Divine Invasions: A Life Of Philip K. Dick (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
(Acessível em http://adlectorem.wordpress.com/2014/...)Imagino que, na confecção de uma biografia, a questão da verificabilidade das informações sempre pose uma questão fundamental para o autor. Quando apostamos em traçar uma linha de vida a partir de depoimentos, correspondências e confissões, temos que acreditar que o que está sendo dito (ainda mais quando se referem a causos de uum passado distante) são de fato os acontecimentos que ocorreram. E aí temos outro problema fundamental: a memória, sempre composta a partir do presente, geralmente apresenta discrepâncias. Lembranças, e portanto depoimentos, são imperfeitos. Um ponto de vista subjetivo a respeito de acontecimentos passados.Pode-se ver como Lawrence Sutin enfrentou estes dois problemas em sua biografia Divine Invasions: The Life of Philip K. Dick. Não raro vemos testemunhos contraditórios durante a narrativa, geralmente entre o biografado e a outra pessoa que participou das cenas que descreve; seja em depoimentos para outras pessoas, seja em suas anotações e cartas. Sua vida era guiada por crises; sendo assim, sua resposta a cada crise era um testemunho distinto da pessoa com quem ele entrou em conflito. E, como disse sua mãe Dorothy, Philip funcionava melhor em crises. Tanto que pulava de uma para a outra — não funcionaria de forma alguma em um cenário normal de um dia ensolarado.PHILIP K. Dick (1928-82) remains a hidden treasure of American literature because the majority of his works were produced for a genrescience fiction-that almost invariably wards off serious attention. You can’t write about rocket ships and be serious, can you? A great white whale serves as a literary symbol, but surely the same can’t be true of a telepathic Ganymedean slime mold.É com sensibilidade que Sutin abordou estas contradições na vida de Dick: expõe a sua versão em cartas, expõe a versão de uma segunda, ou té mesmo uma terceira pessoa. Aponta, quando é possível, para elementos que tornem uma ou outra versão a mais provável, mas jamais chega a distinguir categoricamente a verdade da construção. Estas contradições são explicadas por sua segunda esposa, Kleo Mini:I shouldn’t say it’s not true. If we’re talking about Philip, essentially it’s true-it just didn’t happen. This is a Philip construct of a situation that existed and it’s a little way to describe that situation without strictly adhering to specifically real life data. But then, that’s what he did.Assim como transformava elementos da sua vida real em material para a sua ficção, alterava os eventos de uma forma que, muitas vezes, nem percebia; lembrava dos elementos não exatamente como eles aconteceram, mas como lembra que o afetaram. Por isso poderia muitas vezes reclamar de uma humilhação passada por uma pessoa que nem se tocava do que estava acontecendo. Mas, para Philip, a mágoa ficou.E quantas mágoas! O escritor, que viveu de 1928 a 1982, guardou muitas durante sua vida. Desde a morte da sua irmã gêmea, Jane, quando tinham apenas duas semanas de idade, foi-se acumulando de fobias, temores e anseios. Alguns que jamais viria a superar, alguns que pareceu superar no desenvolvimento de sua carreira. Por exemplo, ao começar a escrever a ficção científica que lhe tornaria tão reconhecido, não levava esta parte do trabalho a sério; sua FC era apenas um ganha-pão enquanto tentava colocar a sua verdadeira obra no mercado: “literatura séria”, que seria categoricamente recusada pelos editores durante a sua vida e a maioria da qual viria a ser publicada após a sua morte. Livros como Confessions of a Crap Artist (único publicado em vida) e Gather Yourselves Together. E apesar de conseguir de fato fazer vários livros com um foco mais literário do que meramente “científico” (como O homem no Castelo Alto e The Transmigration of Timothy Archer), esta seria uma de suas maiores frustrações. Largaria suas tentativas e se focaria em seus romances de FC ao ganhar o prêmio Hugo por O homem no Castelo Alto, mas o desejo pelo status literário