Part 12 Philip K Dick 1971 Interview
James Holmes: Is there any good criticism?
Philip K Dick: What do you mean?
James Holmes: Well, you know–
Philip K Dick: Helpful to the writer?
James Holmes: Yeah, helpful to you, or–
Philip K Dick: Yep.
James Holmes: You know, stuff that you could learn from.
Philip K Dick: Even irrelevant criticism, and that is where they can’t figure out what you’re doing, is valuable because it’s feedback. I mean, like, if you read 20 different critical articles from different parts of the world, and they all can’t understand what you’re doing, and they all misunderstand it the same way, you begin to get the idea that there’s not much point in what you’re doing. Like, the London Times, the focus should be about your– you know, Isvestia you know, and the Alleghany Free Press all say you’re writing such and such, you start thinking, “I guess I’m not getting my point across,” and then some guy sends you a postcard from Pinole. You know, he uses a pencil because, you know, he can’t afford a ballpoint pen. It says, “Dear Mr. Sir, I read your book,” and he gets the title wrong, “and it was really good because it prevented me from killing and it snowed all night and I didn’t put antifreeze in the motor,” and I say to myself now, you know, I didn’t write the book to keep this guy from committing suicide because his 1937 flathead Plymouth 6 motor burst, but, you know, maybe that’s good. I mean, the results are not necessarily what you intended, and you can’t control them, I mean, the consequences. But, in a way, you’re responsible for the general direction of the response. If you deprive your reader of the ability to cope with reality– I mean, if you lessen his stamina, lessen his integrity, lessen his joie de vivre or some other funky thing like that, something vital—I mean, I’m not preaching, you know, like we should write stuff that encourages people to believe that everything is wonderful, because it’s not, and if we encourage them to believe that, then that contributes to wiping out their ability to cope. I mean, this is the difference between positive inspirational writing, like it’s pedaled, you know, by the book clubs. Basically, what they tell you– They are comedies. They say things can be dealt with easily, and here is the formula: Get up early in the morning (that’s always something I don’t like to do – that’s where I stop reading those books), pay your bills, go to the dentist, get a haircut, you know, all kinds of unpleasant things, and when you do that, and then here’s what you get, and this is even worse: You get rich, you get popular, you get respected; you get things that are as bad as universal consequences as the techniques for acquiring them are repellent. I mean, I don’t want to get up early and I don’t want to be rich, and they tell you really basically the universe can be manipulated, and other people especially can be manipulated. They are manipulative technique books. They preach optimism as a philosophy, but they preach techniques for manipulating other people, which is cynical, and I don’t think that’s optimistic. My kind of optimism would be to write a book how to be unable to win friends, how to be completely inept at coping in the sense of influencing people, because you should never influence people in that sense. You know, “Hi Bill! By the way, my house is for sale. If you don’t buy it, I’m gonna send the police a photostat of that picture of you and my wife.” You know, that’s– How about, you know, a book like that– How to extort money, blackmail people and get them busted if they don’t cooperate. No, that wouldn’t be too optimistic. That would strike people as cynical. Now, positive books like psycho-cybernetics are really destructive in that they reduce descriptive science and pure science, like psychology, the science of the human mind, into a series of formulas for getting control not of yourself, but of the people around you, getting control of yourself is a valid thing in line with the Apollo motto: Know Thyself. Getting control of other people is something else to other people in that sense is like bugging their phone and listening into their conversations through your open window through their open window, which, in itself is not bad– it’s sort of interesting, but it’s the use that you put it to that is probably bad. I just write down dialogue before I would change the names. That’s as far as it’ll go. I don’t mail them a copy. I very carefully do not mail them a copy.
James Holmes: Have you ever written anything besides science fiction? Have you thought of doing, you know, mainstream or whatever they call it, you know, regular fiction?
