I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick [Paperback]

Emmanuel Carrere (Author), Timothy Bent (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312424515 | ISBN-13: 978-0312424510 | Publication Date: May 12, 2005

For his many devoted readers, Philip K. Dick is not only one of the "one of the most valiant psychological explorers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) but a source of divine revelation. In the riveting style that won accolades for The Adversary, Emmanuel Carrère follows Dick's strange odyssey from his traumatic beginnings in 1928, when his twin sister died in infancy, to his lonely end in 1982, beset by mystical visions of swirling pink light, three-eyed invaders, and messages from the Roman Empire. Drawing on interviews as well as unpublished sources, he vividly conjures the spirit of this restless observer of American postwar malaise who subverted the materials of science fiction--parallel universes, intricate time loops, collective delusions--to create classic works of contemporary anxiety.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Strange, fascinating man, and this a strange, fascinating book.” —The San Diego Union Tribune

“Emmanuel Carrère’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick is remarkable—a depth charge, a CAT scan, and an exorcism. Carrère, whose own eerie novels include The Adversary, proves that it’s still possible for the French to write like Voltaire rather than Derrida. Informed, affectionate, sardonic, he is also crystal clear.” —John Leonard, Harper’s

“Consistently fascinating and brilliantly written . . . Carrère combines fact and fiction to form a new sort of genre, blending literary criticism and cultural history with a novelist’s earnest speculation.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“The story of a remarkable life marked by great burst of creativity and equally frequent bouts of mental turmoil . . . Carrère wisely eschews the ‘and then he wrote’ approach to literary biography . . . He neither overstates Dick’s gifts nor belittles his more outlandish hypotheses about the underlying meaning of reality . . . Captures . . . [Dick’s] sense of humor , his intellectual curiosity, his very human vulnerability . . . Compelling.” —Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

“Startling . . . Carrère gets so far inside the head of the deeply troubled author . . . the resulting text is remarkably vivid, intimate, often haunting.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“What Dick thinks and feels as a man and writer is richly developed in this riveting biography. Mr. Carrère’s book is mesmerizing. Seldom have I read a biographer who drew me so deeply into his subject’s world.” —Carl Rollyson, The New York Sun

“Every whorl of Dick’s mind, every delusion, every leap through the looking glass, is chronicled. The effect is powerful.” —James Parker, The Boston Globe

“[A] painful and unconventional biography [that] portrays Dick as a Cold War Don Quixote, flailing at the totalitarianism he suspected was taking over 1950s-60s America. Aimed at hardcore Dick fans, it’s a powerful treatment of a difficult subject.” —Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Emmanuel Carrère is one of France’s most critically acclaimed writers, author of several screenplays and novels, including Class Trip & The Mustache, as well as The Adversary, a New York Times Notable Book of 2001. Carrère lives in Paris.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador (May 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312424515
• ISBN-13: 978-0312424510
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #284,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Philip K. Dick DOES come alive in Carrere's book, May 21, 2005

By 

R. Cook (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (Hardcover)

This riveting biography sat on my bookshelf for months, a reflection of my ambivalence about starting it. As a long-time fan of PKDick, I was obliged to buy this book, of course, but I had heard things about it which caused me to wonder whether it would be a worthless speculation, a fantasia on the life of Dick. Most of these things I had heard--or rather, read--here on Amazon.

Upon beginning the book, I found myself almost immediately yanked into Dick's world and life, and, although I have another 70 or so pages to complete, I feel this book surpasses Sutin's fine biography in that it does not merely bring us the external "objective" facts of Dick's life, but vividly animates that life, putting us INTO the "koinos kosmos" of Dick: we come to experience ourselves the sweat and fear and lust and neediness and egocentricity and eccentricity and petulance and brilliance and charm and childishness and addiction and obsessions of the man, among many other of the panoply of traits which made Dick the human being and writer he was.

While as a younger "fan" I might have been threatened to see my literary hero depicted so frankly--which of course cannot leave Dick looking saintly, by any means--as a more mature person I appreciate Carrere's respect for his subject and for his readers, as he does not idealize or elide Dick's less savory traits, but incorporates them into a complex and empathetic portrait which has the feeling of truth. After all, writers are notoriously tormented or maladjusted human beings, and the writer who could have produced Dick's body of work cannot be assumed to have been merely a gently avuncular eccentric, but was a complicated man, driven by harsh anxieties and compulsions as much as by brilliance and creative fecundity.

I have read PK Dick for 30 years, and I have read all the articles and books about him I have been able to find in that time. Yes, Sutin's biography is masterful and authoritative, but I unreservedly recommend Carrere's novelistic portrait as the most powerful recreation of Dick the human being I have encountered.

Superb.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is this Review a Manifestation of Ultimate Truth or a Figment of Your Imagination?, November 18, 2005

By 

Lukas Jackson (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (Paperback)

What a fascinating journey through a bizarre and brilliant mind! I had always wanted
to learn more about Philip K. Dick, but had been turned off by other articles and
books that had drained the life from Dick's story with overly dry and pedantic prose.
In contrast, Carrere offers psychological insight and philosophical speculation
that can only be described as "Phildickian." As one who had read all of
Dick's better-known works, Carrere seems to have reanimated Dick's spirit in this
compelling, partially novelized tale. What the reader sacrifices in footnotes and
verifiable fact is more than made up for by the sheer human interest of the story.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating book about a fascinating writer, August 14, 2005

By 

Elisabeth Carey (Lawrence, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (Hardcover)

This is in no sense a scholarly work-no footnotes, no bibliography, not even a "further reading" list. Emmaneul Carrère is an unabashed fan of Philip K. Dick who, having read everything there was to read, still wanted to know more about how Dick's mind worked. He pursued this quest through much of Dick's unpublished material and apparently interviews with those who knew him. (I say "apparently" because the lack of footnotes, while adding to readability, does detract from complete clarity about sources and research methods.) Nevertheless, Carrère has produced a fascinating book, and he and his translator, Timothy Brent, have made it a very readable one, too.

Carrère gives a reasonably full account of Dick's life, while assuming that his readers are those who have already read most or all of Dick's major works, and the earlier biographies. (Cautionary note: this means that, if you haven't read Dick's major works, you should beware of spoilers.) His goal is working out an understanding of his subject's mind from this wealth of material. To what extent did the traumas of Dick's childhood (the death of his twin sister when they were a few weeks old, his parents' divorce, his mother's own obsessions) contribute to his own instability and emotional problems, and to what extent were they merely the background against which his own personality oddities played out? How did his problems and his drug use affect his fiction? How much was the drug use the cause of his later problems, and how much was it an unguided attempt at self-medication? Carrère seems both clear-eyed and sympathetic in his descriptions of not only Philip Dick, but also his parents, wives, and friends. This is a highly readable and interesting book about a fascinating writer.

Recommended.