seria uma pontada que provavelmente jamais superaria; esta ânsia de ser reconhecido, de ser levado a sério como escritor — requinte este que era sempre negado aos escritores de ficção científica, vista como uma ficção “nada séria” e infantilizada. Mas isso jamais deixou que perdesse o amor pela FC.I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I’m out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That’s what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream bestselling writers. [...] This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It’s not just “What if-” It’s “My God; what if-” In frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming. (PKD)“Nada séria” é um termo que não pode ser aplicado à ficção científica de Phil. Ao perceber as possibilidades que a escrita de FC abria como um leque de recursos, iniciou-se a época em que começou a explorar seus temas preferidos que se tornariam recorrentes em toda a sua obra posterior: o “o que é o humano?” e o “o que é o real?”. Livros (além d’O homem, citado acima) Ubik, Os três estigmas de Palmer Eldritch, Andróides sonham com ovelhas elétricas? e VALIS são frutos deste extenso estudo que Philip, em sua carreira, fez do tecido da realidade e suas contradições. Em vez de focar nas ciências exatas e na extrapolação tecnológica, como vários de seus antecessores e muitos de seus contemporãneos, sua abordagem distinta fez com que recebesse reconhecimento em vários países estrangeiros, mais do que em sua terra natal. Tornou-se popular na França, por exemplo, onde recebeu até mesmo outra biografia (a qual ainda pretendo ler), pelas mãos de Emmanuel Carrere: I am alive and you are dead, intitulada a partir de uma icônica frase de Ubik. I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. (PKD)São nessas páginas que descobrimos todas os complexos e conturbações da vida de um escritor que, a todo o momento, perguntava-se o que era a realidade objetiva: seus questionamentos em relação à ficcionaldade de seus livros; seus problemas com drogas e com mulheres; e, para o fnal da vida, o medo inevitável de estar mergulhado na insanidade. As crises internas e externas de Dick fazem com que essa biografia seja qualquer coisa antes de entediante. A vida do homem parece ter sido um aglomerado de complexos, que infelizmente prejudicaram a sua relação com o mundo e com as pessoas, mas que permitiram esta abordagem tão exótica à ficção científica.O retrato linear pintado po Lawrence Sutin nesta biografia divide em capítulos os diferentes pontos de sua vida: seus cinco casamentos, a escrita de suas obras mais importantes. Conta uma história que começa desde o seu nascimento, a morte de Jane, os problemas com sua mãe; passando por uma adolescência perturbada por seus complexos, mudanças de cidade, vertigens e agorafobia; até uma adultidão cheia de problemas de relacionamento, sua pobreza crônica, carência, abuso de anfetaminas e períodos conturbados entre a escrita e o enfado. E, por fim, até as suas experiências religiosas que começaram datando de oito antes de sua morte; suas dificuldades em entender o que aconteceu consigo e as suas tentativas de ficcionalizar a própria experiência de maneira a entendê-la, torná-la compreensível (veja VALIS).Uma vida difícil é retratada por Sutin. E, com todos os problemas em relação à factualidade dos depoimentos, ele consegue criar uma imagem de Dick que, se não idêntica ao dito homem, não deve passar longe. Consegue desenvolver uma narrativa (de uma vida que parece, por si mesma, uma história digna de romance) sem pender muito para o exacerbadamente elogioso e tampouco cair em algum tipo de denegrimento da imagem do autor. Um escritor genial, mas uma pessoa de difícil convivência, com carências e excessos, e um temperamento para lá de instável, é o que termina composto.Os livros de Dick continuam a ser lidos, e suas ideias continuam atraindo até agora um público. Afinal, a realidade e seus problemas não são datados. E uma morte precoce removeu do convívio humano uma mente brilhante que poderia ter tido ainda mais a dizer.
