Erik Davis on the Pink Beam

Well yesterday may very well have been the fiftieth anniversary of PKD getting zapped by the delivery girl's Jesus fish necklace, or whatever. The funny thing is that the deeper you dig into the timeline, the more out of joint it becomes. Maybe it wasn't February at all. On February 1, 1974, PKD writes to Jamis, "All I can recall about the entire month of January is that I had two molars and a wisdom tooth which had grown down and become embedded in my jawbone removed...." (74 SL pg 3.)

I got to spend part of the afternoon with High Weirdness author Erik Davis, as we riffed on Dick's visions for about thirty minutes in my class, before Davis had to teach the last class of his Stigmata course. 

The main idea I got out of all of this is that 2/3/74 is a kind of sacred uncertainty (if you rearrange the letters of the word "sacred" you get the word "scared"). For me the most important lesson of this radical uncertainty is that part of me wants to be certain, and that I have to work to keep from being certain. As much as I would like to believe that PKD concocted these experiences to fulfill some unmet need for significance, I have to save space for the possibility that something divine and revelatory happened. And I would ask that you check your own need for certainty as you explore your own ideas about what happened to Phil Dick. 

Davis put an old essay about the whole beam deal on his website yesterday. Davis writes: 

"Unlike most religious seers, Dick did not approach his visions with anything like certitude. Dick distrusted reification of any sort (his novels constantly wage war against the process that turns people and ideas into things), and so he refused to solidify his experiences into a belief system. Like William Blake, another impoverished autodidact whose bubbling imagination was steeped in the Western visionary tradition, Dick approached his theophany (or “in-breaking of God”) as artistic material, reworking it in his writings with an artist’s commitment to irony, craft, and a political bite. Even in his private journals, he constantly liquefies his revelations, writing with a modern thinker’s sense of the tentativeness of speculative thought. “Indeterminacy is the central characteristic of 2-3-74,” writes Sutin in his Dick biography Divine Invasions. Sutin points out that mystics traditionally interpret their experiences within the faiths they are raised in. “Phil adhered to no single faith. The one tradition indubitably his was SFwhich exalts ‘What IF?’ above all. In 2-3-74, all the ‘What IFs?’ were rolled up into one.”

Erik Davis on The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Last night I traveled up to the old Berkeley flats, near the old stomping grounds of PKD, to hear Erik Davis give his first of five lectures on The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Unfortunately, Erik's series is also on Tuesday evenings, when, after this week, I will be offering my own PKD class via Zoom. 

Davis was great, and it was awesome to see a roomful of people eager to engage with Phil Dick's weirdness. Interestingly a significant portion of the audience (maybe a third) had never read a PKD book before, which is a testament to their belief in Dr Davis' schtick. 

In the first lecture, Davis provided some background: how he got into Phil Dick (Berkeley druggies), how he was an early champion of PKD, most notably with his Village Voice article (which ended up getting blurbed on the Vintage editions calling Dick "A poor man's Pynchon,") and how he ended up working on The Exegesis.

Davis' overarching focus involves asking readers to play with the idea of Dick prophesying, not the granular details of our reality (though the global warming in 3 Stig is pretty interesting in that regard), but rather predicting how it FEELS to live in our now. As evidence, Davis tossed out the fact that Kanye just got titanium teeth. 

One of the other cool ideas I picked up was PKD's sensitivity to the ways in which everything can go sideways once people get involved. It's as if all of our interactions with reality are a game of "Telephone" with noise creeping into our every endeavor and perception. Another idea that I want to explore more is the idea of the "mind virus" which is sort of what Palmer Eldritch represents. 

It's not just ideas that we're inoculated with on social media. We are given complex rhetorical strategies which we immediately internalize. If you bring up January 6 to a republican, many have been trained to point out that Hillary called the integrity of the 2016 election into question. We are arguing in memes, which cuts off our ability to think about the issue completely. 

For the event, I pulled out my old Vintage edition of the novel, which has seen things you people wouldn't believe. 

Tickets are on sale for the remaining for dates are for sale here. Lectures are available to stream, but not the Q&A (when everybody eats Chew-Z and listens to fig jazz). 

Erik Davis Explores The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

 

It seems I'm not the only one offering a class on PKD. Erik Davis will be lecturing on The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch at a cool place in Berkeley called The Alembic, which is described as a "nonprofit bodymind center committed to experiments in transformation" on their website:

"Erik Davis has been thinking and writing about the visionary Californian science fiction writer Philip K. Dick since he graduated Yale in the 1980s. In this five-part series, he will take on one of Dick’s most mind-bending and harrowing books, 1964’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, reading it as a prophetic precog flash on our present meta-crisis.