Philip K Dick: Well, I did some fantasies back around 1951 and 52, which were pretty good, but the market went away, and my ability to write them went away when the market went away, and I have done some avant-garde stuff and it was no good; it was lousy; it was crummy because I read it over recently, and it was just awful. It didn’t sell because it was no good. I said at the time it didn’t sell because nobody understood it; it was too advanced for them. That was not true. It was junk. I did sell one experimental novel that was marketed as science fiction, but it appeared in a magazine as a serial and will be marketed again in a paperback. How that’ll be presented, I don’t know, but that is not a science fiction, that it’s experimental. It’s a really strange book.
James Holmes: What is it?
Philip K Dick: Hmm?
James Holmes: What’s the name of it?
Philip K Dick: Well, the magazine version was A. Lincoln, Simulacrum. It’s about a Lincoln robot. This is before Disney– Disney built one about the time the serial came out, and his did just about what mine did in the book, only mine in the book it was carried into areas where I hope Disney did not carry his– I hope. I haven’t been down there to see Disney’s, but it was really a strange book; had the first Jewish robot. That’s something I didn’t notice until a critical article called it to my attention. And a pretty, pretty girl, too, but this will be coming out in paperback. I translated it directly from {inaudible}, “Her breasts were like mounds,” and then my Latin got too bad I couldn’t finish the quotation.
James Holmes: [chuckle]
Philip K Dick: But, it’s an interesting book. It’s really strange. I don’t want to have it brought around, though. I wrote that when I was very pessimistic. Like, in the book, people’s eyes are below their noses and their mouths are above their– at the top of their face because of, you know, war time– you know, they’re war time mutants. You know, this is strange, but it’s accepted. You know, “Remember your brother, Chester? You know Chester. The one that has the eyes below his nose.” Unfortunately, I can’t get it straight. They can get it straight. That was a very strange book, since such a robot was built just about the time the book came out.
James Holmes: How is your outlook now?
Philip K Dick: Optimistic.
James Holmes: For, you know.
Philip K Dick: I think–
James Holmes: For your writing? For the world?
Philip K Dick : No, I think robots will have a better future than I thought they would. No, I mean, my writing has always sold well. I mean, you know– I don’t make any money off it because if I do get some money, I can’t figure out what to do with it and I lose it, and if I figure out what to do with it, somebody else figures out better what to do with it, either done on a professional level by the income tax people or on a private level by mutual friends. Somebody can always figure out what to do with it if I can’t, and the sales are pretty good
Philip K Dick: Well, I had a thing in the Soviet Union that sold a million and a half copies. That’s good, I guess. So that’s not an important factor. I think I can sell whatever I write, because most of what I write is pretty good for what that’s worth. That doesn’t really benefit me and I don’t know if it benefits humanity. As far as my view about what’s going on, I’m much more optimistic, I think things are not nearly as bad as I thought. Well I thought they would drop the cobalt bomb in 1912 and they haven’t dropped it yet, not as far as I know. The thing that really cheered me up was Faulkner’s Nobel speech, prize speech. Did you read that?
James Holmes: No I didn’t.
Philip K Dick: Well he wrote that into his book she something I don’t know, it came out in a huge book that he wrote, but it was the Nobel prize speech that he had.
