Inkwell: Authors and Artists
Topic 546: Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #101 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sat 8 Jun 24 09:24
permalink #101 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sat 8 Jun 24 09:24
Incidentally, I don't think PKD was indifferent to his readership. Certainly he wanted a large audience, as any writer does. The hack takes satisfaction from the "Amount Due" line, and the idealist takes satisfaction from the "Number of Copies Sold" line.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #102 of 241: Drew Trott (druid) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:28
permalink #102 of 241: Drew Trott (druid) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:28
Thanks for that RS piece, Jon. It has persuaded me to go back and re-read every PKD title I have. In publication order, I guess.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #103 of 241: @allartburns@mastodon.social @liberalgunsmith@defcon.social (jet) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:29
permalink #103 of 241: @allartburns@mastodon.social @liberalgunsmith@defcon.social (jet) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:29
Thanks for that RS link, off to do some reading. I don't think it was until this topic that I realized how little I knew about Phil Dick's life.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #104 of 241: Alex Davie (icenine) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:34
permalink #104 of 241: Alex Davie (icenine) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:34
It occurs to me that PKD wrote what he wrote for himself, primarily..he had to get it out on paper for his own reasons and we, as readers, were the beneficiaries of his work..I think it is particularly telling that he had to write it out in almost in one sitting so he would not lose the continuity of the story, playing out in his head..kinda sorta like Kerouac did with On The Road, almost like automatic writing
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #105 of 241: Andrew Alden (alden) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:42
permalink #105 of 241: Andrew Alden (alden) Sat 8 Jun 24 10:42
The Rolling Stone piece led me to PKD's work, and I got pretty far into it.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #106 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sat 8 Jun 24 17:29
permalink #106 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sat 8 Jun 24 17:29
Here's a YouTube video called "Philip K. Dick: Philosophic Pulp Poet" that gives a high-level overview of his life, thought with a distinctly snarky tone. It glosses over some things and delves too deeply, IMHO, into others. One thing it omits, while going into some depth about Phil's life in 1971, and mentioning that Phil returned to California in 1972, it doesn't mention where he went and why and elides directly into his marriage to Tessa. https://tinyurl.com/59ced9d9
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #107 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sat 8 Jun 24 17:37
permalink #107 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sat 8 Jun 24 17:37
Here's a link to the Metz speech that has been referred to: https://tinyurl.com/3cthejyw His intro is hilarious.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #108 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sat 8 Jun 24 17:42
permalink #108 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sat 8 Jun 24 17:42
Speaking of the Rolling Stone article, I received a letter from Phil, dated October 24, 1975 that reads, in part: "Dear Linda "The Rolling Stone issue is out with the article on me. It is the longest article in the issue and on the cover it says: "THE MOST BRILLIANT SCI-FI MIND ON ANY PLANET: PHILIP K. DICK "Enclosed you will find a dollar to buy it with. I think you'll like it, especially the pictures. Thanks, by the way, for the big packet of stuff; I enjoyed it. [...]"
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #109 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sat 8 Jun 24 23:19
permalink #109 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sat 8 Jun 24 23:19
Linda, that video is okay, though necessarily very broad-brush, and the pictures are interesting. But its got some inaccuracies. Phil and Ray Nelson werent childhood friends -- Phil was born in Chicago in 1928, but his family moved to the Bay Area in 1929, moved to Washington D.C., and then came back to the Bay Area in 38. Nelson grew up in New York and Michigan, went to college in Chicago, and then spent some years in Paris. He probably arrived in the Bay Area, and met Phil, in around 1960. And while Solar Lottery was Phils first published novel, he had previously written two mainstream novels, Gather Yourselves Together and Voices From the Street. Both were rejected by publishers (though theyve been published posthumously), and he in-effect fell back on his youthful fondness for science fiction for nearly all his subsequent writing (to our benefit -- I dont think hed have been nearly as memorable and important as a mainstream writer). And it's flat-out crazy to suggest that Phil had a quantity of cocaine ("powder," as the narrator coyly puts it a number of times) that he was trying to sell, and fled to Canada to avoid cheated cocaine suppliers! Ray Nelson gave a number of interviews about his acquaintance with Phil, and in none of them that I've seen did he ever mention bags of white "powder" in Phil's safe; and we dont hear him claim it in this video. Phil himself spent several years theorizing about why his house was hit so dramatically in 1971, and he came up with a hundred theories. I just can't believe that through all those speculations he was secretly thinking, "Well of course it was actually because of that stolen cocaine." Phil had flaws, certainly, but his story doesnt need imaginary ones.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #110 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sat 8 Jun 24 23:26