The first evening will serve as an introduction to Dick, his personal and psychological trials, and the religious experiences and concerns that started to emerge around the time he wrote this wild, satiric, and disturbing novel. Subsequent nights will work through the book in 50-60 page increments per week (read the Vintage edition if you can).

Topics will include: virtual reality, consumer psychedelics, Barbie dolls, space-faring billionaires, transhuman augmentation, global warming, Mars colonization, the Eucharist, the cosmic “Outside” (H.P. Lovecraft and Olaf Stapledon), the Gnostic demiurge, the bardo, the nature of evil, the genre of horror, and the breakdown of consensus reality. $25 for the introductory lecture, $95 for all five Tuesdays, beginning January 23rd. Davis will be the guest in my class in April."

I'll be there for the intro class. 

Tickets here. 

Erik Davis Exegizes the Exegesis on Aeon Byte Radio

You read that right, Dick-heads, TDH-pal and annotations editor of The Exegesis of Philip K Dick, Erik Davis, talks up the project with Miguel Connor of Aeon Byte Radio. Check it out here.

btw, my fav review over at amazon - the only one-star review - reads as follows:

"Having nonetities pygmify the Exegesis is not just sacriligeous, it is a clear attempt to censor and sanitise PKD into another crazy visionary pigeonhole, making his commercially lucrative legacy easier to exploit whilst de-emphasizing what was most important to him- namely his VALIS experiences. Not everything can be abridged, least of all by dollar-fixated pygmies and nabob academics."

Erik Davis Recalls Dortmund PKD Conference, Totally

Erik Davis (pictured above amidst the entropy) was nice enough to write a very thorough write up of the recent Dortmund Conference. Actually he wrote it almost two weeks ago, but then my family and I succumbed to the flu and are only now returning to full capacity. In the coming days I'll tell you a bit about my experience reading Nick and the Glimmung to my seven-year-old daughter. Take it away Erik,

This year has held an embarrassment of riches for those of us who like to gather and gab about PKD. The 2012 PKD Festival in San Francisco this last September was a wonderful experience, a rare and perfect blend of scholarship and fandom with lots of talks as well as presentations and even belly dances that broke up the yaddha-ya. And last month, a conglomeration of sharp and generous minds and institutions put together Time Out of Joint: Re-Imagining Philip K. Dick, a conference that, while certainly more academic, was just as friendly, enthusiastic and engaging as the Festival. Held at Dortmund University in Germany, in one of the most modern buildings of this rather ancient institution, the conference featured over three days of non-stop talks, screenings, and performances.

    Though Norman Spinrad was unfortunately held up in Paris with VISA difficulties, the conference hosted a number of ace keynote talks. Umberto Rossi followed up his 2009 article about radio in PKD with a wonderful and funny account of television in Dick's work, a darker but still ambiguous tale of media saturation and the commodification of the imagination. Lawrence Rickels delivered the same dense and cryptic presentation on Germany and the figure of the psychopath as he did at the Festival; hearing it for the second time, I was actually able to follow the whole thing! Roger Luckhurst gave a very insightful and thorough historical account of psychopathology and Philip K. Dick--not just Dick's own fascination with schizophrenia, paranoia, and other disorders, but the constantly changing character of those categories over time. For me, Luckhurst's presentation was one of the most helpful of the whole event, as he illuminated the tendency that many critics have (and that Dick shared himself) to try and diagnose the author. As someone writing about Dick's "nuttier" side, this discussion gave me the helpful perspective that Dick's peculiar mental life conjures up so many possible diagnoses that the effort is frustrated from the get-go. Diagnosis, like everything else in Dick's world, is a moving target, a feedback machine with a life of its own.

