Back to Business

Well Dick-heads, it's been awhile. I've been busy writing a long piece on the string of negative articles following the Library of America's PKD release which will appear online and in print form in a journal called Article Journal: Art & The Imaginative Promise. The article's titled, "The Three Stigmata of Philip K. Dick: A dedicated Dick-head of fifteen years explores why, even with a new volume in the ultra-exclusive Library of America, the media still casts Dick as a poor writer, a drug addict, and a wacko."

Included in the issue will be a thousand word excerpt from my interview with Jonathan Lethem. I'll keep you posted on when and where it will be available. Obviously Gopnik's article in the New Yorker got some people riled up (just look at those comments!). I'll talk a bit more about it in a future post. In fact there's so much PKD effluvia coming at me right now I can't keep up with it. I just received a complete set of the Philip K Dick Society Newsletters with CDs and all kinds of goodies. And I've got Lord RC's Pink Beam PKD companion to review as well.

Just in case you haven't become completely convinced that all PKD articles are destined to focus on his mental illness (I don't even know if I should put scare quotes around those words anymore), here's further proof in some Malaysian publication:

"One of the greatest philosophical writers of the 20th century [PKD] had five failed marriages, was raised in the Depression-era by a single mother, was diagnosed as a schizophrenic at a young age, and was haunted by the prospects of that diagnosis throughout his adult life. He was alienated from his peers, because his writing was so different, and largely ignored by the rest, finding recognition only posthumously."

I will get back to blogging The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch soon. I'm stuck because I cannot find the origin of the phrase, "Take me to your leader." Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.