August 16, 2007

On Philip K. Dick. What is moving in Dick’s madness is his insistence that the surest sign of the madness of the world outside him is the violence that we accept as normal. In “Clans of the Alphane Moon,” he had already glimpsed the possibility that normal governing might be the work of paranoids. This Nixon-era vision becomes, in the VALIS books, a metaphysical truth. “The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.”
posted by HawthorneWingo 17 years ago
  • To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.
  • Yeah, witness the Democratic party, right?
  • Substitute Greed for Empire. Compassion dies when an envelope full of money is accepted.
  • Resistence is futile.
  • no genre writer ever becomes just a good writer; it’s all prophet or all hack Maybe they have a point - I read VALIS recently, and I couldn't quite decide if it was the most important book I'd ever read, or just empty madness.
  • Holy crap I was going to post that as an FPP.
  • I read VALIS recently, and I couldn't quite decide if it was the most important book I'd ever read, or just empty madness But then neither could the author.