Jones Beene wrote:
Stephen A. Lawrence writes,
And what's all this Elvis stuff? The singer in the book was Clapton,
was he not? Or am I confused? (A common feeling with PD's work.)
Confused... by a miscarriage of drollery maybe?
Maybe... On first reading of your post I was amused, but then on second
reading I thought maybe the "takeoff" wasn't supposed to be launched all
that far from the original, whence the question.
If you actually know anything more about the background of the events in
Valis I'd be interested in hearing about it. For all I know, the book
was completely fictitious _except_ for the "pink pictures" sequence, but
I somehow got the impression that there was more of Dick's life woven
into it than that.
Perhaps the caveat about "a Tulpa-projected homunculi, condensed out
of the aether by a schizophrenic human mind no longer in bodily
existence." should have been emphasized more. This was not intended to
be an accurate crtical review of PKD, who often must be "channeled" as
much as read ;-)
Like many of us who have been, at one time or another, grounded in
science - humor is not all that "natural" for me, and despite
persistent efforts at improving that deficiency ... so often I end up
having to explain later why it seemed that such-and-such was deemed to
be so witty at the time.
In this case, the attempted-humor realtes to the issue of how an alien
"overseer" i.e. Valis... might have tried to influence earthly affairs
minimally (assuming that they are trying to adhere with the fishbowl
imperative) by introducing, or fostering a "special" real personality
- a messiah if you will; but with an effort more genuine than
something a projected mental hologram. The Church of Moo should have
been a "giveaway" as to how some earthly observers, if it fits into
their agenda, will stretch the significance of events which aren't
really all "that" coincidental (like Elvis demise and the publishing
of a novel) and try to frame that near-coincidence as being deeply
prophetic....
Oh well, I am one of the few who believe that PKD actually intended a
certain kind of cynical humor in situations where others are trying to
grasp something more sinister - from what was indeed a rather sad and
tortured life ...
Absolutely!
But his humor had a serious side in many of his books. Much "good"
humor does, IMO.
As a couple of trivial examples from "Scanner", the woman who chased
Coke trucks (and finally got one, as I recall), and the argument over
how many gears a bicycle with 2 on the front and 5 on the rear has, both
have to be treated as humorous, though they're also serious. And that's
in the context of a book with a deadly serious theme. In his "lighter"
books (nearly all the rest of them!) the humor's a little more frequent
and obvious, I think.
Ah ... just to avoid making this too totally an "inside" conversation,
here's a little background on the above remarks... One of the characters
in Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" detested coca-cola trucks (I no longer
recall why) and whenever she saw one while driving, she would chase it
in her car. Generally she'd only pursue them a short way, but one day
she gets carried away and actually runs into one. No fallout from the
collision; just a strange and rather humorous interlude in an otherwise
serious book. The discussion of how many gears a 10-speed bike has was
between a group of totally spaced-out stoners, who count them up and
decide that 3 of them have gotten lost somewhere, and the folks next
door, who try patiently to explain to them that it's 5x2 not 5+2... To
put it very baldly, in simplest possible terms, the book as a whole was
about hallucinogenic drug abuse and some of the bad consequences it has
for the abusers.
And the "pink light" sequence in Valis (and again in Radio Free
Albemuth) was something that actually happened to the author: he
suddenly saw images appearing on the wall in front of them, as though
they had been projected by someone or something. The images followed
one another, very rapidly, for what seemed to be hours. He found this
puzzling and invested a lot of effort in trying to determine if it had
been real, or a hallucination, and what it all meant.
Jones
