Mmmmmmmmm that’s the good shit.
I was going to write my thesis on the unique symbolism present in the writing of Philip K. Dick. In his best works he takes symbols that have standard meaning - bowls, cups, animals, deserts, giant faces staring from the sky - and subtly twists them, which gives his writing an aura of unreality and a feeling of confusion that makes a real impact on the reader.
Not only is he writing about his characters having trouble identifying or understanding reality, he was making it difficult for his readers to do the same. Was he having fun running madcap through his stories and fictionalizing himself or was he writing himself as he believed himself to be when he introduced us to Horselover Fat (a self-insert character)?
The visions in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are modeled on a vision Dick had that compelled him to write the book.
I have a more difficult time reading Dick than I do other authors. I can throw down twenty Steven King tomes in a row, work through the entire published works of Gibson in a month, spend uncomfortable weeks with Octavia Butler’s nightmares. But my limit for reading Dick is two. I can get two books deep before I start to feel queasy when looking at the sunlight. Read enough Dick and you start feeling like someone has moved everything in your house one inch to the east. Something isn’t right but you can’t find out what and you can’t see what but you know it’s off and tell yourself to ignore that feeling because you’re just being crazy and paranoid. And yet you’re still sure something is wrong.
His use of language and symbolism to accomplish this is stunningly brilliant, and something I don’t think I’ve ever seen get the recognition that it deserves.
But it’s more than that and it’s worse than that.
Dick knew people. He knew their meanness and their smallness and their quiet little internal fears that could blow up into yawning maws devouring everything that opposed them. And he wrote about it.
We’ve been watching the viral growth of these kinds of petty fears and we’re stuck on shifting sand, trying to figure out if there’s a safe place to step next. We keep making jokes about “the bad timeline” and “what is this year” and we’re getting confused. Our heads are filled with cotton, we don’t know what to do next that won’t set off a worse explosion somewhere down the line.
I walked past a Chipotle the other day. There was a window cling on the front door that said “No Fake News! Queso at Chipotle!” and I had to sit down for a second.
A massive corporation that recently started a food borne illness outbreak because its minimum wage employees can’t afford to take a sick day is using a slogan that the president of the united states says when attempting to undermine the free press to sell melty cheese to millennials. This is so banal that you don’t want to do the “this isn’t normal” thing about a tiny window cling at a burrito restaurant but holy shit.
Is this even real? What? What?! Is the shitty president’s anti-news slogan REALLY something that got past a review board and made people want to buy bland food? How did we get here? What is this?
Did a guy whose primary fanbase is children get in a minuscule amount of trouble for profiting off a suicide victim last week? Did that guy’s brother try to take some of the heat off him by posting a clickbait video about losing his virginity for children to watch?
Did the president actually talk about nukes as dicks and claim his was better? DID HAWAII JUST GET A NUCLEAR ATTACK WARNING? Yeah, but that’s okay, it was fake (I mean it was real but it was a mistake). But the president’s dicknuke thing, yeah, that happened.
The website that harvests everyone’s data also promotes misinformation. The website where people are beset by verified neonazis is at least 10% robots. The website where everyone buys their groceries and sex toys and furniture and clothing is owned by a guy spending large parts of his fortune (made by underpaid employees and barely skirting antitrust laws) on immortality research.
A New Hampshire State Rep was responsible for r/redpill, a forum full of advice on avoiding rape charges and suggestions for gaslighting your girlfriend.
People are voluntarily purchasing always-on devices for their homes and police are trying to make sure they always have the right to subpoena those recordings.
Every computer made in the last ten years is potentially at risk of attack because it seems like we just may not really understand computers. (I 100% wholeheartedly, as a person who works with computers, believe we don’t understand computers.)
Anyway, for the love of god, please hold onto the rocks underneath the shifting sand. Value history, value science, value truth and the seeking of truth. Our world has shifted one inch in the wrong direction. Everything is the same as it ever was, just in a wronger way, and we’ve got to hold on to the fact that things don’t HAVE to be this way, that we’re not being paranoid, that something is deeply wrong and it’s time to look for a way to set it right.
Anyway long story short I love PKD and this article is spot on, thanks for sharing.
titsay
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