permalink #110 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sat 8 Jun 24 23:26
For some reason Phil is a magnet for colorful but imaginary stories! A few years ago a fellow writer assured Serena and I that Phil had killed himself. We corrected him, but he insisted that we were wrong and his story was the truth, and he only backed off when we told him that we had been at Phil's condo when the paramedics were assessing him and wheeling him out on a gurney.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #111 of 241: Alex Davie (icenine) Sun 9 Jun 24 04:04
permalink #111 of 241: Alex Davie (icenine) Sun 9 Jun 24 04:04
Based on PKDs speech at Metz, Tim, (which I just watched in its entirety) that cat could have experienced either Track A or Track B but definitely not Track C.. In re: the letter to you from PKD about you playing games with Tims head..since I could not place it here, I will reproduce the text of the letter instead Dear LRL: Look, baby, if you dont stop playing games with Tims head like you did with mine youre going to have to answer to me, and you know what that means. Watch it. Hes a nice guy. He deserves better. Phil Postmarked 27 Nov 1972 Well Well Well that is the letter from Phil to Linda in its entirety so it brings many questions to the fore, i.e.: what specifically were you doing or what did PKD perceive you were doing to Tims head? And Tim: what was your perception of what Linda was doing, at the time, that PKD took so seriously so he felt compelled to write to Linda a cease and desist letter? Just curious to hear from both of you as to what transpired between the three of you..we already know from his letter how PKD felt but any amplification from you both about this incident would be interesting to hear..
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #112 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sun 9 Jun 24 04:43
permalink #112 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sun 9 Jun 24 04:43
I have no idea what Phil was referring to. Do you, Tim? That letter is part of the vitriol period, in which we discover how nasty he could be.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #113 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sun 9 Jun 24 13:40
permalink #113 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sun 9 Jun 24 13:40
I dunno, Linda -- you and I were going out by that time. I don't recall any "playing with my head"! I suspect this was Phil projecting (at least for the amount of time it took him to write the letter) his tumultuous style of dating onto us. Alex, it would be a mistake -- as with the Application for Immortality letter -- to assume that a great deal of thought was put into some of these communications! This was largely -- not entirely, but largely -- a group of friends bickering around over momentary concerns.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #114 of 241: Paulina Borsook (loris) Sun 9 Jun 24 15:34
permalink #114 of 241: Paulina Borsook (loris) Sun 9 Jun 24 15:34
before the time of your interaction with pkd --- but is there a sense of the reception of 'man in the high castle' when it came out? i recall reading it maybe a year or so after its publication --- and then being startled that 'ubik' was written by the same guy.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #115 of 241: Virtual Sea Monkey (karish) Sun 9 Jun 24 17:22
permalink #115 of 241: Virtual Sea Monkey (karish) Sun 9 Jun 24 17:22
The sense among the fans was very positive; they awarded it a Hugo in 1963. As I've been reminded by the articles and videos we've shared here, PKD hoped that this would provide him a step toward acceptance as a writer of mainstream literature, but that didn't work out. There was an arc from The Penultimate Truth to The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch to Martian Time-Slip in which the familiar-to-us branch of the divided reality was people sheltering in bunkers from a hostile post-apocalyptic world. In The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch the branches of reality were re-entrant and unresolvable. In ubik and to a lesser extend in The Divine Invasion the branches overlaid one another and merged. Which is a long way of saying that while The Man In The High Castle is unique among his books, there were some navigable steps between it and ubik.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #116 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sun 9 Jun 24 18:00
permalink #116 of 241: Linda Castellani (castle) Sun 9 Jun 24 18:00
