Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick THE TRUMAN SHOW meets THE MATRIX Synopsis It’s 1959. Ragle Gum lives with his sister and her family. He’s having an affair with the woman next door. He’s the champion of the newspaper contest, “Where Will the Little Green Man be Next?” Oh yeah, and he’s going sane. It starts with what he thinks are hallucinations—a disappearing soft drink stand, leaving nothing in its place but a piece of paper labeled SOFT DRINK STAND. But then he hears pilots talking about him over the radio and he finds a phonebook from a place that doesn’t seem to exist. And now his brother-in-law starts to notice the signs as well. They decide to skip town, but the town doesn’t want them to leave. There’s always something in the way—a cop, a flat tire, a line at the bus depot that never ends. When they finally do get out, they learn that it’s not 1959. It’s 1998. And all they want in the whole world is for Ragle to keep plugging away at the “Where Will the Little Green Man be Next?” puzzles. Review Although I like the movies that are based on his novels (Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck), this is the first Philip K. Dick book that I have read. The first thing that caught my eye was the title. Ooo, a Shakespeare reference, and Hamlet at that. The next thing that appealed to me was the synopsis on the back cover. I know I already compared The Hunger Games to The Truman Show, but that’s because of the reality TV element. Time Out of Joint is like The Truman Show because it’s a town revolving around one guy, an illusion to keep him where he is. But it’s not about celebrity like in The Truman Show. It’s about Ragle cracking codes and seeing patterns in what he thinks is a harmless newspaper puzzle. I actually think that the movie makers admitted that they were inspired by this book. I can’t help but love this idea. I also, many years ago, wrote a story of two people who could not find a way out of their town. It’s a What is reality? thing. Kind of like The Matrix (There is no spoon) if you took out all the flipping…and the second half of the movie. The foundation of this book is very sophistic. Philosophy comes up again and again, and it’s no wonder why. There’s a theory that everything is made of language. The only difference between the table and the chair is caused by us naming them as separate. If we named the left side of the hand one thing and the right side something else, they would be two different things rather than both be hand. So, when Ragle sees that his world exists as he sees it only because there are little pieces of paper that name things, he realizes that words are concrete and things are not. He even goes so far as to point out that In the beginning was the Word. This is what the world is made of. Dick approaches the story very slowly, always with both feet in reality. Halfway through the book, there’s disappearing buses and freaky radio transmissions, but there’s also lasagna and bowling. It’s all so commonplace and not the over-the-top action movies that his stories eventually become. Despite that it moves at a leisurely pace, I am sucked in the whole time. It’s never boring. Part of what keeps my attention is the characters. I really do like them, Ragle in particular. There’s nothing all that unique about any of them, but Dick makes you care about them. The book is written in omniscient third person, so we get into each and every one of their heads, sometimes head-hopping all over the place. It’s mildly jarring, but not too bad. It causes wonderful dramatic irony. He does something I really admire: he tells us misinformation depending on what character we are close to. He relies on us to know that the character is misunderstanding the situation. I find that too gutsy to attempt because I’m afraid that it will confuse the readers. But he pulls it off marvelously. He’s also a great observer. He takes those little moments that happen to everyone but that people don’t consciously think about, and uses them as part of the plot. For example, Vic walks into his bathroom and gropes around for the hanging pull cord for a few seconds before remembering it’s a light switch in the bathroom. It’s always been a light switch. dick tunes into all those little paranoias that we get. It’s actually the opposite of what you read about nowadays. Usually, you read about someone who thinks everyone is following them, but it turns out they’re paranoid and the writer has taken you along for the ride and made you believe the character’s delusions. However, here, strange things really are happening to the protagonist, but he insists through most of the book that it’s his psychosis and that he really is just losing his mind. That’s refreshing. I did read in the afterward that Dick suffered from some kind of psychosis. He said at one point that a supremely sane consciousness entered his mind or somesuch. Do you have to be crazy to write crazy, I wonder? I want to talk a little bit about Dick’s view of the future. It’s weird having the distant future be 1998, but I guess I’ve always liked the 50’s view of what the present would look like, more than what now’s view of what the future will look like. I guess it’s because they haven’t conceived of things like computers yet. The future to Dick involves an altered language and fashion statement, kerosene cars, and plastic chips for money. But mostly, it’s very similar, just as 1998 was similar to 1959. There were still sofas and paperback books and diners. It’s not completely foreign, so he’s realistic enough. It’s funny to see this estimated view of 1998 because it’s like an alternative reality. In 1998, we still had metal and paper coins, but we do have word processors and DVDs, things that Dick never considered putting in his future. Having the futuristic part be so strange to the reader really puts us in the characters’ shoes. I can’t understand the dialogue of the teenagers of 1998. They speak in pigeon English. They operate on different laws and conventions. This is better than if Dick (writing in the 50’s) wrote about people who thought they were in 1900 and then found themselves in 1950. That would have a different feel because the readers would be able to both sympathize with the characters and correctly interpret what they experience. But Dick’s created a new world only understood by him (if that). There’s no dramatic irony here. The ending gets very political. It felt very Dickian despite not having read his work before. Always with the irony, that man. To me, it’s astonishing to see Dick’s insight. I know he’s writing this in the 50’s, but it feels like it was written by someone with knowledge of the last fifty years, someone who can look back at 1959 and see it objectively. It’s almost as if he is an author from a time out of joint.