Philip K Dick: Now how can I quote the Faulkner Nobel prize speech. Anyway, I always quote these things wrong, you know in style. But I translate them into my own language and they’re usually improved somewhat, but not in this case. So anyway, the hydrogen war and the world is in ruins which is what we science fiction writers wrote about all the time, and our books come out of the ruins with 8 legs carrying weapons that they’ve made out of copies of the bible that they’ve refrigerated until they’re firm enough to cut into scimitars and other shit. Anyway, here’s the way he saw the ruins after the war. And then there’s this noise from way down in the ruins and it’s man or men or something, and they’re scheming, arguing, plotting, planning, figuring out what to do, getting it wrong, correcting each other, arguing, but constantly arguing and bickering about it. They’re so busy arguing and bickering about what they’re going to do, they’re oblivious to the big picture, the fact that the world is in ruins. They’re just down there, they probably got an old envelope, probably something from the phone company saying they’re going to cut off the phone, and on the back of it they’re writing down what they’re going to do I guess. I mean this is the way I envision it, They can’t agree on what they’re going to, but they’re so busy planning they simply don’t notice the magnitude of the job and by the very intensity of their interaction, you sense they have a better chance, well, our stories didn’t have any chance at all because how can you rebuild the entire world. If he were here to read it, he would probably read the whole thing and be more effective. That was the impression I got, that they would come out of the ruins, that was the impression he wanted to give and do something, but it was the idiomatic quality of their gabble and I heard him read this over the radio, and I just turned it on and I heard what I thought was a Baptist minister, you know pontificating and ranting, and this went on for a long time. I’m very un-selective in what I turn off. And then he got on to this section, and I said you know that Baptist minister could make a name for himself, at least in the Southern states, if he could get rid of that accent, then they said it was William Faulkner reading the Nobel prize speech. So I liked it before I heard who it was, I like to think you know. I thought Jesus Christ, those rednecks have got something to say after all, they’re dumb and they use little, short words and they’re repetitious, but at least it’s soul time and that’s something. At least it isn’t all limited now to you all come back now, you hear, like we had heard about the south. That I suggested to an opulent friend, a materialistically inclined and very good at it, that when they were looking for inspirational literature having already consumed the bible in 8 days in a speedreading contest with the people across the street, that they try that and see if they like that. They didn’t buy it because it was too expensive and they couldn’t get a 10% discount by ordering more than 50, so instead they got something by James Mitchner, about how the races are inherently unequal and they read that instead because it was cheaper and it was more recently published so they figured it was more topical. I rest my case. This junkie too, they loaned it to me afterward, the dog ate it.
James Holmes: If you could be anyone…
Philip K Dick: Dogs going to be in court pretty soon paying for it too. Full price. Yes sir.
James Holmes: If you could be anyone in history, who would you be?
Continued in:
Part 13 Philip K Dick 1971 Interview
Part 12 Philip K Dick 1971 Interview
James Holmes: Is there any good criticism?
Philip K Dick: What do you mean?
James Holmes: Well, you know–
Philip K Dick: Helpful to the writer?
James Holmes: Yeah, helpful to you, or–
Philip K Dick: Yep.
James Holmes: You know, stuff that you could learn from.
Philip K Dick: Even irrelevant criticism, and that is where they can’t figure out what you’re doing, is valuable because it’s feedback. I mean, like, if you read 20 different critical articles from different parts of the world, and they all can’t understand what you’re doing, and they all misunderstand it the same way, you begin to get the idea that there’s not much point in what you’re doing. Like, the London Times, the focus should be about your– you know, Isvestia you know, and the Alleghany Free Press all say you’re writing such and such, you start thinking, “I guess I’m not getting my point across,” and then some guy sends you a postcard from Pinole. You know, he uses a pencil because, you know, he can’t afford a ballpoint pen. It says, “Dear Mr. Sir, I read your book,” and he gets the title wrong, “and it was really good because it prevented me from killing and it snowed all night and I didn’t put antifreeze in the motor,” and I say to myself now, you know, I didn’t write the book to keep this guy from committing suicide because his 1937 flathead Plymouth 6 motor burst, but, you know, maybe that’s good. I mean, the results are not necessarily what you intended, and you can’t control them, I mean, the consequences. But, in a way, you’re responsible for the general direction of the response. If you deprive your reader of the ability to cope with reality– I mean, if you lessen his stamina, lessen his