Exegesis

[amanda mcbride]

I thought Tyler, and any other lurking Philip K. Dick fans, might enjoy this site: www.philipkdick.com/new_exegesis.html

And, of course, there's the official Philip K. Dick site:
www.philipkdick.com/index.html

[Tyler]

KDick was, by all accounts, crazy as a shit-house rat.
But I think you'd have to be to bring all that conceptual goodness into the world.

[Betterout]

Dick out of joint: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_k_dick

And his essay How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
www.geocities.com/pkdlw/howtobuild.html

[Tyler]

I believe his visions concerning 2/3/74 were caused by VALIS trying to tell him that I had arrived and that he should begin my teaching.

I am TERRIFIED of insanity.

[Betterout]

When I was gone this week I decided to revisit the final installment of the VALIS trilogy. I actually read the first two in a sort of frenzied blaze in the fall of 2002. Well, at least for me it was a frenzied blaze. I usually average a week per page on fiction. But, I bogged down on Transmigration of Timothy Archer on the Thanksgiving weekend we visited the southern McBrides and ultimately gave up on the book. I decided again to read it. And I did so -- in four days, which has to be a record for me (excluding, of course, Prisoner of Azkaban).

The VALIS trilogy is kind of interesting for those of you who haven't read it. More than anything, it gives you ideas about Philip K Dick, namely, as Tyler pointed out, that he's as crazy as a shithouse rat. But, also, about his overarching vision of the world, which is similtaneously frightening and hopeful. In the first book, VALIS, he pretty much lays the philosophy out for you. In the second book, he turns the philosophy into a very enjoyable story. The second book was my favorite. It's called the Divine Invasion. The third book, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, seems utterly unrelated in so many ways, and yet also very much a part of the same cycle. I came away with less from the third book, though it certainly read faster than VALIS. I could actually almost picture this as a movie where I could definitely not picture the other two.

The book tells the story of Angel Archer in both the past and present, and by present I mean early 80s, and by past I mean the early 70s. She's the daughter-in-law of the Episcopal Bishop of the California Diocese. This won't spoil anything, but almost all the characters in this book are dead at the time the book starts, including Angel's father-in-law, Timothy, her husband, Jeff, and her friend and would-be mother-in-law, Kirsten. Along the way, we hear a lot about Q, the source for the synoptic gospels, a particular sect of Saducees, an awful lot about suicide, the German playwright Schiller, the German general Wallenstien, loss of faith, and a healthy dose of neurosis and philosophy. Throw in some paranoia, some drug use, a self-help seminar, and some really off color racial jokes and you've got the book in a rather small nutshell.

Here are two really great quotes from the book:

"When people come here to listen to me speak, I offer them a sandwich. The foolish ones listen to my words; the wise ones eat the sandwich."

"The thinkers of antiquity did not regard death per se as evil, because death comes to all; what they correctly perceived as evil was premature death, death coming before the person could complete his work. Lopped off, as it were, before ripe, a hard, green little apple that death took and then tossed away, as being of no interest -- even to death."

I did feel a little vindicated by this book in as much as I probably caught more references this time than I did last time. And I felt fairly comfortable with the thoughts. So I guess I'm a total rube, just half of one. Anyway, I definitely recommend the series to you guys if you haven't already read it. I'd say it's a good recap of Dick's unique writing style as well as a good introduction to his work.