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Philip K. Dick’s *Man in the High Castle*: a response

I guess it was last week or so that the Squuby fellow finished reading Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle and he had some questions about it, and since I said that I would and since I recommended the book, I feel like I should present my thoughts on the thing, at any rate. Not that I’m actually certain that those aforementioned thoughts will in any way clarify those questions, but it’s worth a try, eh?

I’m not entirely certain what his question(s) about the book is/are exactly, but here’s the little bit that I latched onto, anyway:

“I don’t think I get it. If it weren’t for that I could unequivocally say I liked it. The writing is great, the surreality of the thing is just up my tree. But the whole fact of it ending up sort of leaving me hanging here saying, ‘err, what? None of it was real? Is that the thing?'”

The Man in the High Castle (MITHC) was one of the first PKD books that I read, about three years ago, and I read it in a single afternoon, so my response here will be colored by the ten or so of his other novels that I’ve read in the mean time. Additionally, I’m not going to go into a plot summary of MITHC either, because, well, I’ve read the book and HE’S read the book. It’s a story about an alternate world where the Nazis and the Japanese won in WWII, where the West coast is a Japanese protectorate and the East coast is run by the Nazis.

MITHC is one of PKD’s earlier books (written in 1962), but it’s themes or ideas are present in most (all?) of his books that I’ve read: basically, what is the nature of the reality that we perceive? Or, to put another way, the reality that we perceive is an illusion and we can only perceive the True Reality obliquely, through flaws in the Illusion.

At its most basic, I think that MITHC is a simple alternate history, What If?, novel, with the added complexity of a book within the story which is a fictional account of what appears to be our ACTUAL history: the US and Allies defeating the Nazis and Japan in the war. This addition raises questions as to the nature of artistic creation: if the author in this fictional work writes an account of our “real” history as an alternate history, what does that mean for us, who are reading a book by a “real” science fiction author about an alternate history?

The fascinating thing, for me, about PKD is that a decade or so after writing MITHC (and many others), he experienced (or reported experiencing) what he perceived to be “real” events which called into question the reality of our reality (or the reality of HIS reality) and which served to reinforce the idea that reality WAS an illusion. He experienced the thing which his science fiction novels and short stories, up to that point, had been exploring.

I find it very very interesting that so many of his short stories and novels have been recently adapted (mostly not well) into movies. An interesting idea that PKD had was that if there was a Truth out there–beneath the Illusion–then it wouldn’t appear in any obvious fashion, but as “a thief in the night”, as trash in a gutter, or commercials on the television or as trashy science fiction novels…

I could go on and on about this, but I think I’ll stop for the moment. Does this help?

Oh, and if you haven’t read Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, you should.

David Mamet’s “Secret Names”

A charming essay by Threepenny: Mamet: “Secret Names”.

“And which of us has not had the experience of the old friend to whom we say, or who says to us: This is one friendship which will never end. And we feel that cold wind, whose premonition is, of course, fulfilled. Not only are there no atheists in foxholes, there are, I believe, no atheists anywhere. We just call our gods by different names. Indeed, psychotherapy may be nothing more than the attempt to find those names, and so challenge their power.”

Completely strange internet thing

Okay, I don’t really know that much about Poppy Z. Brite, except that she writes novels of the horror variety (and I’m broadly generalizing here, because I’ve never read any of them). Apparently, there’s a Livejournal fansite devoted to her, among other things. PBZ attempted to communicate with them and was told that she wasn’t welcome. In other words, she was kicked off her own fansite. The, ahem, beleaguered author tells the tale in great detail here: Dispatches from Tanganyika.

Very, very funny. In that quirky, internettish kind of way, of course.
(found via disinfo

colder than cider and that’s the truth

4’s begun a snapper and no mistake. near to snapped my nose clean off; it sure got red enough. and flurries of flurries all day long, staring out through that pressed glass. only back out in it once the sun’s tossed inside it’s warmer and the crouching shadows loom [outside of everything].

feeling that… or that is to say… there’s just some kind of painful twinge–brainwise, neurochemickular–when contemplating that staccato beat, that blood-thumping maestro, thoughtless, maybe, but not so… i mean, that is to, no faltering yet. and now with all the questions and probings and the rehashings of old records (can they be found)… a painful occlusion of the mind when pondering the coaldark side of things. is this the cowardice that makes
religiousers? if i went that route (sirrah?!) i’d want it to be otherwise, indeed.
feel that old flush of anxieters crouching by, cramping out that phone cord smile.
ulp…

this one wants the long dark to end and the sun to bring back its light…

gaggles and giggles aplent back on the farm, yessir. old frapperies seem to be fraying at last and maybe there’ll be those of us who’ll see some new kind of thing a’brewing. (toil, toil, boil and bubble…) there’s like, maybe?, some kind of transmigration or transmutation of metals going on here… some malkuthian paradox had to transplant that whatzit, or something. or, contrariwise, there’s nothing change, but we’re now looking at it through the curvature of a spoon, bouncing and bending that old light until things like NOSES, say, or FNORDernails seem bulbous and curved, reaching towards the center of it.