It's time once again for yet another Dick-Fest! Has it been two years since the last one already? Well, no, but it will be. This summer Dick-Head podcast host and overachiever David Agranoff is taking the reins and looking to bring the Dick-Fest to a wider audience with more events! Paul Shelton, who I met at the last Dick-Fest and who has since become a good friend and colleague, has put together a video, replete with some of the "PKD at Disneyland with Norman Spinrad" footage people have been searching for for years!
We're just a week away from my community read of Confessions of a Crap Artist in Point Reyes Station. To say I'm excited would be an understatement.
So, to get my wiggles out (as my mom used to call it), I thought I'd provide some resources for readers of the novel, whether they be Point Reyes Stationians or internet bound.
First off, readers may have noticed that some of the novel's geography doesn't quite work.
Chapter two begins: "Seville, California has a good public library. But the best thing about living in Seville is that in only a twenty-minute drive you're over into Santa Cruz where the beach is and the amusement park is. And it's four lanes all the way."
Google's driving directions don't lie (except when they do): Seville California is just a bit more than three hours from Santa Cruz.
So what's Dick up to here?
Anne Dick recalls in her memoir:
“One afternoon not long after the discussion about Phil's career, we were lying on the bed in the study, our arms around each other. We had just made love and I was feeling happy and relaxed. Phil started laughing and laughing. He said, "I have a great idea for a novel. It's about this guy, Jack Isidore. I'm naming him after an early encyclopedist, Isidore of Seville, who collected weird bits of knowledge. The novel will be in the first person. The opening line Jack Isidore says is, 'Let me tell you about myself. The first thing is: I'm a pathological liar." (In the published version it is, "I am made out of water.") And Phil laughed and laughed some more. For some unknown reason I felt a little chill of unease, but nevertheless I smiled encouragingly. Phil began working on this novel, Confessions of a Crap Artist, during the honeymoon period of our relationship.”
“At a time of disintegration of classical culture, aristocratic violence and widespread illiteracy, Isidore was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigothic kings to Catholicism, both assisting his brother Leander of Seville and continuing after his brother’s death. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo and Seville.
His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an etymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. This work also helped standardize the use of the period (full stop), comma, and colon.”
But I think Phil is really excited about this: on January 17th, I'll be leading a community discussion of his literary novel Confessions of a Crap Artist in Point Reyes Station, where the novel is set, and where Dick lived, off and on, between 1959-1964.
As part of my PRRIC-ular duties, I have been getting to know the locals in the tiny town of just under 850 people. I spend a couple days a week inhabiting Dick's slow-paced pastorale landscape: walking by Cheda's Garage, shopping at The Palace Market, and working in my office above The Old Western Saloon. The experience has enriched my reading of Confessions of a Crap Artist, which is about Dick's time in Point Reyes Station, as well as his marriage to Anne, who I knew pretty well.
So for an expert, which Henry Kissinger famously said is someone who knows more and more about less and less, it doesn't get much better than this. I will post some study materials for those of you interested in reading the novel along with us. Until then, enjoy these pictures of locations from the novel courtesy of Henri Wintz and The Philip K. Dick Bookshelf.
If you're in the Bay Area, GET YOUR ASS TO POINT REYES, on January 17th.
I've just returned from the future, and it's New Orleans, people. A whirlwind week in The Big Easy with
incredible music (I reconnected with a saxophonist I played in a band with 30 years ago), interesting sights (for instance an outlet mall's foodcourt on the Mighty Mississipp), all culminating with an absolutely incredible art show titled Reflex Machines at local gallery Chemical 14, curated by Dick-Head artist extraordinaire Brent Houzenga!
Just look at this picture of Brent and me with Phil's birthday cake, burning with the fire of a thousand suns and 97 candles. Now there are a couple of guys happy to be Dicking it up.
Below are some photos from the gallery. The exhibit will be up until early January, so if you're in the area, do not miss this. Highlights included, stylized wardrobe inspired by Blade Runner's Pris, the "Dissbot" which takes a picture of you before hurling an insult your way, the ridable Isomorph bug which growled and gurgled malevolently as people clung to its bucking thorax, PRRIC's own Reverse Psychic, an exploded and neon-gutted wall-mounted dolphin, and so much more... Oh and I gave a thought-provoking lecture replete with PowerPoint slides.
Sunday November 23rd, I'll be joined by Dick-Head Podcast host David Agranoff, cyberpunk legend Rudy Rucker, and Tachyon publisher Jacob Weisman at the San Francisco Public Library to talk about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, "Blade Runner," Dick's novel writing formula, as well as his influence on the science fiction genre.
"Join SF in SF with experts David Gill, David Agranoff, and author Rudy Rucker, along with publisher Jacob Weisman, in a discussion on PKD and Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? David Gill, the authoritative expert on PKD, will tie Dick’s life and writing process with David Agranoff’s expertise as the co-host of the PKDickheads podcast, and discuss the larger religious and philosophical questions the PKD’s work explores. Author Rudy Rucker, and Jacob Weisman, publisher of The Search for Philip K. Dick, by Anne Dick will join in as well.
Big news from The Alembic, where last year Erik Davis gave a multi-week course on The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Well, the author of High Weirdness is back, this time offering a five-week course on Dick's most carefully constructed novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
The course is every Monday evening, starting November 3rd.
Talk about fantastic post titles! There's something equally great and terrible about specialized language. While most of you know what those words mean, there are some (like my 87-year-old mother) who would be stymied by everything but the preposition.
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