Over the past two years or so, I’ve read the biographies of four writers- Kurt Vonnegut, Jerzy Kosinski, David Foster Wallace and Philip K. Dick- and have grouped them together in my mind, probably for no particular reason. Out of the four, or at least the depictions of them I found in the biographies, I liked Vonnegut the least as a person; Kosinski’s life was the most depraved; and life was probably the most difficult for Philip K. Dick (although Wallace was a close second in this category). Dick’s life was also the strangest, with Kosinski finishing a strong second. Dick was extremely well-read and erudite, but also kind of childlike. It took me a while, from the time I first started reading his novels, to realize how smart he was, mostly I think because he didn’t place much importance on his own prose (although as far as science-fiction goes, he still wrote much better line-for-line than, say, Robert Heinlein); he valued substance, not style. He had an incredible theory for plotting novels, involving an archetype he called “Mr. Übermensch”, which he doesn’t seem to have ever exactly followed. He was more depressed than I'd realized, from reading his books. His home was broken into at one point, with files and papers stolen, and he (and others) theorized, among other things, that he himself had done it, and forgotten. When his fourth wife left him and took their children, he opened his house to pretty much anyone who wanted to come in off the street, and soon he was living with someone who kept a loaded rifle under his bed. He could be very charismatic, but had difficulty being around people. His life was in some ways so strange that it reads like science fiction, and he was aware of that. He was physically large, which I hadn't known, and people who knew him say photos don’t do his physical presence justice. The only jobs he ever held, according to Sutin’s biography, were a) a brief job at a store as a young adult, and b) science-fiction writer. Hard to believe, but apparently it’s true.Here’s a friend of his, Tim Powers: “Phil had recently bought the Stones’ album Sticky Fingers…and I still can’t hear Sister Morphine or Moonlight Mile without instantly being back in that living room, me pouched in an old brown-vinyl beanbag chair and Phil on the couch, the bottle on the table between us, Phil frowning as he decided how much of some awful story he dared reveal to me (‘and if I told you the rest of it, Powers, you’d go crazy’).” Another friend said: “There was something about him that made you feel involved. Phil had this softness. But depth. He was like a director. Almost like he’d bring certain people in to see how they’d react. And sit back and watch and create science fiction. I think he lived in a fantasy overall. He seldom left the house. His whole existence was like he could create everything there…of all the people I’ve known, if I had to spend eternity with one, it would be Phil.” I had to laugh a little when I read some reviews of this biography; people seemed shocked to discover that Dick had a dark side, and occasionally did fairly awful things. I’m not sure what else someone who’d read a few of his books could have expected. Furthermore, personally, I think a big part of the strength of Dick’s writing (and this is even more true of Wallace, and I noticed some of the same complaints with regards to DT Max’s Wallace biography) came from his own questioning, self-doubt, depression, and so on. Or from the tension between his personal weaknesses and his desire to live a moral, spiritual life. And it makes sense, I think, because that’s the kind of struggle that most readers, or at least I, can relate to; whereas most of us tend to find it more difficult to relate to morally exemplary, very well-adjusted people. This is why, after finishing Sutin’s biography, I didn’t feel (as some other reviewers did) that the cover had been blown off someone who’d been pretending to be a nice guy the whole time. Rather, I felt grateful that I’d been allowed to read the story of a sad and harrowing life in full, with no bullshit, and more intimate with a writer I like. The biography, by the way, seems to me fairly objective. It’s not hagiography. Sutin doesn’t try to advance this or that psychiatric diagnosis (this is impressive if only because Dick seems to bring out the armchair psychologist in a lot of people). Sutin tends not to pass judgment- not on Dick’s conduct as a person, nor on any of the unsolved mysteries of his life (the home invasion, the visions he had for the last decade of his life); he just presents these mysteries in detail, offers possible explanations, and leaves the rest up to the reader. I’m not sure if I’m really giving five stars to the biography or to his life story, which of course he didn’t live to entertain or to elicit a certain number of stars from me. If you haven’t read any of his novels, my two favorites are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly. I also like VALIS, but seem to be in the minority.
