"Dick,_Philip_K._The shifting realities of Philip K Dick" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

2 Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 1976, 1981), p. 229.
3 Philip K. Dick, In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis, ed. Lawrence Sutin (Novato, Calif./Lancaster,
Pa.: Underwood-Miller, 1991), p. 161.
10
ultimately, inexplicable -- event of his life. These inspired what has become known as the "Valis
Trilogy" -- the final three novels of Dick's life that have earned both critical praise and a broad
readership (through their recent simultaneous reissuance as Vintage trade editions): Valis (1981),
The Divine Invasion (1981), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982). In all three
novels, Dick explores the anguish and entropic emptiness of an earthly realm in which God (or
whatever alternative name we give to the divine) remains unknown and perhaps unknowable. But
also, in all of these works, Dick offers the hope that divine knowledge and redemption may yet be
granted -- even to modern, scuffling souls who have trouble paying their rent and keeping their
marriages together. There is a striking thematic resemblance between these novels and the
speculations of the Gnostic thinkers of the early centuries of the Christian era. Indeed, in the definitive
modern edition of Gnostic scriptures, The Nag Hammadi Library (1988), an "Afterword" singles
out Dick (along with Jung, Hermann Hesse, and Harold Bloom) as a preeminent modern interpreter
of Gnostic beliefs.
As we have seen, even prior to the "Valis Trilogy," philosophical and spiritual questions had
formed the underpinnings of Dick's SF "alternate" worlds and "alien" intelligences. But Dick had
harbored a carefully limited view of himself, through the first two decades of his writing career, as
one who fervently posed ultimate questions but lacked -- as a matter of personal experience -- any
real encounter with a higher source of being. After 2-3-74, this changed to an extent. By his very
nature, Dick was not a man to arrive at -- or even to wish to arrive at -- a simple conclusion about
any life event, much less as complex and unsettling a series of events as 2-3-74. But through all of his
wrangling, one fundamental fact emerges plainly: 2-3-74 served as a soul-shaking inspiration for
Dick as a writer and thinker. The pratfalls and paradoxes of his SF plots had begun to seem to him -
- after two decades of prolific exploration -- mere entertainments. Not that Dick did not wish to
entertain. On the contrary, it was one of his paramount concerns as a writer: He loved the
excitement of a good SF plot, as is amply testified to in his essays on SF included in this volume.
But one of the strongest facets of his character -- and one that sets Dick aside from the abundance
of writers who dabble in metaphysical puzzles out of sheer amusement -- was his conviction that
answers could be attained by those who persisted in asking questions. Imagination, intelligence, and
yearning insistence could prevail. Now, in his final years, there was a new passion: the driving
necessity of getting to the truth of what had happened to him in those months.
Was "2-3-74" a case of genuine mystical experiences, or a contact with "higher" (or simply
"other") forms of intelligence, or a conscious manipulation of his mind by unknown persons, or a
purely private outbreak of psychotic symptoms? Dick considered each of these possibilities, as well
as others too numerous to summarize here, in his eight-thousand-page Exegesis (subtitled by Dick
Apologia pro Mea Vita, to emphasize its central importance). The Exegesis was a journal --
handwritten, for the most part -- at which Dick labored night after night for eight years, until his death
in 1982, in an attempt to explain 2-3-74 to his own satisfaction. He never succeeded. The Exegesis
is, at times, a wild and wayward human record: Eight years' worth of impassioned journaling through
the dead of the night (Dick's preferred time for creative effort), with no expressed intention of
publication in his own lifetime, could not but result in highly uneven streaks of writing. But the
Exegesis is also replete with passages that confirm Dick's standing as a subtle thinker and an
astonishing guide to hidden possibilities of existence. A previous collection, In Pursuit of Valis:
Selections from the Exegesis (Underwood/Miller, 1991), edited by the present writer, has won
critical praise for Dick as a philosophical and spiritual thinker. Robert Anton Wilson (coauthor of the
popular Illuminatus trilogy) wrote: "Dick explains 'mystic' states better than any visionary writer of
the past." In Gnosis, reviewer John Shirley declared: "Deluded or spiritually liberated, Dick was a