/lit/ - Literature

My favorite book of his is A Scanner Darkly; it is the most honest and poignant depiction of drug use in all of literature. He does not morally condemn the drug user , he lets the state control apparatus be the villain which, if you've ever been a drug addict, you know is true to life. Now that I think of it I have to read it again in light of what layers of meaning I might have missed. The title references the Bible so maybe there was some gnostic meaning behind it as well.

>>9627471
It is a well-known fact that PKD's editor chose the titles for him

>>9627445
>Dick

IIRC he wrote a neat essay in which he says that his two main themes are (what is reality?) and (what is an authentic person?).

>>9627445
I would describe it pre and post 3-74.
Pre: Nice, I have not much to compare him to except Poe and Lovecraft really so Dick was Superb.
Favs: Ubik, Do Androids dream of electric sheep and Now Wait for Last Year.
Post: tfw You know what it's all about but words escape you but you are a great writer with a druggie-past, lost you wife/kid (left) and oh my god my brain is firing neuron beyond comprehension. Still gonna write it down though, masked as novels.
Favs: All that stuff.

>>9627471
He does refers to Scanner in The Exegesis of Philip K Dick in such a manner.

>>9627817
This also plays a role in his puzzling, everything went right and because it went i can see clearly now.

>>9627839
t. Horselover Fat

bump

>>9629350
thanks for bumping my thread senpai

He gets a lot of flack for his dialogue I notice. But I actually like it, like how a lot of his characters basically have no social grace at all adds to the crude humor that he displays in his work. It feels to me like he's very effortlessly funny when he wants to be and that some people might be missing the joke.

>>9627445
It's hard to put one of your favorites into words without feeling like you;'re doing it a disservice, especially in this age of hyperbole. More than anything, especially post 3/74, Phillip K Dick believed in the humanity of others. Call it cliche, but he spun it in ways that I doubt we'll see again from a writer anytime soon. Since it was mentioned, take the end of A Scanner Darkly for example. Spoilers, but the book is decades old. It's very easy to read the coldness of the situation, of the feds as the bad guys, sacrificing a man for the utilitarian 'greater good'. The entire book they've been the bad guys, even as our MC plays a double agent. Yet we're given a somber portrait of two people very unsure of what they've just done. You can argue this is not reflective of reality [a many books of actual agents you'll likely hear some spin of 'just following orders'] but that isn't particularly the point. The point is for PKD he saw humanity in everyone, even as of yet unachieved computers. There are definetly villains, but the villains are rarely souless from what I've read [I'd say I've read roughly half his library, not including short stories].

>>9630165
Or take themselves too serious {or not, depends on how you look at it}.
>>9630211
Greatly put!
This is exactly why I liked Now Wait for Last Year" though it was pre.
Again nicely put. {for me at least}