Declare About Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
| Title | : | VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1) |
| Author | : | Philip K. Dick |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 242 pages |
| Published | : | August 3rd 2004 by Vintage Books (first published February 1981) |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Fiction. Philosophy. Religion. Novels. Science Fiction Fantasy. Fantasy |
Philip K. Dick
Paperback | Pages: 242 pages Rating: 3.93 | 23170 Users | 1491 Reviews
Narrative Toward Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
VALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. VALIS is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime.Specify Books Conducive To VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
| Original Title: | VALIS |
| ISBN: | 0679734465 (ISBN13: 9780679734468) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | VALIS Trilogy #1 |
| Characters: | Philip K. Dick, Horselover Fat |
| Setting: | Santa Ana, California(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Foreign Novel (1985) |
Rating About Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
Ratings: 3.93 From 23170 Users | 1491 ReviewsCritique About Books VALIS (VALIS Trilogy #1)
Religion is a form of schizophrenia. Consider: an attempt to make absolute sense of the world, fitting its endless random details into a coherent overall pattern. Which am I describing? It's no surprise that religious delusion figures so prominently on psychiatric wards -- they're categorically made for eachother. Beside the psychiatric ward in this novel, see also Anne Quin's The Unmapped Country, which I finished immediately before this, or pretty much any other example.As a novel, this fitsI semi-regularly freak out over my own consistency on goodreads. What do I do about reading a novel that is contained in a book with multiple novels, what cover do I choose, what about books that I read multiple times, do I keep the original date that I read it or update it to the newest date? So many stupid things to waste my time worrying about when there are so many other stupid things I could be wasting my time worrying about. For my own peace of mind, I'll state here that I read this book
A question we had to learn to deal with during the dope decade was, How do you break the news to someone that his brains are fried? So says the first-person narrator in VALIS, Philip K. Dicks autobiographical novel of spiritual odyssey, a novel where the narrator begins by laying out the major issues he must deal with as he attempts to gain a measure of sanity along with a sense of purpose and the meaning of life: drugs, a desire to help others, the pull of insanity, suicide and death, time and
Well, that was weird. If literature is a way for us to commune with the minds of others, I guess those others dont necessarily need to be sane. In fact, Philip K. Dick (and his alter ego, Horselover Fat) are both pretty up front about the fact that he/they are not mentally well.Despite his mental illness and years of drug use, Dick can write! VALIS seems to be his dissertation on his mental illness and it is a pretty lucid and rational analysis of his own state. It kept me reading for 271 pages
Imagine taking a walk in a bad neighborhood and sitting on a sidewalk bench. Beside you sits a disheveled homeless person with crazy eyes. Despite your best efforts the two of you strike up a conversation. Slowly, incredulously, you begin to realize that this crazy person is well read. No, this person is educated, well educated and though he goes off on wild tangents and makes seemingly ludicrous claims, his mind is a brilliantly tangled mess, a fecundity of original thought. And yet all the
Fat conceives of the universe as a living organism into which a toxic particle has come. The toxic particle, made of heavy metal, has embedded itself in the universe-organism and is poisoning it. The universe-organism dispatches a phagocyte. The phagocyte is Christ. It surrounds the toxic metal particle the Black Iron Prison and begins to destroy it.Nope! No idea what that means. I havent a clue! And there are plenty more where that came from. A couple of years ago I made a start on VALIS,
When you spend your whole creative life walking the thin line that separates genius from madness then occasionally you are going to make a few missteps.Philip K Dick walked that line longer than most and we should be grateful he kept it together enough to write some of the most intriguing works of twentieth century science fiction. This was not one of those works.If you want to invest some time in thinking about the connections between theories of parallel worlds, Gnosticism, pre Socratic
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