    The rest of the conference talks and panels were solid and sometimes excellent, with many younger scholars represented, showing that there is a lively future in store for PKD studies. There was also a wide range of topics addressed--not just the more established discussions of android ethics and other topics in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (though these were present as well), but also talks on nostalgia, autism, drugs, and the under-appreciated Galactic Pot-Healer, a personal fave that Matt Englund opened up into a discussion of Dick's meta-fictional labyrinth of readers, authors, and texts. As one of the editors of the Exegesis, it pleased me to see how many presenters were using the recently published volume to put forward their (characteristically divergent) takes on PKD, ranging from neurology (Jason Ellis) to religious studies (oh wait, that was me). James Burton had the good graces to deliver a different paper than he did at the Festival, and his analysis of the shift from exegesis to ecology  makes me even more excited about his forthcoming (if ambitiously titled) book, The Philosophy of Science Fiction, which looks at PKD in light of the religious philosophy of Henri Bergson. But Dick himself was not (just) a religious philosopher. Some presenters, including Yari Lanci--who drew attention to some of PKD's neglected 50s work in his discussion of the neoliberalist foreclosure of time--also reminded us of the continued value of more leftist and materialist approaches to Dick.

    Luckily the conference did not drown in academic discourse. In her wonderful Scottish brogue, Fabienne Collingnon presented a cultural history of "cold pac" that was as poetic in its expression as it was intelligent in content. Dutch documentary filmmaker David Kleijwegt showed his new and lovely PKD doc The Owl in Daylight. While most of the faces and concepts will be familiar to Dickheads, Kleiijwegt's editing, soundtrack, and atmospheric, occasionally haunting camera work puts this doc far beyond the usual talking-heads grind, and made me want to see his 2008 film about the indie-rock band Low. The conference also hummed with more fannish enthusiasms as well. One panel devoted to PKD adaptations included co-organizer Stefan Schlensag's passionate dissection of Tony Parker's Androids graphic novel, while Irina Novikova's gave a literally eye-opening overview of PKD translations in Russia (what amazing covers!). One of the conference organizers, Damian Podlesny (a gentle soul from Poland), joined Tommi Brem to discuss a variety of projects, including Brem's ambitious online wiki-index of Dickeana, which readers of this blog will certainly want to check out (http://www.appendix-dick.com/).

    Along with the superb hosting from Walter Grünzweig and his colleagues and students at Dortmund (who kept us rigorously caffeinated and snackified), these presentations--as well as a number of stand-outs I did not mention--makes it a safe bet that a good time was had by all.  The only question on people's minds after the closing talks was not whether there would be another PKD conference in the future, but where and when.

Total Dick-Head Is Five Years Old Today! (now with links)

You read that right, compadres! TDH is five years old today. In a few more years perhaps the blog will be mature enough to get over the dick jokes, but anyhoo, it's been a fairly unqualified success.

Seriously, the coolest thing about the endeavor was being a part of the PKD scene and meeting so many cool people. Mr Hand over at Philip K Dick and Religion has become a great friend, and Patrick Clark and the Otaku folks are super-cool. Erik Davis and Lord Running Clam... I promised myself I wouldn't cry. It's also nice to see PhilipKDickFans.com up and running again. And Frolix-8 has consistently churned out awesome PKD content for ages. And now we have a festival page. Now we're on Facebook too, please 'like' us so we can look big time. It's nice to see more Dick on the Internet.

It's been a big five years for PKD too:

Published by Library of America
Briefly the subject of two dueling bio-pics
Back-handed compliments by The New Yorker
High Profile Profiles in LA Times, NY Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek...you name it
Cinematic adaptations including Next and Adjustment Bureau
A good adaptation of Radio Free Albemuth and talk of a Gondry-helmed Ubik
Publishing of 975 pages of Exegesis writings
(I was going to link all of these, but you're so good with The Google, you do it)

So it's been a fun time. For some reason I feel like the wave has crested, like the publishing of The Exegesis was Dick's high-water mark in pop-culture - actually I think it was a little before that. Maybe I'm wrong, and when Ubik comes out they'll fire up the Philip K Dick Article Generating Machine and churn out "Troubled Misfit Druggie Wondered What Was Real (And He Predicted Robots!)" articles by the dozen.

So, you probably want some links:

Miguel Conner has posted a cool interview with John Simon, director of Radio Free Albemuth (which we'll all have watched some day) over at Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio. Check it out.

There's short preview trailer that's been released in anticipation of the Full Trailer for the Total Recall remake:



It's got a dodgy chair - generally considered to be the kiss of death in PKD adaptations - those and hats.

Erik Davis, Ted Hand, and I will be presenting at this year's Esotericism Conference in sunny Davis, California on Friday, July 20. You can learn more here.

