Customer Reviews

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My first Dick book. While not for everyone, it's pretty accessible to anyone who can appreciate alternate reality/paranoid sci-fi. It's classic man-against-the-clock stolen identity stuff in the tradition of D.O.A. and (to a much, much lesser extent) Enemy of the State. Jason Taverner, anti-hero as he may be, is a great character in which to carry the main storyline of arrogant celebrity turned underground fugitive, but the smaller characters are what make this book into something more than "one man out to get back what was stolen from him." When read as a whole, it is a great testament to being human in the face of mechanical adversity. Not clanking robots, mind you (although it does have it's share of cool futuristic gadgetry), but rather the mechanisms imposed by society, and ourselves, that would otherwise strip away or mask what is good and human in everyone. The best character in the book (in my humble opinion) is the policeman who has a ferocious hard-on for nailing the fugitive Taverner, and from whom the wonderful title is taken. To those who start this book and are inclined to put it down partway through, be assured! Good things will come to those who wait. The scene at the end that involves the title is one of the singly most beautiful ever penned, in sci-fi or any other genre. But it is a very subtle beauty and perhaps not suited for every reading palette. If yours is a refined taste that can grasp a sentiment that is not delivered with a sledgehammer, and enjoys it in the setting of a eerie future America that smacks dangerously of our present one, read this book post-haste.

Written straight from Philip K. Dick's broken and wandering heart, this is one of the genre's best, and saddest, books. Instead of clanking heavy-metal robotics, quantum theory, or brave new worlds, Dick offers up our future peopled by fragile humans, all looking for love. It is impossible to read this book, and not feel Phil's heart breaking as he wrote every beautiful word

A truly astonishing work that, in my opinion, should easily stand among PKD's best work save for one flaw - an unnecessary epilogue that saps a bit of power from the otherwise gut-wrenching finish, putting a happy polish on what should have been a more bleak finale.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is, like the works that best represent Philip K. Dick's career, a "What is reality?" book. The scenario he lets unfold - one day a guy is the Johnny Carson of his time, known and loved by all, the next day he is an unknown without an identity and doesn't know why - keeps you turning pages, wanting to know the truth as badly as the protagonist. The world he creates is, as always, intricate in its not-quite-the-world-we-know details. And the ending? Wow. Remove that epilogue (which in a very unDickian manner wraps everything up in a neat little bow at the end) and it's very powerful. If you've read PKD before, this will be familiar to you - twisted reality, hazy drugs, a world turned on its head - and if you haven't, Flow My Tears offers a good look at everything that makes up what a Philip k. Dick book is.

If only it didn't have that darn Hollywood ending ...

Flow my tears... is another great read for me, a self proclaimed Phil Dick fan, however I suggest to those who havent read him yet to start with another book. Maybe A Scanner Darkly, or The Phillip K. Dick Reader which is a collection of short stories, some of which have become major movies i.e. Total Recall, Paycheck, and Minority Report. Total recall is based on a short story called "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale"

This is my first Phillip K. Dick novel, and in my opinion "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" deserves high praise. For starters, it wins the fight against one of the most difficult opponents that a sci-fi novel could face: Cliché. Simply put, this story is based on an overused plot-the man who loses his identity and struggles to regain a sense of self. Cliche is a tough monster to beat, and most sci-fi novels are devoured by it boots and all. Going into this novel (which I read on a recommendation from a friend) I had low expectations, because I for one am sick to death of this particular premise. However, Phillip Dick somehow managed to actually win the battle against this tired fiction formula, and won me over in the process. He actually found, somehow, a unique way of telling the story. A very unique way.

It deserves kudos for this alone. Not the snack, but the regard and esteem.

Apart from being pleasantly surprised at Dick's ability to pull this story off, there is a lot more that deserves commendation, too... there's a like-him-hate-him anti hero, a wonderfully fleshed-out policeman (two, actually), and a manically bizarre "mini-heroine" that pops up to simultaneously help, hurt and hinder the protagonist, Jason Taverner.

Another aspect of the book that I enjoyed was Dick's writing style. The story is written upon a fine line between poetry and prose that often lulled me into a false sense of security. He managed on several occasions to make me say "wow" due to some particularly inspiring turn of phrase, or through some witty and poignant philosophical observation... in fact, some of his descriptions, in their poetic simplicity, created such vivid images in my mind that I am inclined to compare them to Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451, which contains one of my favorite pieces of descriptive text of all time.

All-in-all, "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" is an easy read with very realistic characters, a healthy dose of political and philosophical impact (which is what sci-fi is all about after all), a delightful plot-twist at the ending (I loved the ending), and an overall quality and completeness that many novels lack. The ending (did I mention that I loved the ending) was ripe with potentialities as well, an amalgam of hidden possibilities and quantum probabilities. Basically, the premise of the book (that a man is sucked into some alternate reality where he does not exist) is caused by something that does not fully cease to occur until somewhere in the epilogue (That will make more sense after you read the book. Pay attention at the end, and wonder just what is real and what isn't. It's fun).

