy Archer" as well as "Valis," which, if you consign yourself to the notion that all of the crazy stuff is in Fat's head, isn't really science fiction. This notion was backed up by William Gibson's past few books, which have taken place in the present and have brought Gibson's sci-fi focus to bear on today's technology. The way Gibson describes a real-life two-year old camera is in a different voice from most living novelists, and Gibson's genre background really gives him a unique point of view.
I don't know that that observation holds up much; I can't think of many other examples on either side. That issue isn't here or there, though, just some brain food for an anemic mind. Ultimately, what I think I'm trying to say is that if authorial intent doesn't matter--and in this case, it shouldn't, because I suspect that Dick's intentions would involve taking pink laser beam gods seriously--then "Valis" is a fantastic, moving read, where the bizarre exists only in the mind of a sympathetic griever, the same way that I only care about The Grand Inquisitor tale from "Brothers Karamazov" when I understand Ivan, who is telling it to Alyosha. Fables and ideas are important, and Philip K. Dick knew that, and most of the time, he remembered that the people who come up with them come first.
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