integrity, lessen his joie de vivre or some other funky thing like that, something vital—I mean, I’m not preaching, you know, like we should write stuff that encourages people to believe that everything is wonderful, because it’s not, and if we encourage them to believe that, then that contributes to wiping out their ability to cope. I mean, this is the difference between positive inspirational writing, like it’s pedaled, you know, by the book clubs. Basically, what they tell you– They are comedies. They say things can be dealt with easily, and here is the formula: Get up early in the morning (that’s always something I don’t like to do – that’s where I stop reading those books), pay your bills, go to the dentist, get a haircut, you know, all kinds of unpleasant things, and when you do that, and then here’s what you get, and this is even worse: You get rich, you get popular, you get respected; you get things that are as bad as universal consequences as the techniques for acquiring them are repellent. I mean, I don’t want to get up early and I don’t want to be rich, and they tell you really basically the universe can be manipulated, and other people especially can be manipulated. They are manipulative technique books. They preach optimism as a philosophy, but they preach techniques for manipulating other people, which is cynical, and I don’t think that’s optimistic. My kind of optimism would be to write a book how to be unable to win friends, how to be completely inept at coping in the sense of influencing people, because you should never influence people in that sense. You know, “Hi Bill! By the way, my house is for sale. If you don’t buy it, I’m gonna send the police a photostat of that picture of you and my wife.” You know, that’s– How about, you know, a book like that– How to extort money, blackmail people and get them busted if they don’t cooperate. No, that wouldn’t be too optimistic. That would strike people as cynical. Now, positive books like psycho-cybernetics are really destructive in that they reduce descriptive science and pure science, like psychology, the science of the human mind, into a series of formulas for getting control not of yourself, but of the people around you, getting control of yourself is a valid thing in line with the Apollo motto: Know Thyself. Getting control of other people is something else to other people in that sense is like bugging their phone and listening into their conversations through your open window through their open window, which, in itself is not bad– it’s sort of interesting, but it’s the use that you put it to that is probably bad. I just write down dialogue before I would change the names. That’s as far as it’ll go. I don’t mail them a copy. I very carefully do not mail them a copy.
James Holmes: Have you ever written anything besides science fiction? Have you thought of doing, you know, mainstream or whatever they call it, you know, regular fiction?
Philip K Dick: Well, I did some fantasies back around 1951 and 52, which were pretty good, but the market went away, and my ability to write them went away when the market went away, and I have done some avant-garde stuff and it was no good; it was lousy; it was crummy because I read it over recently, and it was just awful. It didn’t sell because it was no good. I said at the time it didn’t sell because nobody understood it; it was too advanced for them. That was not true. It was junk. I did sell one experimental novel that was marketed as science fiction, but it appeared in a magazine as a serial and will be marketed again in a paperback. How that’ll be presented, I don’t know, but that is not a science fiction, that it’s experimental. It’s a really strange book.
James Holmes: What is it?
Philip K Dick: Hmm?
James Holmes: What’s the name of it?
Philip K Dick: Well, the magazine version was A. Lincoln, Simulacrum. It’s about a Lincoln robot. This is before Disney– Disney built one about the time the serial came out, and his did just about what mine did in the book, only mine in the book it was carried into areas where I hope Disney did not carry his– I hope. I haven’t been down there to see Disney’s, but it was really a strange book; had the first Jewish robot. That’s something I didn’t notice until a critical article called it to my attention. And a pretty, pretty girl, too, but this will be coming out in paperback. I translated it directly from {inaudible}, “Her breasts were like mounds,” and then my Latin got too bad I couldn’t finish the quotation.
James Holmes: [chuckle]
Philip K Dick: But, it’s an interesting book. It’s really strange. I don’t want to have it brought around, though. I wrote that when I was very pessimistic. Like, in the book, people’s eyes are below their noses and their mouths are above their– at the top of their face because of, you know, war time– you know, they’re war time mutants. You know, this is strange, but it’s accepted. You know, “Remember your brother, Chester? You know Chester. The one that has the eyes below his nose.” Unfortunately, I can’t get it straight. They can get it straight. That was a very strange book, since such a robot was built just about the time the book came out.
James Holmes: How is your outlook now?
Philip K Dick: Optimistic.
James Holmes: For, you know.
Philip K Dick: I think–
James Holmes: For your writing? For the world?