I am a Philip K. Dick fan but I didnt like this book much. The plot here doesnt make much sense. The usual quirky take on the world of tomorrow is there. The central figure Jason Taverner (who is not the title character) is not particularly likable nor are his thoughts as expressed in his internal dialogue especially believable. This book gave me the impression that the author used the slim plot of the story as a framework to give us his take on situations from his own life and from events of the day. (The book was written in the early seventies.) Taverner is a smarmy variety show host in the early 70s Johnny Carson mold. He is assaulted by a deranged woman with whom hes had a predatory sexual relationship and is grievously wounded. He loses consciousness and wakes up in sleazy motel. Taverner discovers that he has lost his identity: no ones ever heard of him and theres no record of his existence. Taverner meets a delusional petite young woman and fantasizes about sex with her. Soon after they meet she demands that he have sex with her and he immediately is turned off. He meets an aging ex-girlfriend and takes advantage of her hospitality, putting her in danger of a police jam in the process. He cruelly mocks her fading looks to her face. Theres a funny scene where he describes a mural depicting the ascent into heaven of Richard M. Nixon. The policeman of the title and his S&M-minded sister seemed like bizarre characters inserted more for their weirdness than for appropriateness to the story. The powerful ruthless policeman shows that, underneath it all, hes just a touchy feely guy who would like to give the world a hug and a flower. His sister, on the other hand, is interested in weird sex and mind altering drugs. Theres an unlikely background story of a fascist police state holding left leaning university campuses in a state of siege; students are hunted down for extermination or deportation to labour/death camps. Its all very cute and funny but not enough to justify a book. I read this straight through on a ten-hour plane flight and I was left feeling emotionally isolated and disassociated and wanting those hours back.

Philip K. Dick, as many people know, had a series of visions / hallucinations throughout his life and these are explained in detail on the Philip K. Dick page on the Wikipedia. The famous illustrator and cultural documentarian/commentator R. Crumb illustrated "The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick" -- an 8 page comic story / graphic novella [philipkdickfans daught-kham (four wards lash) weirdo (forewards lash) weirdo1 (daught aychee,tee,em ] (sorry, phonetics... otherwise ah-mah-zhan sense "or's" it! )

On "page 8", the last page of the story there is a reference to this book (Flow my tears) stating: "One of his books in which there is a "cipher" a secret prophetic message aimed at "particular people"; and which Dick was not even aware of when he wrote the book in 1974."

I just thought that was interesting. Cheers!

This was an awsome book. In the usual Philip K Dick manner he explores the question of what is real. But i would highly recomend tearing out the fourth part, the Epiloge, and burning it. It may nearly wreck the book for you. It seems as if Dick wanted could not stand the world his book created and had to unmake it. If you can not stand to tear it out at least wait a few days between reading the rest of the book and the last part.

"Flow my tears" is a sad, moving, very personal story by one of the world's Science Fiction greats. It is an adventure, a love story and a Science Fiction tour de force. In one of his favourite themes Dick has taken an idea originated by the philosopher Kant, and expanded it into a story. Simplified Kant reasoned that an individual experiences two universes, the common one (Koinos Cosmos) and a personal one (Einos Cosmos). The common cosmos could be a sum of all personal cosmoses, plus reality. (Don't blame Kant for this, I'm oversimplifying.) Dick extrapolates from there: What if one person's cosmos is disproportionately influential in the perception of the common cosmos? and what if that person is insane? or on drugs? The universe could well become a very weird place. Dick's huge intellect, experiences with drugs (especially LSD) and often unhappy personal life come together to make a hugely involving novel which has to be counted among the very best of the genre.

FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID is a drug induced romp through a future that has already happened. Or is it?

[...] dope, he thought. You can always tell when it hits you but never when it unhits, if it ever does. It impairs you forever or so you think so; you can't be sure. Maybe it never leaves. And they say, Hey man, your brain's burned out, and you say, maybe so. You can't be sure and you can't be not sure."

I have read other Philip K. Dick works and FLOW MY TEARS had been on my "to be read" list for years. I finally bought it just prior to a business trip that would include a half-dozen airport hours. The main (anti-hero) character, Jason Taverner, is everyman and no-man. As anyone familiar with Dick knows, he was ahead of his time, in the company of Heinlein, Bradbury, and Asimov. This story, with its "Police State" setting, is suddenly current and relevant to 2006. A quick and easy read on the surface, if consumed cerebrally, the twists and machinations that Dick works into the "two" worlds, reveal a startlingly philosophical look at what constitutes identity and reality.