"La parola non rappresenta la realtà. La parola è la realtà."Tempo fuor di sesto, dall'evidente citazione shakespeariana, è uno dei più classici romanzi dickiani, sebbene appartenente a un decennio considerato ancora "giovanile". Tra i tanti temi dickiani, uno dei più importanti è sicuramente il conflitto tra realtà e illusione, che lo scrittore rielabora in maniera sempre diversa e sempre più fantasiosa.A far da sfondo è, altro topos dickiano, una tranquilla cittadina di provincia sul finire degli anni Cinquanta. Niente, però, è come sembra. Lo sa bene il protagonista, Ragle Gumm: quando comincia a venire giù il castello di carte che è la realtà in cui vive, si ritrova dilaniato da uno straniamento esistenziale e uno più paranoico, che scivola lentamente sul complottismo. Ciò che accade a Ragle tocca molti altri protagonisti dickiani: qualche anno prima era toccato al protagonista di La città sostituita; se però in quel romanzo un Dick più acerbo sposta lo straniamento su un piano puramente fantastico, in Tempo fuor di sesto mette nero su bianco la paranoia della guerra fredda, i timori di uno stato di polizia, i delirii di uno scontro fratricida. Dick compie dunque un ulteriore passo verso la dissoluzione del tessuto della realtà, ma il velo di Maya è ancora intatto. I presupposti filosofici ci sono, ma ne mancano gli sviluppi; il conflitto realtà/visione inizia proprio nel regno della metafisica, con dibattiti squisitamente filosofici tra Ragle e la sua spalla, il cognato Vic, ma oltre non riesce ad andare: l'inganno viene svelato, la realtà viene ricomposta, Ragle riacquista i suoi ricordi e con essi la sua vera vita.Nondimeno, anche questo romanzo ha lasciato il segno, fosse solo per le citazioni esplicite o occulte; per citarne una, si è notato quanto il film The Truman Show sembri ispirarsi a questo romanzo, dall'ambientazione allo straniamento del protagonista, con l'inganno di una realtà finta, costruita ad hoc, mandata avanti da attori, controllori e spettatori.
What do You think about Time Out Of Joint (2002)?
Throughout the 1950's, Philip K. Dick continued to write mainstream novels involving working class characters and realistic situations. His agents were never able to place any of these titles with publishers, at least not until several years after Dick's death when the Dickian industry began in earnest and publishers were scrounging for new material. Dick never looked down on his sf output, but he continued to have faith in these realist novels into the 1960's.Time out of Joint, published in 1959, is a science fiction story that reads, for much of the time, as one of Dick's mainstream efforts. The characters are middle management types, one manages the produce department of a local grocery store, another works for the water department. They live in a new suburb of modest homes and are somewhat civically active. One couple, Vic and Margo, share their home with Margo's brother, Raigle, a war veteran who makes a comfortable living by answering a daily newspaper quiz, Where Will the Little Green Man Land Next. He is always right and has become something of a celebrity.The first odd moment arrives when Vic looks through a newly arrived brochure from the Book-of-the-Month Club and wonders who Harriet Beecher Stowe might be. It's possible he wouldn't know, but later Raigle sees a layout in Life Magazine and marvels that the featured starlet's breast can maintain the tile they have in the photographs. Since this is a Philip K. Dick novel, all three characters analyze the breasts in some detail but then also wonder among themselves just who Marilyn Monroe could be that she would merit so much attention.The next day, while Raigle contemplates adultery with the neighbor's wife, he takes her to the municipal swimming pool, and when he goes to the refreshment stand for cokes, the stand and its manager fade from sight leaving behind only a piece of paper with the printed words SOFT-DRINK STAND. Raigle puts the note into a box he keeps in his pocket where similar messages read DOOR, FACTORY BUILDING, BOWL OF FLOWERS.We are now in Dickian territory, where few people are who they claim to be, and a trip past the city limits is a trip to another world. Dick earns his standing as the connoisseur of American paranoia with this one. Early on Raigle has the insight that he may be the most important person in the world. He's no dummy.
—Charles Dee Mitchell
La sensación que tengo del libro es que es un poco deslabazado. No sé cuanto tardó el autor en escribirlo, pero no me extrañaría que fuese en dos meses. Es mi primer libro de Philip K Dick y veo por qué tiene fama: la trama de este libro se adentra en lo filosófico / metafísico y eso le da cierta profundidad, aunque en este caso en particular es un poco pastiche.El comienzo de la trama es aburrida hasta decir basta, y luego la novela progresa gracias a la maestría del autor para ir soltando datos que aclaran poco a poco qué es lo que ocurre.El final de la trama sobraba, las motivaciones son un poco forzadas, o por lo menos a mí no me gustaron.Al final, dosestrellas porque el tema de fondo (¿es la realidad como la percibimos?) es interesante y porque me ha hecho pasar buenos ratos, aunque supongo que este autor tiene mejores títulos que probar.
—Luis C
I'd have to rank this as one of my favorite Philip K Dick books so far- it felt like a really good episode of the Twilight Zone. Aside from centering on his most obvious theme, the illusion of a universal idea of reality, it was I think the first book to introduce the generic Philip K Dick protagonist, who is quite obviously a mirror of Philip K Dick himself- an arrogant, stubborn, down-on-his-luck proletariat with a persecution complex, someone with a bruised ego who nonetheless in a sort of Ayn Rand way knows he is right, and ultimately the center of the universe. Many of Philip K Dick's books so far have centered on this protagonist accepting his god-given gift of will to power and rising above the masses, who he believes are conspiring against him, and coming to terms and accepting the hype of his paranoid megalomaniac personal view of reality until by some sort of shear force of willpower the personal reality breaks free of supra-reality's restraints and becomes legitimate. There's something childish and immature about it all, but also something really heavy.
—Printable Tire