Forget Paul Giamatti as PKD, reader Mike Winder found this pic to convince all of us in the PKD group on Facebook that Jeff Bridges is PKD:

Erik Davis on The Exegesis

Just a quick note today: check out Erik Davis talking bout The Exegesis on Miguel Connor's Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio. Listen here. Good stuff.

The World Sucks, and My Lack of Posting Isn't Helping

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find the time to post here. Now I've got a second band, a side-project that I'm involved with, and I've been slaving away late at night working on this story, which if all goes according to plan, should get submitted tomorrow. At that point my attention will turn towards the Philip K Dick Conference planned for next year. Time to get going selling t-shirts, raising funds, maybe even getting a Kickstarter project going. Our list of notable attendees includes: Jonathan Lethem, John Simon (director Radio Free Albemuth), Tommy Pallotta (producer A Scanner Darkly), Erik Davis, Ted Hand, and me. That list is sure to grow as I begin the process of tracking folks down in earnest.

The amazing thing is, while I've been away from this blog, the world has gone full Black Iron Prison:

First, Pat Robertson fails to have even the heart of the robot taxi cab at the end of Now Wait For Last Year, as he recently suggested a husband could leave his wife suffering from Alzheimer's, Nice work, Mr Robertson:

“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her,” Robertson said.

To quote another famous android, "That's the spirit."

But a quote in this article about Amazon seemed to sum up best the way our world now resembles the apathetic futures in PKD's books:

"People who run companies like Amazon operate as though it never occurred to them that it could have been them crawling through the aisles. And the people who run labor unions possess little empathy for how difficult and risky and remarkable it is to build something like Amazon."

And it's starting to really bum me out.

If you've been pining for more Phil Dick content, cursing my name and blog for my seeming indifference, you need to head over to Mr Hand's PKD and Religion blog where our friend has been a very busy little Phil Dick scholar and has all kinds of good posts. Talks are underway to bring Mr Hand's content to us directly here at TDH. So don't give up on us yet.

Here's A Contest! PKD and the Beauty of Nature

Currently vacationing in Kauai with the family. Of course it's lush and beautiful here, and it reminds me of an observation of Erik Davis: Dick does not describe natural beauty in his books. So, since I'm on vacation I will turn it over to you gentle readers... Find me an example of a vivid description of nature, and you may win a plastic dark-haired hula girl for your car's dashboard. I suggest you look in Confessions of a Crap Artist. Leave your best quoted description in the comments section. A-LOOOOOO-HA!

Update: Some great entries. Currently in first place is a quote from the beginning of "Upon the Dull Earth." But there's still time. I think we can do better.

On The Road

Erik Davis and I are planning to leave at the crack of noon or so, driving straight east towards the PKD Fest in Black Hawk, Colorado; we hope to make it close to the Nevada/Utah border by Wednesday night. I will try to keep you apprised of any exciting developments. If you need an immediate update on our progress, simply imagine a gnostic version of Thelma & Louise...


In the meantime, pleased to enjoy this picture of Dr Wilder Penfield (right) with his niece (my grandmother) and my grandfather:

Erik Davis Interviews Jonathan Lethem about Philip Dick

There's a must-read interview of Lethem up over at h+ magazine conducted by none 0ther than TDH friend Erik Davis! It's a meaty interview, knife and fork kind of stuff. Here's a taste:

ED: Dick set many of his tales in what we might now call a “posthuman” future of cognitive-enhancing drugs, psi powers, and other amplifications of human capacity. Many of the developments he envisioned in his own unique way are now edging ever closer to reality, and there are many enthusiasts. While not exactly bleak, Dick had a generally more dark and satiric — and often funny — take on cognitive enhancement. Was he a pessimist or a realist? How would you characterize his particularly lesson about human for today‘s enthusiastic transhumans?

JL: While I‘m hardly an expert on the reality of cognitive enhancement or the transhuman impulse as it‘s working itself out on the contemporary frontier, I suspect Dick had little to offer in the way of a “lesson” for aspirants, except in the senses that were relevant while he was coming of age as a writer — that‘s to say, when the breaking news in the framing of such matters involved names like Freud, Kinsey, Norbert Weiner and, well, A.E. Van Vogt. Dick‘s concerns were ultimately both epistemological and deeply moral — in the sense that a philosopher would use the world moral, not in the sense that, say, Joseph L. Breen would. You know, love, empathy, “what is human?” and so forth. For contemporary voyagers, these matters remain as Dick delineated them: exquisitely local, negotiated on the human-to-human, or human-to-self playing field according to an infinite number of variations and contexts. No sweeping paradigms will do here. We‘re all walking down the street conducting our self-Turing exams every time we pass a homeless person, or greet our spouse at the breakfast table.

