philip k dick C/D, S+D

Start of a six part series on the LA Times site on PKD's life in Orange County. Good stuff, they're currently up to the third part.

Movie version of Radio Free Albemuth on the way. Starring Alanis Morissette and with music by Robyn Hitchcock.

The Exegesis is forthcoming:

In 1974, after a number of novels that explored the notions of personal identity and what it means to be human, Mr. Dick had a series of experiences in which he believed he had information transmitted to his mind by a pink beam of light. He wrote about these and similar occurrences in autobiographical novels like “Valis,” but also contemplated their meanings in personal writings that were not published.

“It’s something that he talked about and created a kind of amazing aura around,” Mr. Lethem said, “so that people have an image of it as if it’s some kind of consummated effort. ‘I’m working on my exegesis.’ But what he really meant was he was turning his brain inside out on the page, on a nightly basis, over a period of years of his life.”

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which has also acquired the rights to 39 of Mr. Dick’s previously published works and will release them next year, plans to release Volume 1 of “Exegesis,” which is about 350 pages, in the fall of 2011, and Volume 2, at the same length, a year later.

Wow! Awesome news.

can't wait to the wikipedia summaries of these!

I don't think this is a good idea tbh

altho I'm curious about the non-exegesis unpublished works

some of this was collected in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, right? Which I remember as being pretty unreadable and dull (though it has been over ten years)...

yeah pieces have been published here and there.

I guess if you are also excited to read rants posted on telephone poles by homeless schizophrenics then this will be right up yr alley

"Pamela Jackson, a Philip K. Dick scholar"

lol, cute. Really could care less about this, but the nearly complete canonization of Dick has truly been a wonder to behold.

I've enjoyed the exegesis excerpts I've read; I expect I'll enjoy the whole hit and caboodle as well.

It's still excerpts though, 700 pages out of 8,000 or whatever...

Whole thing feels like it'll be the equivalent to that Jung book that recently came out.

Sort of surprised Vintage lost (or gave up on?) the rights to Dick's work after all these years...

Are Jonathan Lethem books worth reading? I know him almost entirely for his "I AM THE BIGGEST DICK FANBOY"-dom, but he actually writes books, right?

unfortunately no he's not worth reading anymore. as soon as the NPR/NYT crowd got ahold of him it was all over. His early stuff is quite good though, would be happy to recommend some if yr curious

xp Probably just got outbid.

I am. I see copies remaindered all over the place.

you don't love me yet (2007?) isn't horrible. there's even a kangaroo reprise

My commute is putting a serious dent in the stack of unread books by my bed so any suggestions are welcome actually.

Gun With Occasional Music - some PKD silliness (genetically engineered talking kangaroos! super-intelligent babies!) plus Dashiell Hammet/Raymond Chandler noir narrative
Girl in Landscape - PKD plus Little House on the Prairie, Martian colony coming-of-age story from the POV of a young girl
Amnesia Moon - pretty much just straight PKD homage. Plague of amnesia has hit the planet, nobody can remember anything for more than a few days, civilization has collapsed, etc.
The Shape We're In - THE BEST. very short, Kafka-esque journey by two hapless miniature protagonists as they try to find their way around a body that they live in (literally, they are trying to get from the bowels to the eyes)
Men and Comics, some other collection I can't remember the name of right now - short stories, prose experiments, usually pretty well done. he's an excellent stylist.

Everything afterwards = crap.

well not totally crap but there's definitely a precipitous drop in quality (imho) when he started working in more conventional literary territory. his book about an indie rock band (the above-referenced You Don't Love Me Yet) = ugh, hated it. definitely put me off him for good.

Ick.

yeah it's about a young couple who form a band together but aren't sure they're a couple (or really a band!) and .. ugh. just... why.

oh there's also a split book he did with Carter Scholz called Kafka in America which is really good.

