I just read Phillip K.Dick's The Man In The High Castle....

[jus_the_facts]

...anyone else read this book and wot are your thoughts?!

I guess I just didn't *get* it....and really need somebody else to explain it to me. :shrug:

[EstimatedProphet]

1. OK, what don't you get?

Granted, it's been several years, but I still remember it.

[jus_the_facts]

4. Well...Mr. Tagomi's epiphany....or the ending at the author's house...

....it just seemed like a lot o'build up and then just petered out w/o much explination of any of it really...I guess I'll have to read it again...because it didn't make much sense to me...quite odd in fact.

[EstimatedProphet]

7. I do remember the ending

What I took from it at the time is that they realized that the reality they lived in was an illusion. It's a common theme in Dick's stories. The Allies actually did win the war, but the world was under the delusion that the Axis powers won it.
Now, why the illusion was occurring I don't know.
OK, maybe I don't remember as much as I thought. sorry...

[jus_the_facts]

9. S'okay....all I really got from the ending is.....

....the fact that the author refused to live his life in fear of the people out to get him..for expressing himself in his book about the alternate reality of the US winning the war...that's about all though and I expected to understand more but didn't....sigh..thanks for your response anyway! :hi:

[EstimatedProphet]

11. I'd recommend A Maze of Death or Ubik

if you want to see more of what dick wrote. It may help you "get" him more.

[jus_the_facts]

15. Thanks for the recommendation....

:hi:

[Ptah]

18. I'll second the recommendation for Ubik

it brings to mind the song lyrics:

Timothy Leary's dead.

No, no, he's outside looking in.

[jus_the_facts]

24. Thanks!

:hi:

[El Fuego]

33. Definitely Ubik!

I think Three Stigmata and Ubik are the most brilliant PKD novels.

[jus_the_facts]

34. Yeah I definitely wanna read The Three Stigmata of Eldrich Palmer....

...heard it's really good...thanks! :hi:

[Taverner]

16. There is also a further message...

It's also a veiled message that the US and USSR as the new superpowers on the block, acts as if they are the Axis power. Remember, at this time Vietnam was starting and we had just gone through McCarthyism. The Soviet Union was seen as a threat as well.

It kind of builds on his thesis in other books that "The Empire Never Ended" - that we live in an oppressive state, whether ruled by the Romans, the Nazis or in the US....

[jus_the_facts]

21. Hmmm....will have to get that one too then....

....the plot just seemed sorta discombobulated to me in this one. Thanks for your input...appreciate it! :hi:

[tigereye]

2. husband just finished re-reading it

he says what didn't you get?

[jus_the_facts]

5. I guess not much of it at all....

...it was really bizarre to me.

[tigereye]

8. Dick was pretty intense

apparently knowing some background about him might make his writing make more sense. H is a big fan of his and has been for years.

[jus_the_facts]

10. Yeah I knew he was a trip and have read other stories w/o...

...any problem..this one was just way bizarre and seemed sorta unfinished. :hi:

[tigereye]

13. I haven't read it - although the plot sounded very familiar -

but my h described the plot and it sounded like a wonderful spectulative fiction about what would have happened if we had lost WWII. Dick has a very complex style that uses a lot of internal monologue and he can be rough going if that's not what you are used to. :hi:

[jus_the_facts]

17. As far as the alternate reality of post WWII it was definitely a trip...

....the plot though was really OUT THERE and sorta intangible...that's the only way I can describe it! :D

Thank you for your response! :hi:

[Taverner]

20. did you know that he consulted the "I Ching" while writing that

And any time he would choose a plot direction, he rolled the Joss sticks and consulted it? Just like the characters in the book...

[jus_the_facts]

22. Ahha...no wonder LOL.....

.....I did not know that...maybe that's why it was difficult fo me as I don't know much at all about any o'that! :D

[Taverner]

25. Here's what Phillip K Dick had to say on the matter...

"In THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE there is a novelist, Hawthorne Abendsen, who has written an alternate-world novel in which Germany, Italy and Japan lost World War 2. At the conclusion of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, a woman appears at Abendsen's door to tell him what he does not know: that his novel is true; the Axis did indeed lose the war. The irony of this ending -- Abendsen finding out that what he had supposed to be pure fiction spun out of his imagination was in fact true -- the irony is this: that my own supposed imaginative work THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is not fiction -- or rather is fiction only now, thank God. But there was an alternate world, a previous present, in which that particular time track actualized -- actualized and then was abolished due to intervention at some prior date. I am sure, as you hear me say this, you do not really believe me, or even believe that I believe it myself. but nevertheless it is true. I retain memories of that other world..."

..."The world of FLOW MY TEARS is an actual (or rather once actual) alternate world, and I remember it in detail. I do not know who else does. Maybe no one else does. Perhaps all of you were always -- have always been --here. But I was not. In March 1974 I began to remember consciously, rather than merely subconsciously, that black iron prison poice state world. Upon consciously remembering it I did not need to write about it because I have always been writing about it. Nonetheless my amazement was great, to remember consciously suddenly that it was once so-- as I'm sure you can imagine. Put yourself in my place. In novel after novel, story after story, over a twenty-five year period, I wrote repeatedly about a particular other landscape, a dreadful one. In March 1974 I understood why, in my writing, I continually reverted to an awareness, in intimation of, that one particular world. I had good reason to. My novels and stories were, without my realizing it consciously, autobiographical. It was -- this return of memory -- the most extraordinary experience of my life. Or rather I should say lives, since I had at least two: one there and subsequently one here, where we are now."

[jus_the_facts]

26. Wow....so that explains it then.....

....that does help to understand it a bit better...very interesting...thank you Tav! :loveya:

[tigereye]

27. sure I just thought it was funny that I saw your post

right after the husband had just told me he reread the book!

[Terran]

3. It's been years, but

I remember it being hard to understand too, at the end.

[jus_the_facts]

6. It just ended so weird...I was expecting a lot more....

....of an explination and it just ENDED so damn strange.

[Elidor]

12. You have to keep in mind, Dick had a thing for pills

He once calculated how many words he had to type a day to keep his family afloat (it was a LOT), and concluded that speed was his only hope. That doesn't diminish his stories, but it skews them mightily. Paranoia and metempsychosis are popular themes.

My favorite remains Valis. But the first six chapters are tedious and meandering. Then, after the lengthy setup, he smashes everything to bits. It's marvelous.

[jus_the_facts]

14. I'd heard that he was trippy....only read some short stories o'his...

...until I read this book...I will read more o'his work regardless of how this particular one left me! :hi:

[Taverner]

19. Might not want to try VALIS yet then...

VALIS is amazing, however I think anyone who reads it should check out "Radio Free Albemuth" first as it was the first version of this, and it puts everything into place...

[jus_the_facts]

23. Thanks again for the input....will help me out in the future....

:hi:

[khashka]

29. Problem with VALIS

perhaps you can explain this.

Was the little girl really the Second Coming of Christ or was it a scam?

If the former, why did it end the way it did? If the latter, how did she know all she knew?

Khash.

[khashka]

28. Try VALIS, Ubik or Radio Free Albemuth

And you might get it.

Either Dick went crazy or he was a conduit for God or he was contacted by aliens. The jury is still out.

Khash.

[jus_the_facts]

31. LOL....Thanks for the recommendations....

:hi:

[hunter]

30. If you read it from the point of view that your own self may be fiction..

...it makes more sense.

To put it in cheap sophomoric terms, your own "high castle" is your own place of self.

It's a great book.

:evilgrin:

[jus_the_facts]

32. I can dig it....

:D

:hi: