[lit-ideas] Philip K. Dick
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 09:48:02 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
From today's Writer's Almanac. I wonder if Bush had the same problem with his
encounters with God. Alcohol is a drug. In Bush's case, God let him down.
Not picking on Bush, just interesting to see people in similar situations. The
ol brain in a vat gets in there too. Santayana's comment about the lover seems
a bit trite. Lovers are generally "head over heels" and in other, by
definition, non-reality based places. Are absolute good and universal beauty
not real then? If they are real, where/what are they, and why do they not have
the sticking power of evil?
Putting off getting started,
Andy
It's the birthday of science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick, (books by this
author) born in Chicago (1928). He was one of the first novelists to explore
the idea of virtual reality, and his work has influenced a generation of
science fiction writers and filmmakers.
He started writing science fiction in the 1950's, when publishers wanted
made-to-order science fiction, full of formulaic plots about aliens and
gadgets. Dick churned these novels out rapidly, sometimes finishing a whole
novel in a single night. But he grew frustrated with conventional science
fiction, and he began to write more ambitious novels, hoping they would win him
a broader audience. He was jealous of writers such as Ray Bradbury and Ursula
Le Guin, who were accepted by mainstream readers.
In the late 1950's, his marriage was falling apart, he was abusing alcohol and
drugs, and then he began having visions. He thought he saw a face in the sky.
He wrote, "It was a vast visage of evil with empty slots for eyes, metal and
cruel, and worst of all, it was God." He wasn't sure if his visions were
authentic or if they were symptoms of drug abuse or insanity. He was fascinated
that he could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't. He started writing
a series of increasingly strange novels about the nature of reality. His novel
Time Out of Joint (1959) is about a man who believes he's living in 1950's
America, when in fact he's living in an artificial replica of the 1950's,
constructed as a kind of prison.
Dick's novels were highly regarded in science fiction circles and in Europe,
but they didn't make any money, so Dick wound up on welfare in a seedy
California neighborhood. He began to suffer from paranoid delusions, believing
the FBI and the CIA were keeping tabs on him.
Someone broke into Dick's house and destroyed his papers. He found the incident
strangely comforting, and wrote in his diary, "At least I'm not paranoid." But
he also briefly considered himself a possible suspect. It was during his period
that he wrote some of his most important novels, including Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep? (1968) and A Scanner Darkly (1977).
After Dick finally got off drugs, his visions only grew stronger. Over the
course of a few weeks, he believed God was speaking directly to him through
flickering colors, voices coming from an unplugged radio, and a beam of light
that conveyed knowledge directly to his brain. He spent the next eight years
writing about the experience in his diary, as well as a novel called Valis
(1981). He studied hundreds of TV advertisements and record albums, looking for
evidence of the God who had spoken to him. But even though he thought it was
the most important experience of his life, he also constantly wondered if it
had been real, or just some weird drug flashback, or a stroke.
He wrote, "They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get
to keep him... Finding God (if indeed [I] did find God) became, ultimately, a
bummer, a constantly diminishing supply of joy sinking lower and lower like the
contents of a bag of [drugs]."
Since his death in 1982, many of his novels and short stories have been made
into movies, including Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990) and Minority
Report (2002). He's been called one of the most influential science fiction
writers of the 20th century.
Philip K. Dick said, "Insanity is sometimes an appropriate response to reality."
It's the birthday of the philosopher and poet George Santayana, (books by this
author) born in Madrid (1863). He was the man who coined the famous phrase,
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana's
father was Spanish and his mother was Scottish. He spent almost his entire life
in the United States, though he never wanted to become a citizen. For many
years he taught philosophy at Harvard, and his students included T.S. Eliot,
Gertrude Stein, Conrad Aiken, Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens.
Santayana wrote a great deal about art and the importance of creative thinking.
He once said, "Cultivate imagination, love it, give it endless forms, but do
not let it deceive you. Enjoy the world, travel over it and learn its ways, but
do not let it hold you." As he grew older, he became tired of teaching and what
he called the "thistles of trivial and narrow scholarship," so he left Harvard
and spent the rest of his life writing. His books include many philosophical
works, as well as collections of poetry. He also spent about 20 years working
on a novel, The Last Puritan (1935), about a young man's struggles in Boston
high society just before World War I.
He said, "The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty
than the logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise."
And, "There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
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