Valis (Vintage)

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Philip K. Dick
Publisher:	Vintage
Release date:	02 July, 1991
List price:	~~$12.00~~
Our price:	$9.60 that is 20% off!

Valis (Vintage)

Average rating: Stars

Dick Dabbles and Dawdles in Religion

This is not a novel. This is a thinly veil attempt by Philip K. Dick to account for a strange happening that occurred in 1974. It is turgid as hell, packed with Horselover Fat's essays about who God really is. One good point is that he never completely takes himself seriously. This is strange stuff and he knows it. I just wish it could have had a bit more cohesive flow. It isn't until the middle when Fat and his amateur philosopher friends decide to get off their rears and go see the film VALIS that the plot picks up. My suggestion to him would have been, if some mystical experience happens to you, don't write a series of essays thinly disguised as novel, just write the essays.
Divine Invasion is much better as Dick seems to have gotten a second wind playing Biblical Games and making great use of parodying characters from the Bible. God even has a funny personality. As many have mentioned, the VALIS trilogy isn't really a trilogy more than a confederacy of novels that have to do with Dick's take on religion. Granted, reading it will help you understand some terms used in Divine Invasion.
If you have a great deal of time and don't mind hearing the words "The Empire never ended" repeated thousands of times between contradictory declaration about who God is, then by all means take up VALIS. By the way, is Eric Lampton supposed to be Eric Clapton?

Valis (Vintage) - Philip K. Dick

We-ird

This is about as close to an autobiography that we'll ever get from the famed author. He died not long after writing this "trilogy". VALIS is a book in which he is two characters, one an alter-ego that is only revealed after some time. Difficult to understand, this book serves as a primer for the real hardcore PKD fans.

I gave it five because its probably his most important work. Not really science fiction in the literal sense. Its set in the modern world of the mid-70s when some (though how much we are not told) of these events actually transpired. How fictionalized is it? I don't know. How real did Philip K Dick think whatever happened to him was? I don't know.

What I do know is that I read this book in one day, one sitting, and I couldn't do anything else until I got to the end. That is really rare.

Philip K. Dick - Valis (Vintage)

Magnificent!

The opening chapters of Valis represent some of Dick's finest writing, hands-down. If you read only that much of the book, it will still be worth the full price.

This obliquely autobiographical journey synthesizes the marvelous introspections of a man better able to examine himself that most of us are, and what winds up on the page is a joy to witness. Dick's choice of dual/single narrator is effective and clever, predating many other authors' Postmodernist experiments along these lines, and Dick manages to wrap it around a poignant and heartfelt quest for meaning and redemption.

For my money, the book is Dick's best, certainly the finest of the so-called Valis Trilogy.

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