Science fabrication writer Alice Sola Kim has a rattling personal essay over in Buzzfeed about how she discovered Philip K. Dick when she was 15 . And even though you’re able to be entirely well - adjust and flow in love with Dick ’s imagination , being “ bummed and ugly ” help her get into his work .
aboveboard , you should just go take the entire essay , which is marvelous and kernel - rending . Talking about how insecurity and sadness made her connect more profoundly to Dick ’s work when she was a teenager , Kim writes :
When I found Philip K. Dick , he was no big closed book . He was in apartial State Department of rediscovery — there were a bunch of gracious paperbackreissues from time of origin , plus a five - volume set of collected stories onwhich I consistently place holds at the subroutine library . Everything — Iplaced holds on everything . Why ’d I get it so unfit for Philip K. Dick ?
I first loved the twirl . The showmanship ! The pulpy agitation of it all ! The first PKD volume I ever register was Eye in the Sky , about eight visitant to a speck accelerator who get trapped in eachothers ’ subjective reality . Back then , it was so easy to wow andsurprise me , and each time the world as we have a go at it it turned out to be aconstruct , false , somehow not right — it knock me over . ImaginePKD type in a Benzedrine rap saltation intend that this would reallyget them . Did it ever . If you pet a hotdog in a PKD novel , get ready forthe firedog to thaw and in the puddle will be a gaucherie of paper that reads“SOFT - DRINK STAND . ”
Of course , there was more to it . Knowing thatreality could be up for grabs , manipulated , and twist feed me aprickly , shuddery joy . But this would be a shallow delight without thedeep gumption of unhappiness in the best of PKD ’s work . When the world you knewwas ripped by from you , even if in that world you had a crappy joband could n’t get a date , he recognized that you had to mourn . Youmourned for the faux Earth that you missed , you mourned that any kindof straight , tangible earthly concern was problematical or else completely lose and that nothingwould ever be the way it was meant to be , whatever that was .
agree outthe whole essay over at Buzzfeed .
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