Some of the excerpts from the Exegesis have been interesting. It's hard to believe that Ubik wasn't intentionally about gnosticism but that's what he claims. Dick said he only noticed the themes in his work in retrospect. Anyone ever read the early book that was explicitly Zoroastrian (the Cosmic Puppets)?

Finally returned to reading PKD for the first time since junior high, just finished The Simulacra and am ready to head back to the library for more.

When did the 'canonization' of PKD start? Anyone in particular responsible (Fredric Jameson)?

yeah I've read Cosmic Puppets... but lol don't remember a thing about it! A lot of his early work blurs together for me

When did the 'canonization' of PKD start? Anyone in particular responsible (Fredric Jameson)?

nah I would credit other sci-fi writers actually - LeGuin and Lem in particular were big advocates, and wrote stuff about him prior to his death iirc

and duh Bladerunner

LeGuin and Lem in particular
When Author X was Compared to Author Y by Author Z

The Cosmic Puppets is one of PKD's more underrated books imo. Generally I'm not a huge fan of his early work, but this one was great. The whole thing feels like a really weird twilight zone episode and I mean that in the best way possible.

Bladerunner was more of a factor in putting the word of PKD out there, and I guess that could've been picked up by academics...which is more what I'm wondering about as to what sparked that process of canonization. xxp

Lem and Malzberg both published excellent career overviews of PKDs (Lem's was published while he was still alive iirc)

xp

The Cosmic Puppets is one of PKD's more underrated books imo. Generally I'm not a huge fan of his early work, but this one was great. The whole thing feels like a really weird twilight zone episode and I mean that in the best way possible.

Seconded, it doesn't really fall into the SF bracket at all. Dunno what you'd call it genre-wise, fantasy? Not that it matters.

"When did the 'canonization' of PKD start?"

Late 70s was when it started to expand beyond sci-fi circles. It def. snowballed though post-Bladerunner and the Vintage tpbs.

shakey this shape we're in's my favorite lethem too. it's almost as good as a donald barthelme novel. don't get the hate for ydlmy. indie rock shtick notwithstanding it's a long love letter to n. west and miss lonelyhearts imho

When Jonathan Letham was Compared to Nathaniel West by Poster Kamerad.

you spelled his name wrong though

I did it on purpose just to demonstrate how little I care.

goes without saying

I did it on purpose just to demonstrate how little I care.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, April 30, 2010 3:49 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

d-d-d-dang... thats cold bro...

lol I'm sure Jonothan Lethem is crying all the way to bank.

he is :(

I'm getting onto a PKD roll, finally starting to splurge on all the books of his that I have been meaning to get to for years. Up to now I had only read the easy famous ones - Do Androids and Man In The High Castle, but now I have just finished Flow My Tears (after rereading Do Androids for SF book club) and am planning to read Dr Bloodmoney and VALIS soon (mainly because they are the ones lying around at home). I am open to recommendations for future reads.

Has anyone tried his non-SF books? I found myself imagining that I was getting an inkling of what they are like from some of the dialogue and situations in Flow My Tears - people moaning about their lives and being dissatisfied and stuff.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is the best of the non-sci-fi in my opinion. The rest are just okay.

I'm assuming even though you haven't mentioned it, you've read A Scanner Darkly. If not that's definitely a must read. Martian Time-Slip, Now Wait For Last Year, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are all amazing. I think there is a thread for POX PKD novels. I'll find that and link to it.

Oh and UBIK is also amazing.

POX Phillip K Dick

I'm assuming even though you haven't mentioned it, you've read A Scanner Darkly.

not read it, but it is next (or after next) in SF book club.

Confessions of a Crap Artist is the other good non sci-fi one (with Transmigration). I've read a couple of others, they're not bad, but "people moaning about their lives and being dissatisfied and stuff" is pretty much correct and while this can be interesting sometimes, for the most part I can't really recommend it too much, though I guess I did enjoy it enough to finish all the books that I started.