Valis Book

Imagine taking a walk in a bad neighborhood and sitting on a sidewalk bench.

Beside you sits a disheveled homeless person with crazy eyes. Despite your best efforts the two of you strike up a conversation. Slowly, incredulously, you begin to realize that this crazy person is well read. No, this person is educated, well educated and though he goes off on wild tangents and makes seemingly ludicrous claims, his mind is a brilliantly tangled mess, a fecundity of original thought.

And yet all the while the crazy eyes continue to make you uncomfortable.

This is a fitting illustration of reading VALIS by Philip K. Dick. Narrated by the author and yet telling the tale of Horselover Fat (a pseudonym for Dick himself) and yet with allusions that Fat is himself (and a direct reference to David Bowie!) and only written in the third person to make a better story.

VALIS is a theological, philosophical, sociological funhouse ride. Is Dick really a self-medicated schizophrenic? Does he affect this perspective to tell the story? Is the perspective an unguarded glimpse at mental illness; is this a literary affectation for effect?

VALIS may be his best novel or his most unstable, or both, it grips the reader and holds tight and all the while the reader is held like a rubber-necking motorist slowly passing a wreck. But is the wreck real or a cleverly crafted performance art? It all goes towards the brilliance of the book. The cameo appearance by David Bowie was very cool, that conversation can easily be imagined.

Clearly well researched, Dick's eclectic litany of abstract and unorthodox ideas are reminiscent of Kesey or H.P. Lovecraft. VALIS represents the literary culmination of much of his research that readers can find in the The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. If you don't like PKD as a writer, don't bother, but if you like his writing, this one is a must read.