/lit/ - Literature

Fantasist schizophrenic writes a load of cool shit. I love it.

He fried his brain with too many drug and became a nonsense babble Psycho-Jesus trying to write about ideas that were too far-reaching and abstract for him to lucidly explain in their entirety through fiction.

>>5521789
this is what i have been thinking from time to time when reading his books. like one chapter i'll be like "okay stop trying to describe your last lsd trip" and in the next chapter i'll be balls deep in his amazing alternative realities.

i guess it has to do with him writing the books to earn money for rent. for some books he didn't even have time to edit at all. if he had a lot of time editing and changing things maybe they would give a more coherent and lucid impression.

He was a genius who showed his genius in the form of inspired pulp SF and then lost his mind because he did too much acid and speed, or he was a prophet and we should all convert to gnosticism.

There's literally no other possibility.

>>5521767
I think he took science fiction and was like fuck it lets not do it the same forever and created science fiction into what it is today. Science fiction would NOT be the same without him.

I feel like he created the whole concept of "what if" that was sorely missing from science fiction back then.

Last year, while living on my own, I had the shittiest winter ever. No heating, house was drafty as fuck and I had wasted all my dole money on books and weed. All I had to keep myself sane was a hot water bottle and my collection of PKD novels.

The man was in dire need of an editor, for sure, but his stories were a great mix of pulp and genuinely interesting ideas. Definitely a product of the cold war and his schizophrenia, but as long as you realize that they are still enjoyable.

Don't know if it was the early stages of hypothermia, but VALIS made me cry.

I thought Ubik was shit even though it is often regarded as his best work. The three stigmata and Androids are amazing. Might start on VALIS tomorrow.

I feel like I have to read everything he has written to actually get a grasp on what he was trying to say. After four or five books I still feel like he is amazed at LSD and tries really hard to get the sensation of a trip into a good story - sometimes putting the focus on "whoa man, what if i'm in your dream or if you're in mine. or like, i'm really dead and you're communicating with me even though you're alive. or like, what if we're all, like, not human but still think we are because raisins." I want to write an essay on his works when I'm done. Fucking interesting guy

>>5521904
I'm not sure he ever took or claimed he took LSD.

>>5521911
He did and he did. And his books do.

>>5521911
The dude is well-known to have done shitloads of drugs. I can't say for sure that he ever did LSD, but I highly doubt he didn't.

>>5521955
He's well known to have done a lot of speed. Other than that, I haven't seen much evidence of anything.

>>5521950
[Citation needed]
I'm not saying you're wrong, I've just never seen any evidence and would be interested to.

>>5521911
He did, in his book "Maze of death" there is a preface where he states one of the scenes involving the death of a character was inspired by an LSD trip he had.

>>5521950

>He left the other cap of acid for Nancy and me, and that night we divided it, each of us taking half a standard dose (I suppose about 75 mg). I had a theory that if you took such a small amount you might not go so deep into it, would retain more of a sense of reality and meantime enjoy colors and sounds, etc. I was right; at least for myself … I saw all manner of joyous coloration, especially pinks and reds, very luminous and exciting, and I had several great insights into myself (e.g. that I had had two attacks of schizophrenia, one when I was six, the otherwhen I was eighteen, and that my basic fear was a return of this). Nancy, it would seem, experienced nothing at all except as sense of well-being -- which I also had, before the color sensation began. I wonder why it didn’t affect her more; I wonder, then, what a full dose would have done. Frankly, I’d like to get hold of some more; it was an altogether pleasant trip, one which I was sorry to see slide into the oblivion of the past.

from a letter to Jack Newkom.

>>5521971
Okay, thanks. I'll look it up.

>>5521975
>a cap of acid
>75mg
errr. I guess I'll attribute that to him not knowing what the fuck he was talking about

>>5521989
assuming he means micrograms, and he is taking a half tab, it sounds about right and now YOU'RE the dumbass

>>5521767
I love his storys, he likes big boobs.

>>5521911
He once started speaking Koine Greek on LSD.
He only did it that one time, though.
If you think all he's doing is writing about trippy stuff for the sake of it you aren't reading him right.

Which book should I try out from him?
Best critically acclaimed one?

