Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
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.
  

    
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.
  

    
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.
  

    
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”
  

    
The Rolling Stone piece led me to PKD's work, and I got pretty far into it.
  

    
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
  

    
Here's a link to the Metz speech that has been referred to:

https://tinyurl.com/3cthejyw

His intro is hilarious.
  

    
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.

[...]"
  

    

Linda, that video is okay, though necessarily very broad-brush, and
the pictures are interesting. But it’s got some inaccuracies. 

Phil and Ray Nelson weren’t 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 Phil’s first published novel,  he had
previously written two mainstream novels, “Gather Yourselves
Together” and “Voices From the Street.” Both were rejected by
publishers (though they’ve 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 don’t think
he’d 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 don’t
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 doesn’t need imaginary
ones.
  

    
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.
  

    
Based on PKD’s 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 Tim’s
head..since I could not place it here, I will reproduce the text of
the letter instead

Dear LRL:
        Look, baby, if you don’t stop playing games with Tim’s head 
like you did with mine you’re going to have  to answer to me, and
you
know what that means.
         Watch it.   He’s 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 Tim’s
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..
  

    
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.
  

    
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.  
  

    
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.
  

    
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.
  

    
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.
  

    
- 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.
  

    
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.
  

    
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"!)
  

    
"Flow My Tears" is special for me because it's so humane.
  

    
Yeah I think about that lonely meeting at the gas station all the
time; incredibly moving and oddly prophetic about US race relations
IMO.
  

    
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/>
  

    

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.
  

    
I have a relative with BPD, and it is indeed quite crazy making. 
  

    
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.