Knowing Dick

[faustus]

Addenda Context: Some outfit called the Library of America have made a very safe choice of Dick's novels and have released them in an omnibus edition. I envisage this as Readers Digest, only full text. A service so you can keep up with the Zeitgeist. Whilst some people still say Dick's nothing more than a hack, other people are wetting themselves in the excitement that he has arrived! The release of Next is possibly to blame - I read one piece saying that Dick had written at least seven novels. I dreamt the thirty others then.

Now the mighty New York Times have written up a press release declared that Dick has arrived, which is news to us who have been somewhat aware that he's been here, albeit only after he died, aside from in France where they caught on by the mid-1970s. See here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/books/06mcgr.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&th&emc=th and reach for the cod.

I don't think the author of this piece shows any evidence of having read any PKD - maybe this review of Carrere http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE7DC1430F933A15755C0A9629C8B63&fta=y, but he trots out the cliches - drugs, FBI, many wives, misquotes the Ace Double Bible joke and says:

"So for the most part you don’t read Mr. Dick for his prose. (The main exception is “The Man in the High Castle,” his most sustained and most assured attempt at mainstream respectability, and it’s barely a sci-fi book at all but, rather, what we would now call a “counterfactual”; its premise is that the Allies lost World War II and the United States is ruled by the Japanese in the west and the Nazis in the east.) Nor do you read him for the science, the way you do, say, Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein."

Asimov on Science for the Science, maybe, but not the Foundation trilogy. Or any of it. And Alternate History would do nicely. (I suspect if you check the book it's Nazis in the south but I would swear to that)

Anyway, Patrick Nielsen-Hayden skewers it at Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008949.html) and the description of the article as "writing whose main purpose is to explain to anxious readers whether it’s socially acceptable to like this stuff or not" is spot on to me.




So Dick is no longer neglected so that people can write things like this: http://books.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1300681.php/Sci-Fi_writer_Philip_K._Dick_goes_from_neglected_to_accepted

Apparently the pubic is slow. The what?

Sheesh.

Dig deeper and you can find that [the person who summarised the NYT piece at Monsters and Critics admits]

"I did some interesting posts, one where I talk about Philip K. Dick's neglect as a writer, and mention James Emanuel. I've never actually read Philip K. Dick, (but I've heard good things) and I took it as a chance to speak about how the great artists rise and the mediocre fall away."
(http://jaschneider.blogspot.com/2007/05/monsters-critics-updates-general.html)

Unbuh-leavable.

I wonder where this "trolls and wackos" characterisation of his fans comes from? Sounds more like the people jumping on the bandwagon.

Comments

Re: Philip K. Dick

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Oh, there are always opinions.

It's a shame you didn't get to cull a news story that didn't just recycle the old cliches about PKD - takes amphetamines and drugs, check, wrote to KGB, check, many wives, check - or appeared to be written by someone who actually has read him, because McGrath doesn't say anything new himself.

In what way Dick was neglected since his death? Individual books have come in and out of print, but he's been available to buy since his death pretty constantly. There have been conference and symposiums devoted to him, two biographies - one of which has gone through several editions - endless articles in the press, several PhDs. If that's neglected then you need a new word for James A. Emanuel. Dick had just been given a big fat cheque from the Blade Runner people; he wasn't penniless like Hurston at his death. He had rough times during his life time, and was always more appreciated in France than the US, but his posthumous reappreciation was pretty swift and happened back in the 1980s.

Re: Philip K. Dick

[(Anonymous)]

No one in the High Literati has considered PKD a "real writer" just a "pulp" one. Even the NYT piece states that. He did in fact struggle to pay his bills because I am familiar with bits of his bio. "Neglect" can cover a wide range of areas- yes he was published, so he was lucky in that way but as for the literary opinion of him, he wasn't taken seriously (like Bradbury or Clarke) because sci-fi writers generally aren't. (LeGuin even complains of this). It's sort of like Hitchcock- he wasn't taken seriously as a filmmaker until someone like Truffaut championed his work. Then they (the critics) began to listen.

PKD was not as neglected as Hurston was, and certainly not as much as Emanuel, who has only had very small presses publish his poems yet deserves a reputation in a league with Langston Hughes. But again, there are different degrees of "Neglect."

In my post, I say that I used this angle to speak about this elitist attitude in the snobby literary world. It was more of an attack on that attitude rather than me championing PKD's actual work. Perhaps I could have made that more clear in my original blog post, but I assume those reading it know I'm not the type to give a fiddler's fart about what the general public thinks. If something is good, it’s good whether it’s sci-fi or not.

But then there are those who worship everything certain writers have written, (like Joyce or Woolf) simply because of their reputation. The fact that PKD’s book will be published by The Library of America is the establishment’s ‘thumbs up’ in saying, ‘hey this guy is for real.’ And that was the point to the post. Whether I agree or not is beside the point.

Re: Philip K. Dick

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I'm not the type to give a fiddler's fart about what the general public thinks.

So my thick headed skull clearly misread "It is also my chance to take a stab at the general public." Doesn't matter if the general public ignore, well anyone.

All I'm saying is I don't think that it is news. It's just marketing. The NYT is twenty years behind the times, kudos wise. Lots of us have been reading and buying and writing about him. Fay Weldon, Kingsley Amis, Fredric Jameson, Stanislaw Lem, Jean Baudrillard. I see you your Library of America in 2007, and I raise you the Institute of Contemporary Arts commemorating the anniversary of his death in 1992.

I hope you get round to reading some PKD. It's good stuff. Then you can share in the we at the end of your piece.

And I'll share something with you that has helped me: don't look for the approval of people whose opinions you don't respect.

Re: Philip K. Dick

[(Anonymous)]

Something in that post has obviously pained you, ok. When I said this 'Im not the type to give a fiddler's fart about what the general public thinks.'

I mean that I'm not one who bases my opinions on other people. Most writing is crap. I know this. Likewise, there are many in that general public who do. That's who I was poking at.

"Thick Skulled"- you called me a dickhead, do I take it personally?

"The NYT is twenty years behind the times, kudos wise."
I'm not disagreeing with you here.

"It's just marketing."

Correct again. Do you think I've read all those books I do posts on? I mean, come on, it's just advertisement.

I'd like to read some PKD, he's on my 'to read' pile. Likewise, you should check out the weirdo Turk who responded to my Armenian Genocide post. The work I do on M&C is my job. I take most things with a grain of salt.

I think you read more personal intention into the post than what's there. But I'm getting lots of Live Journal people reading me, so thanks.