Snazzy title. As this NYT blog, Arts Beat, reports, there are plans afoot to release a two volume edition of PKD’s theological ramblings (one is entitled to use the somewhat derogatory “ramblings” when the extant work extends to more than 8000 pages…).
I must say, fascinated as I am to peruse these magical writings, it all seems a bit macabre. And believe me, I know macabre…
Anyway, aside from reservations about parading around a dead man’s thoughts and ramblings never meant to be published in the public sphere, I expect there will be some magisterial moments in all this straight plain crazy.
Interestingly, the outline of this larger exegetic experiment is to be found in PKD’s novel VALIS, telling the tale of Horselover Fat, a sci-fi writer who has a religious experience and goes insane, all at once. VALIS winds in many directions, but can ultimately be described as a Gnostic science fiction novel. And brilliant.
This makes mention of any new PKD material noteworthy.
Johnathan Lethem, one of the exegesis editors (can you edit an exegesis?), says: “It’s absolutely stultifying, it’s brilliant, it’s repetitive, it’s contradictory. It just might contain the secret of the universe.”
Sounds like a page turner…
N.B. Apologies that April has been PKD month; judging from the stats, this in not a “big topic” around here. Maybe it’s time I tagged better…
May 1, 2010 at 10:25 pm |
[...] The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick « The Necromancer [...]
October 23, 2010 at 9:57 am |
[...] Biographies are in this sense constantly being re-written, re-imagined. But the limbo from which the images are drawn is often archival. New biographical tangents are always a possibility when an untapped archive is present. Consider, as a random example, the new re-envisioning of Philip K. Dick we will witness next year with the publication of his exegesis. [...]
November 24, 2010 at 6:35 pm |
Interesting side note: Erik Davis, of Techgnosis fame, mentions in a recent interview on Technoccult that he’s working on an aspect of PKD’s exegesis. Small world.