What do You think about Divine Invasions: A Life Of Philip K. Dick (2015)?
1989. There are several ways to go about your discovery of PKD. You can read his best novels; you can read his best stories; you can scrounge around garage sales and on-line for old magazines with his earliest works; you can read essays and interviews by and about him in those old mags, and increasingly in the "mainstream" periodicals as his work caught on and the "mainstream" caught up; you can rent the movies made from his novels and stories then you can read the underlying works and compare them to the Hollyversions; and if you really want to go deep, you can read Exegesis, PKD's eight-year, eight-thousand page hand-written quest to answer his two BIG QUESTIONS: WHY ARE WE HERE? and WHAT IS REAL?Or you can read Lawrence Sutin's excellent biography. Written within seven years of PKD's death, this bio is smart, thorough, and close to the subject. Sutin read it all - over forty novels and two hundred stories, the then unpublished Exegesis, and a lifetime's correspendence - no small feat. He interviewed Phil's surviving family and friends and fellow writers. Through it all, he exhibits honest respect for his subject, hairy warts and all. NOTE: I just found this comment on Amazon from Tessa Dick and add it for perspective:"By Tessa B. DickI have mixed feelings about this book. Sutin gives the impression that he interviewed me extensively, but he actually used quotes from other interviews and never met me, although I did briefly answer three of his questions by letter. Furthermore, I must disagree with most of his conclusions. Since I spent ten years with Phil, and those were the last ten years of his life, I believe that I know more about him than a biographer who never met him and simply read about him."Wherever you start, PKD is a literary journey worth taking.Then there is PKD the man: an only son whose twin sister died at one month and who by his own admission spent the rest of his life looking for her replacement. PKD married five times, fathered a son and two daughters, fought money troubles most of his life, attempted suicide at least once, and abused pharmaceuticals to sustain his energy and alleviate his phobias and anxieties. He loved cats, loved his children, fell in love at the drop of a hat - especially with dark-haired girls half his age - and was often generous with his friends and family. Coming of age in the SciFi boom of the 50's when success accrued to the writer who could crank it out the fastest, PKD learned to write - and type - at break-neck speed, at one stretch composing on average fifty pages a day for weeks at a time. As he aged, the drugs which helpd him sustain that pace took their toll, and he learned as did everyone who enjoyed the synthetic highs of the 60's, that drugs had their dark side. He called Through a Scanner Darkly his anti-drug statement, even writing to the FBI to volunteer as a spokesman for anti-drug PR efforts. As successful as PKD was at SciFi, his first and abiding ambition was to break into "mainstream" literary fiction. His only such breakthrough during his life was Confessions of a Crap Artist, published in 1975 to modest success. My intro to PKD happened to be that book which I found in a dime store on a rotating book rack. I was a lit major and had suckled on serious stuff, ya'know, but I often supplemented my diet and fattened up on richer fare. Crap was rich, and I was blown away by its energy, its humor, and its honesty. Who knew reading could be that much fun? It's like it wasn't even work; the words flew off the page and the pages turned themselves. Who was that guy?I've since read some of his better books, some of his better stories, and plowed through all of Exegesis. None of it has disappointed. Of course, I'm a fan. And at this stage anything with his initials is going to interest me. PKD was a man of ideas rather than a man of action. He wrote himself into physical and emotional hell, or he wrote himself out of physical and emotional hell. You could look at it either way. However you choose, he left us with a body of work that is as unique and powerful as anything from the second half of the twentieth century. After a visionary experience in Feb/March 1974, PKD spent the last eight-and-a-half years of his life writing to try to understand the two BIG QUESTIONS. Exegesis is interesting because of the rest of PKD's fiction. Exegesis is an exploration that doesn't arrive at any conclusions. It asks THE QUESTIONS and discards every answer to further test corollaries and opposites and take unexplored paths. He read deeply and widely, dreamed constantly, thought and argued with himself consistently, and talked for hours to friends who would listen. Who knows, he may have understood THE BIG QUESTIONS a little better at the end, and as only he knows, he may have been ready for death when it came.PKD left us with a body of work that is entertaining, provocative, funny, and capable of skewing your view of reality just enough to perhaps help you perceive it a bit more clearly. If that's not mainstream fiction, PKD, I don't know what is.