Karish slipped with a better answer to <loris>. >>is there a sense of the reception of 'man in the high castle' when it came out? I don't know, Paulina, but since it won the Hugo, I'd guess it was pretty well-received. >>it would be a mistake -- as with the Application for Immortality letter -- to assume that a great deal of thought was put into some of these communications I think that the introduction to the Metz speech does an excellent job of showing the humor, tone and wit evident in the letters from the funnybone, like the "Application for Immortality," "The Fan Letter," and "Elijah and Ovaltine," and how much weight to assign the content. We've covered a couple of the letters from the heart, like "Starry, Starry Night" and "Dear Kathy/Linda" and the "Stop Playing Games With Tim's Head" letter from the spleen, let's get into the context for the vitriol. One day, Phil's wife Tessa came over to our apartment, in distress and covered with bruises. She told us that Phil had turned up the stereo and the air conditioning so no one could hear anything, and then he beat her up. She was looking for advice. Mine was, "get out of there, like I did." I had been keeping my distance from Phil after the night that he went into a jealous rage while I was driving, grabbed the steering wheel and drove into the oncoming traffic, and when I finally regained control and pulled over, I ordered him out of my car. He then grabbed me by the windpipe and punched me in the face. That was it for you, Phil Dick. And I left him there. Shortly after, he found another dark-haired girl to glom onto, Tess, and eventually married her. It was only then, with his attention on her, that I felt remotely safe and returned to hanging out with the gang. So I advised Tessa to do the same. Something happened to that message in the short walk from my apartment back to hers and Phil's. I don't know if it happened inside her head or inside Phil's but it changed and I received the following letter from Phil, "Advising Tess to Leave:" October 31, 1972 Dear Linda, Advising Tess to leave before the trip to San Francisco is so irresponsible that I begin to think back to all the people who have told me they see a sadistic streak in you. Any chance of our being able to stay in Fullerton depended on that trip, as you knew. All your admonitions to go up to Marin County and fight it out in court were just so much hot air in view of what you advised Tess. You were tinkering with our lives and I don't appreciate it, Linda. You showed the sort of infantile irresponsibility that borders on the malicious; if Tess hadn't come back I probably would have given up and not tried to go to San Francisco. When I think back to what I said to you earlier that morning at the restaurant -- the affection I expressed for you, my loyalty to you, my determination to stay in Fullerton. I told you my main reason for wanting to stay -- which motivated me to make the trip to San Francisco was you and our friendship. Just a few hours later you advised Tess to leave me. Neither you nor Alice showed any concern or interest in my life, and I had just dedicated myself to maintaining our friendship at the expense of Tess' trip to Canada. This is self-defeating for you, Linda; had Tess followed your advice I would be probably have gone on the (sic) Canada and be there now. "Stay here in Fullerton," you implored me, and when I did my best you undercut me in the coldest, most dispassionate manner possible. [...] "In a childish way you have tinkered us out of your lives, but we would have gone anyhow; our use-factor is limited: it can be strained only so far and then we get tired of hearing you complain to us of troubles that the rest of us grew out of in our grammar school days." I'm fascinated by the implication that I somehow corralled Tess and tried to convince her to leave Phil, and ignores the fact that she reached out to me for advice. That's why I wondered what happened to the message on the way back to the apartment. Did she maliciously turn it around to make me look evil, or is that how Phil heard it? Either way, I'm now the enemy.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #117 of 241: Paulina Borsook (loris) Sun 9 Jun 24 19:19
permalink #117 of 241: Paulina Borsook (loris) Sun 9 Jun 24 19:19
- pkd seems to be one of those people for whom the locus of control is --- elsewhere in other people. he's never at fault/at cause/responsible. he can charm/he can harm/has no sense of his impact on others. - after reading 'man/castle' i never felt much need to read more alt history --- pkd's felt like 1st and best. i exempt something like tim's wonderful 'declare', which i put more in the category of 'secret history', a genre ben aaronovitch has done some good stuff with.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #118 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sun 9 Jun 24 20:39
permalink #118 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sun 9 Jun 24 20:39
Linda, your message to Tess was probably warped by both heads: in transmission and reception. You could hardly *not* have told Tess what you told her, and between them they could hardly *not* have recast the situation and your message into something entirely else. Reality was always subject to revision. I think you were supposed to delete from reality, and from your memory, his horrifying behavior in your car. From subsequent communications, it seems that he did.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #119 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sun 9 Jun 24 20:40
permalink #119 of 241: Tim Powers (tpowers) Sun 9 Jun 24 20:40
Karish, it's my impression too that PKD thought "Man in the High Castle" would be a step toward acceptance as a mainstream writer, or at least a more widely known writer. His next published book was "Martian Time-Slip" (my own favorite of his books, by a hair) and it was an ambitious effort -- but it was published as a paperback original, a step down from the hardcover publication of "Man in the High Castle." Paulina, I agree that "Man in the High Castle" is the best alternate history novel -- and there have been some very good ones, like Keith Roberts' "Pavane," Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee" and Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration." (And yes, I think of "Declare" as "secret history"!)