Philip K Dick : No, I think robots will have a better future than I thought they would. No, I mean, my writing has always sold well. I mean, you know– I don’t make any money off it because if I do get some money, I can’t figure out what to do with it and I lose it, and if I figure out what to do with it, somebody else figures out better what to do with it, either done on a professional level by the income tax people or on a private level by mutual friends. Somebody can always figure out what to do with it if I can’t, and the sales are pretty good
Philip K Dick: Well, I had a thing in the Soviet Union that sold a million and a half copies. That’s good, I guess. So that’s not an important factor. I think I can sell whatever I write, because most of what I write is pretty good for what that’s worth. That doesn’t really benefit me and I don’t know if it benefits humanity. As far as my view about what’s going on, I’m much more optimistic, I think things are not nearly as bad as I thought. Well I thought they would drop the cobalt bomb in 1912 and they haven’t dropped it yet, not as far as I know. The thing that really cheered me up was Faulkner’s Nobel speech, prize speech. Did you read that?
James Holmes: No I didn’t.
Philip K Dick: Well he wrote that into his book she something I don’t know, it came out in a huge book that he wrote, but it was the Nobel prize speech that he had.
Philip K Dick: Now how can I quote the Faulkner Nobel prize speech. Anyway, I always quote these things wrong, you know in style. But I translate them into my own language and they’re usually improved somewhat, but not in this case. So anyway, the hydrogen war and the world is in ruins which is what we science fiction writers wrote about all the time, and our books come out of the ruins with 8 legs carrying weapons that they’ve made out of copies of the bible that they’ve refrigerated until they’re firm enough to cut into scimitars and other shit. Anyway, here’s the way he saw the ruins after the war. And then there’s this noise from way down in the ruins and it’s man or men or something, and they’re scheming, arguing, plotting, planning, figuring out what to do, getting it wrong, correcting each other, arguing, but constantly arguing and bickering about it. They’re so busy arguing and bickering about what they’re going to do, they’re oblivious to the big picture, the fact that the world is in ruins. They’re just down there, they probably got an old envelope, probably something from the phone company saying they’re going to cut off the phone, and on the back of it they’re writing down what they’re going to do I guess. I mean this is the way I envision it, They can’t agree on what they’re going to, but they’re so busy planning they simply don’t notice the magnitude of the job and by the very intensity of their interaction, you sense they have a better chance, well, our stories didn’t have any chance at all because how can you rebuild the entire world. If he were here to read it, he would probably read the whole thing and be more effective. That was the impression I got, that they would come out of the ruins, that was the impression he wanted to give and do something, but it was the idiomatic quality of their gabble and I heard him read this over the radio, and I just turned it on and I heard what I thought was a Baptist minister, you know pontificating and ranting, and this went on for a long time. I’m very un-selective in what I turn off. And then he got on to this section, and I said you know that Baptist minister could make a name for himself, at least in the Southern states, if he could get rid of that accent, then they said it was William Faulkner reading the Nobel prize speech. So I liked it before I heard who it was, I like to think you know. I thought Jesus Christ, those rednecks have got something to say after all, they’re dumb and they use little, short words and they’re repetitious, but at least it’s soul time and that’s something. At least it isn’t all limited now to you all come back now, you hear, like we had heard about the south. That I suggested to an opulent friend, a materialistically inclined and very good at it, that when they were looking for inspirational literature having already consumed the bible in 8 days in a speedreading contest with the people across the street, that they try that and see if they like that. They didn’t buy it because it was too expensive and they couldn’t get a 10% discount by ordering more than 50, so instead they got something by James Mitchner, about how the races are inherently unequal and they read that instead because it was cheaper and it was more recently published so they figured it was more topical. I rest my case. This junkie too, they loaned it to me afterward, the dog ate it.
James Holmes: If you could be anyone…
Philip K Dick: Dogs going to be in court pretty soon paying for it too. Full price. Yes sir.
James Holmes: If you could be anyone in history, who would you be?
Continued in:
Part 13 Philip K Dick 1971 Interview