—M.L. Rudolph
DIVINE INVASIONS is a readable, revealing biography of the 20th-century sci-fi titan into whose mind we all most wish we could climb. Philip K. Dick’s brilliance is never in doubt, even as author Lawrence Sutin guides us through the labyrinthine emotional upheavals and relationships of his life. And boy, are they fraught, particularly when it comes to women. From his love/hate vacillations with his mother to a slew of girlfriends to all five of his wives, PKD’s life reads at times like a hormone-filled, drug-addled teen drama. Sutin is clearly a superfan, but he presents his subject’s literary prowess and social prescience in counterpoint to a painful lifelong search for emotional wholeness. His approach feels both balanced and intimate, but isn’t afraid of a little humor now and then.Tessa B. Dick, PKD’s fifth wife, has criticized Sutin on Amazon for giving the impression that he interviewed her for this book. But Sutin documents his sources in copious endnotes, also making clear in the text when something she says comes from a letter to him or when it comes from her writings, so careful readers shouldn’t be confused. Sutin drew on a vast number of sources throughout, including (but not limited to) extensive interviews with the people who lived and worked most closely with PKD.Although, as a biography, DIVINE INVASIONS rightfully focuses on life events, Sutin also delves deeply into a number of PKD’s most important works, including VALIS, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, UBIK, and FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID, and also the lengthy EXEGESIS of his final years. For everything else, Sutin provides a comprehensive bibliography of publications and lost works, including synopses and ratings. Despite its wealth of detail, this biography is quick to devour and provides a welcome insight into the man and his prolific output.
—Lisa
Answer the following True or False questions about the life of Philip K. Dick.1) PKD's twin sister, Jane, died in the first months of her life from malnutrition and poor home care.2) Later in life, PDK liked to imagine that his sister was living and a lesbian.3) In high school, PKD's agoraphobia was at times so bad that he could not go to public events such as concerts. Later he was comfortable in only one Chinese restaurant that had very high sides to its booths.4) PKS was on amphetamines from the mid 1950's until around 1972. Some were prescribed, but as the drug scene took off in the 1960's, he also bought speed off the street.5) When he was a young man, his mother told him that if he left home he would become a homosexual.6) PKD's first wife was also the first woman he had sex with. The marriage lasted six months and Jeanette, the wife, said in court that Phil's record playing kept her up at night.7) PKD was married five times, towards the end to women who were barely half his age.8) Between 1953 and 1957, PKD wrote 14 novels. Between 1963 and 1964 he wrote 11.9) PKD wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch while tripping on acid.10) PKD stole pills from his mother and blamed her for not keeping them under lock and key.11) While trying to live in Canada, PKD felt a mental collapse coming on and pretended to be a heroin addict to get into the only treatment program he could find. He did not like the people he met there.12) When PKD's house was broken into, ransacked, and burgled the police were not able to solve the case. They considered PKD to be their most likely suspect.13) When PKD and his wife were investigated by the FBI, his wife fixed dinner for the agents and one agent taught PKD how to drive.14) In February, 1974, PKD had an impacted wisdom tooth removed and sodium pentathol was used. Later that day, a girl from the drugstore who was delivering Darvon wore an icthus, the Christian fish symbol. When it caught the light, and PKD stared at it, he realized for the first time that he was an immortal being. For the remainder of his life he had visions of the divine and conversations with a divine presence he named VALIS,15) PKD's spiritual visions, and many of his other character traits, are common symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy.Only number (9) is false. According to his biographer Lawrence Sutin, all the rest are true.
—Charles Dee Mitchell