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #120 of 241: Virtual Sea Monkey (karish) Sun 9 Jun 24 22:13
permalink #120 of 241: Virtual Sea Monkey (karish) Sun 9 Jun 24 22:13
"Flow My Tears" is special for me because it's so humane.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #121 of 241: Wagner James Au (wjamesau) Sun 9 Jun 24 23:31
permalink #121 of 241: Wagner James Au (wjamesau) Sun 9 Jun 24 23:31
Yeah I think about that lonely meeting at the gas station all the time; incredibly moving and oddly prophetic about US race relations IMO.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #122 of 241: Inkwell Co-host (jonl) Mon 10 Jun 24 05:22
permalink #122 of 241: Inkwell Co-host (jonl) Mon 10 Jun 24 05:22
This is interesting, Linda: Tessa Dick claims that you were not "the dark-haired girl," and in a comment on this post, she also denies that the beating occurred: <https://ubikcan.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/tessa-dick-objects-to-linda-levys-cla im-to-be-dark-haired-girl/>
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #123 of 241: Tiffany Lee Brown (magdalen) Mon 10 Jun 24 08:29
permalink #123 of 241: Tiffany Lee Brown (magdalen) Mon 10 Jun 24 08:29
various people on the Interwebs have been indignant that they were not the only Dark-Haired Girl, is my impression. Linda's description of PKD's behavior toward her, eventually culminating in violence, rings true to me. that his next Dark-Haired Girl, whom he married, would come to Linda after he committed violence against her also rings true. Tess would know that 1) Linda understood, having been with this engaging psycho of a person, and 2) Linda would believe, because this or something like it would likely have happened to her. were either Linda or Tess to completely abandon the truth of their experience? change the story? not allow the truth of Being a Victim to stick on them, either in their own minds or in the minds of their friends, eventual Internet fanboys, etc.? this would also ring true to me. yes, i speak from personal experience with a similar but less famous guy, in a later era that was supposed to be more enlightened in terms of gender relations. i've also seen this in many other women's experiences, and read about it among women whom i don't know personally. also: PKD's really starting to sound like a Borderline Personality Disorder person to me. that stunning way they flip the story around to be *your* fault (sometimes in ways that are clearly weird and false,but other times in ways that are slinky and believable, so good luck standing up for yourself in a social group or court of law when they turn on you). the way they make others around them feel like *they* must be the crazy ones. by being in a friendship, family relationship, or heaven forfend romantic relationship with someone like this, people often end up in these wild distortions of reality, perpetuated by the person with BPD. it's like an extended, exhausting, and sometimes unintentional gaslighting. to be clear, i have never dated someone with BPD. i have seen two close friends and one writer i was mentoring go through it. i have had to protect myself. as a person with Bipolar I disorder, i have sympathy for all of us who struggle with mental illness. but that black-and-white, manipulative, "i love you, you are the goddess; no, now i hate you, you're a terrible person and i know exactly how to tell you that pushing your most vulnerable buttons" behavior is really common in Borderline Personality Disorder. especially if you add alcoholic beverages.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #124 of 241: William F. Stockton (yesway) Mon 10 Jun 24 09:35
permalink #124 of 241: William F. Stockton (yesway) Mon 10 Jun 24 09:35
I have a relative with BPD, and it is indeed quite crazy making.
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Philip K. Dick, The Last Ten Years: A Conversation Between a Dark-Haired Girl and Tim Powers
permalink #125 of 241: Drew Trott (druid) Mon 10 Jun 24 10:22
permalink #125 of 241: Drew Trott (druid) Mon 10 Jun 24 10:22
I don't know half of the relevant details, but from what's been said here I would surmise that "the dark-haired girl" is PKD's anima archetype and that he had major issues with his own feminine side.
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