Read the rest here.

Happy 80th Birthday PKD!

Is it morbid to celebrate the birthday of a dead person? 80 years ago, Philip K Dick was born at noon, on a cold Chicago day. Twenty minutes later his twin sister Jane was born. We celebrate the birthdays of the dead when, in retrospect, it seems those days yielded something extraordinary.

I think our world is profoundly better for having Philip K Dick in it, and I know my life is immeasurably richer for having discovered his work. It makes me a little sad to wonder what he could have done had he lived longer.

Whatever, y'all are bringin' me down.

As I skeptic I believe in none of this but Erik Davis thought it'd be a good idea to get a star chart for PKD. We know he was born at noon, in Chicago, on December 16, 1928. What say you cosmic oracle, alabe.com?:

Name: Philip K Dick
December 16 1928
12:00 PM Time Zone is CST
Chicago, IL

Rising Sign is in 25 Degrees Pisces
Very sensitive to your surroundings, other people's feelings become your feelings. Try to avoid negative people because your tendency to empathize with them will make you negative also. An idealist, you must believe in something beyond your normal everyday existence. A dreamer, you like to escape to a world of your own creation. As such, you are known for the vividness of your imagination and should try to share your inner visions with others. Very self-sacrificial by nature, beware of others becoming overly dependent on you or vice versa. Allow yourself to live for yourself once in a while -- you deserve it. Don't be so envious of those who are more aggressive than you -- your gentle charity and true humility are indeed wonderful gifts. on the tenth house cusp (MIDHEAVEN).

Sun is in 24 Degrees Sagittarius.
Very fun-loving, spirited and energetic, you have a huge reservoir of physical energy within you that needs to be released. As such, exercise or sports are very important to you. Quite gregarious, you enjoy being with other people, but you tend to avoid emotionally restrictive or intimate relationships. Constantly curious about the broader issues of life, you may at times be quite careless and sloppy about details -- you tend to leap to conclusions before all the facts are in. An avid reader, you are totally enthusiastic about any given subject should it interest you. You are known for being idealistic, generous, sociable, cheerful and very positive!

Moon is in 14 Degrees Aquarius.
Very freedom-oriented, you must always be able to do what you wish, no matter what. You become stubborn and recalcitrant when others try to force you into a mold. You are a true democrat -- you are not a follower, but you enjoy being with those who are like-minded. You appreciate emotional self-control -- you practice it yourself and you look for it in others. You solve problems, including emotional ones, with your brains and intellect, not your feelings. Try to be tolerant of those who have powerful and obvious emotional responses -- not everyone is as objective, cool, dispassionate and detached as you are.

Mercury is in 23 Degrees Sagittarius.
Your mind is very curious and inquisitive, always seeking information on a wide variety of topics. The broader the subject matter (philosophy, science, religion, metaphysics), the more it will appeal to you. You prefer to deal with abstractions -- the small but important details associated with any subject tend to slip your grasp. You are known for being blunt, honest and truthful.

Venus is in 05 Degrees Aquarius.
You are a friendly and outgoing individual, but close relationships are difficult for you to maintain due to your fear that they will cause you to lose your freedom. You attract friends and associates who are exciting, different and sometimes a bit odd. You are popular with others and enjoy working within a group toward group goals.

Mars is in 01 Degrees Cancer.
Your moods are very important to your overall well-being. You are confident and self-assertive when you are feeling upbeat, and you are retiring, irritable and grumpy when you get depressed about anything. Very sensitive, you wear your heart on your sleeve. You are easily angered whenever you think someone has slighted you. It is best for you to show your anger immediately and let it all out, rather than to try to hold it in or to hold grudges for a long time. You're extremely loyal and defensive of your family, neighborhood, community and culture.

Jupiter is in 00 Degrees Taurus.
Growth only occurs for you after you have found a stable lifestyle and a dependable, protective and secure environment. You are at your best when those around you provide you with a great deal of affection and support. When you feel insecure or threatened, you tend to become possessive and grasping and self- indulgent. You are an inveterate collector with an expensive preference for all the good things that life has to offer.

