Interview with Tessa Dick

There's yet another good interview with PKD's fifth wife Tessa over at Self-Publishing Review, and while it's not chock full of new information, it sheds some additional light on their marriage, 2-3-74, and her self-published version of The Owl in Daylight (which differs markedly from the version PKD's estate is currently crafting into a bio-pic).

Tessa has written a lot recently about her life with PKD (remember she was a published writer before she met PKD). First she produced The Dim Recollection of Philip K Dick, a short, self-published memoir of her time with PKD, available at Amazon.com. Then she turned her efforts to writing PKD's final, unfinished novel The Owl in Daylight. As most of his fans know, PKD talked incessantly to his friends and family about his novels before sitting down to write them, and Tessa uses her memory to construct the story from Dick's riffing.

In this interview Tessa talks a bit more about what it was like living with PKD during his 'mystical experiences' in 1974:

"Phil constantly discussed his visionary experience and his multiple interpretations of it. On the other hand, he was closely involved in raising our young son and handling all the little cares of daily life. It was as if he were two or three different people. He especially enjoyed having people come over to visit, whether they were fans of his or just friends who didn’t read his books."

For all the people who (naturally) assume that experiences like this are completely overwhelming (as Dick makes them sound in VALIS and the Exegesis), it's interesting to note that Dick continued to dwell in the day to day world of childcare and writing.

Tessa also discusses in detail some of the varying plotlines PKD laid out for Owl over the years:

"Phil had written very little about this novel. In fact, all that has been found is a letter that he wrote to his editor and his agent (same letter, two copies). It was very sketchy and did not even name any characters. It did mention Dante’s Inferno and the Faust legend.

I did not use Phil’s ideas as he expressed them in that letter to his editor and his agent. He was going to have a great scientist design and build a computer system and then get trapped in its virtual reality. The computer would be so advanced that it developed human-like intelligence and rebelled against its frivolous purpose of managing a theme park. In the conversations that we had shortly before Phil’s death, I couldn’t convince him that a computer system would have to be designed and built by a team of experts in different fields, such as one expert in graphics, another in animation, one for hardware, one for software and so forth.

I have read that Doris Sauter published an alternate plot involving a musician and aliens, but I did not read her book and did not use her ideas. Someone told me that the name she had for the main character was similar to the name that I gave him, but that is mere coincidence. I named him Arthur, Art for short, because he is an artist. I made his last name Grimley because he is in a grim situation.

The Owl in Daylight is my concept of what Phil’s novel should be. I relied heavily on Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The plot is loosely based on Phil’s life, which will become more apparent in the sequel, The Owl in Twilight."

The interview also has some rare pics (including the one of Tessa and PKD used above - which I had never seen before).

Check out the interview in its entirety here.

Then head over to Amazon.com and pick up her books.