>>5522636
Three Stigmata, VALIS, and Man in the High Castle are his best books.
Really, though, the only way to read him is to read all his major works chronologically.

>>5522656
Thanks anon.

>>5522636
>>5522656
those are definitely great ones but my personal favorite has always been Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

2hr interview. The best insight you can get on the man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXqHJYz8NXo

>>5522656
>>5522689
>not Ubik

Apparently, all the amphetamines he took didn't hit him, he metabolized it all too quick

I love Philly Dick. Ironically I hate sci-fi. Valis, Scanner Darkly and Confessions of a Crap Artist are great though.

>>5521867
It wasn't hypothermia, friend.

>>5522795
Yeah, that was described in the introduction to VALIS, which he wrote after a mental breakdown following the realisation he'd never been affected by amphetamines. It said he'd written all his works while taking amphetamines.

>>5522839
>>Yeah, that was described in the introduction to VALIS, which he wrote after a mental breakdown following the realisation he'd never been affected by amphetamines. It said he'd written all his works while taking amphetamines.

This makes no sense to me. He was taking drugs for years and then suddenly realized they weren't getting him high so he had a mental breakdown? What the fuck?

>>5522851
It's a "it was within you all along" deal, except it's the paranoid-schizophrenic flavour.

>>5521856
I think that would be Twilight Zone.

>>5522656
>the only way to read him is to read all his major works chronologically
That's a great way to end up not liking him very much. He hits the same themes and tone so frequently that it's easy to get bored by him if you read too much of his work.

>>5522720
I liked Ubik the first time I read it, then I reread it once on my own and later again for a college class and liked it less each time. It has some real structural problems, and I'd say it's not nearly as good as High Castle.

>>5522857
Oooohh, as in it wasn't the amphetamines that fucked him up. I thought you guys meant after kicking his habit he realized he didn't get high once and I was seriously doubting the validity of that

>>5522871
Well, I think it's possible his state of mind wasn't helped any by the presence of large amounts of drugs in his system, but they didn't directly affect him mentally.

>>5522869
Very much this. Stay away from the oldest stuff unless you've already read all you cared to, because it's almost all early, less crazy drafts of the ideas used in his best. You can pretty much predict where it's going.

>>5522892
Say that to Galactic Pot-Healer.

what gets me is what would he have been capable of if he was financially stable and not having to churn out almost a novel every six months? imagine if he had worked on a book for a few years and had a good editor. the world would not be able to handle something that incredible

>>5522705

he has a cool voice. very erudite and intellectual

i recently read the man in the high castle, my favorite part was when the Japanese guy has a Buddhist freak out because of the jewelry made by frink.

>>5524240
What have you read by him that indicates that he's the type of author capable of crafting his work into something greater given enough time? I could see a good editor resulting in marginally better prose, but he had an editor for Man in the High Castle and Scanner Darkly and the prose in those was still a mixed bag.

>>5524263

Well the books that he spent a bit more time thinking over and working on tend to be a little better in my opinion, like "Valis." According to the LOA edition he wrote Valis the novel in two weeks but he was working on the Valis material and ideas for almost two years, so writing Valis was more like transcribing things he had already worked out. Its just my personal opinion but I tend to think that authors in general do better work when they take their time and work their way through their themes and ideas. I love PKD, I'm not dissing on him, I just fantasize about what he might have written if he had no money problems, which motivated his manic, meth fueled writing binges. It is incredible that he was able to write as much as he did and it is incredible that his works are as good as they are given that, but I wonder....

>>5524297
If he'd taken the time to edit, he wouldn't have been PKD.

>>5522689

I thought that the conclusion to flow my tears was far too quick compared to the immense build up. But other than that, yeah it was a good one.

>>5525430
>Say, Phil, are you sure you don't want me to look over this?
>Where we're going, we won't need editing.
>Allrighty!

>>5524252
same, that whole passage stood out to me

>>5522630
I'm not sure if it was LSD.
Comic dump coming through
(1/7)

>>5527120
(2/7)

>>5527129
3/7

>>5527135
4/7

>>5527138
5/7

>>5527144
6/7

>>5527149
7/8

>>5527155
8/8

bump.
PKD threads are always welcome