Saturn is in 21 Degrees Sagittarius.
Basically quite conservative, you respect traditional authority figures and are very thankful and supportive of the laws and institutions which govern your life. You learn and accept new ideas only after having very thoroughly examined them. Ideals and abstract concepts are important to you only if they can be used in some practical fashion. You are so practical and so orderly that you have natural skills in planning, administrating and organizing.

Uranus is in 03 Degrees Aries.
For you, as well as for the rest of your peers, the issue of personal freedom is not just an abstract issue that can be discussed and then forgotten. You feel very deeply the loss or threat of loss of your ability to remain unrestricted and independent. And you will react vigorously and vociferously to defend your right of self-expression, no matter what the cost.

Neptune is in 01 Degrees Virgo.
You, and your entire generation, idealize work, duty and responsibility. You tend to be very fearful of anything that would force you out of the protective shell of your everyday routines. You place a high premium on personal pride in productivity and craftsmanship. But in your search for perfection in minor details, you sometimes lose track of the overall purpose of life.

Pluto is in 17 Degrees Cancer.
For your entire generation, this is a period of profound global changes, especially in the nature and shape of family structures. In one such period, in the Twentieth Century, major calamities such as depression and world war accelerated the replacement of the old village-oriented extended family by modern cosmopolitan living.

N. Node is in 00 Degrees Gemini.
You will consciously seek out many different contacts with others throughout your life. Many of these will be of very short duration, not necessarily because you're fickle, but just because you always seem to be more excited by the prospect of meeting someone new rather than prolonging your present relationships. At any rate, you will learn something new from almost everyone you come across -- intellectual stimulation is what you crave from others. You will be well known to neighbors and relatives, partly due to your curiosity about what they're doing -- you delight in keeping up-to-date about the latest news (and gossip).

Erik Davis on PKD

Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis, recently reposted "Technomancer," an article he wrote on PKD for the Village Voice in 1989 (when I was ditching class and smoking pot my senior year in high school, still tragically unaware of Philip K Dick's existence). In fact Vintage culled the now-ubikuitous blurb: "Dick was many authors: a poor man's Pynchon, an oracular postmodern, a rich prophet of the changing counterculture" from this very article.

What I'm struck by is the amount of insight and detail in Davis' write up. His column makes every single article in the recent spate of PKD coverage look a like pre-fab, cut and paste job containing only the most superficial of details. Davis shows what's possible when you let someone who knows Dick's irv and who cares about Dick's ideas write about his literary accomplishments.

Davis writes:

"As far back as the ‘50s, Dick saw the dark, paranoid side of McLuhan’s global village. The animism that primitive humankind projected onto Nature was for him reborn in our technological environment, where ominous spiritual forces merged with the instruments of late capitalism. Dick’s machines are black jokes rather than believable imaginings..."

If Gopnik's article in The New Yorker had included even a single sentence with this kind of insight, this level of engagement with Philip K Dick and his ideas, perhaps we might have forgiven him for dragging PKD through the mud a bit. Philip K Dick was passionate about ideas, passionate about his writing, and desperate for readers willing to invest in his speculations and assume the mortality he depicted in his characters. Gopnik, et al, were satisfied with mere summary of Dick's life and work, but something more is needed if you really want to sell people on the worth of PKD's fiction; you need to plumb the depths a bit, come back from the novels with something to show for your effort if you expect others to make the journey.

Davis writes:

"Dick was a narrative trickster, a master mindfucker. He pulled the whodunit inside out: Decoding small meaningful details doesn’t put the picture together so much as rip it apart. By twisting the page-turning groove of pulp into a Möbius strip, Dick attempted to undermine the political, social, technological, and psychic structures of “reality.” He wanted a pulp guerilla ontology that deconstructed everyone’s power trip—Nixon’s, IBM’s, God’s, the author’s."

It's clear to me that many of those pre-fab PKD articles used Davis' write up as a kind of template, a set of talking points they would address in their own articles, but for Davis, PKD isn't merely a notable personality, his books serve as a searchlight for Davis' own explorations of reality or the lack thereof. This crucial difference drives home the power of the Internet, where we can find passionate guides for all of our own searches, rather than the paid, staid, and marketed efforts of "professionals" who cover our obsessions with token interest, and who are, ultimately, mere spectators here.

Read the rest of Davis' article. I promise, you won't be disappointed. The really exciting news is that Erik Davis is currently hard at work on a book-length examination of Dick's life and fiction. Both Jonathan Lethem and I feel that Erik is uniquely positioned to write one of the most important books about PKD ever, and after you read the rest of the article I think you'll agree.