Comments on: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

By: Griff

Griff — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 01:28:51 +0000

isn’t that kind of the point? the debate whether or not it’s even worth leaving The Matrix?

By: Greg Borenstein

Greg Borenstein — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:25:21 +0000

As a major PKD fan, I find Flow My Tears to be the most depressing and frightening of his books. Felix Buckman is an incredibly disturbing Big Brother because he's also the only calm sane figure in the book. Also, the scene where Buckman's sister dissolves into pure decay in the midsts of Taverner's having the hots for her is one of the most grotesque images Dick ever came up with (second only, in my mind, to 'gubble' from Martian Time Slip). This book was, and feels like it was, written during the darkest time of Dick's life. He was dirt poor, surviving off of dog food, and beset on all sides by paranoid delusion and real practical woes.The one ray of light moment is the strange ending with the 'copter landing at the gas station where the Empire (Felix Buckman's whole world) seems to have been an illusion that just suddenly dissolves. Dick wrote that he relived this moment in real life himself years after having written the book.I highly recommend this collection of Dick's non-fiction writing: http://www.amazon.com/Shifting-Realities-Philip-Dick-Philosophical/dp/0679747877 It has some great commentary on the books as well as a few really moving personal essays. He actually was quite a talented essayist, somewhat surprisingly.

By: Claire Evans

Claire Evans — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:10:51 +0000

Wait, have we talked about this before? Last time that I watched The Matrix I was blown away by my lack of credulity in the entire conceit: who would ever want to unplug? I mean, not in this “I just want to eat real steak again” way, but if the robots are getting something productive out of it, and I have the total illusion of free will in my magical brain world, then how is The Matrix not a win-win situation?

By: evan

evan — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:32:34 +0000

i know, you being who you are and me being who i am, that it is probably important for me to write something about this post but i’m kind of at a loss. The more distance I get from PKD (or I guess from the intense phase where I read a bunch of his novels one after the other) the easier it is for me to distinguish between what are his talents (chief among which is his profound understanding of what gives the banality of mass media its own kind of holiness) and what are his psychoses. But even with his well-documented break down I’m still not entirely convinced the whole thing was ‘sincere,’ or even that it is even a question of sincerity vs. satire (or fiction, or anything else on the other end of sincere conviction).Recent things I’ve been reading have made me re-think the entire ‘gnostic’ side of sci fi writing, and I don’t think I’ll be able to actually understand any of it again until I finally get around to reading “The Flight to Lucifer” and pretty much everything else Harold Bloom has ever written.It would also require me to pretty much obliterate all memory of “the matrix” because even though it seems so inspired by this whole subgenre it is essentially a reversal of the formula. There is nothing sublime about the ‘truth’ that the characters in those films find, and the whole thing boils down to some kind of messianic parable in the end that makes the whole thing kind of irrelevant.Anyhow I enjoyed this, especially because its a PKD book I’ve never read. Speaking of Baudrillardian observations of theme parks, I’ve been meaning to go back and re-read the part of Contact about disneyland now that I am no longer 12 years old, but I can’t find my copy of it. I remember it being very good. That whole book was incredible to me. Enough to make the film of it seem irrelevant in comparison, even though it is a Very Good Film by any other standard.

By: Mr. Marianna Ritchey

Mr. Marianna Ritchey — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:52:58 +0000

I only recently read VALIS because I’m planning to assign it in a course I’m teaching this fall. I know you’re probably not taking requests, but I would definitely be interested in your thoughts on the book at some point in the future.

By: Claire Evans

Claire Evans — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:05:37 +0000

Ah, I have much to learn still. Onward!

By: Mr. Marianna Ritchey

Mr. Marianna Ritchey — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:20:25 +0000

Dick is definitely not bullshitting about Judea 50 A.D. At least, not bullshitting in the sense of deliberately concocting a ruse. His “real” (!) encounter with an information-rich pink laser is documented in VALIS and the edited “exegesis,” IN PURSUIT OF VALIS, both of which I highly recommend to you and/or your loyal readers, assuming you and/or your your readers have not already experienced second-hand Dick’s mind-bending pursuit of VALIS, a pursuit which took up the better part of his latter days.