Customer Reviews

In Milton Lumky Territory (GollanczF.)

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I'd advise only reading this if you're like me, you enjoy Philip K. Dick's writing, you've read a fair few of his books including 'Confessions of a Crap Artist', and you hope to read all his works (and steer clear of stuff like 'The Ganymede Takeover').
'In Milton Lumky Territory' may not be as exciting and quirky a read as 'Confessions of a Crap Artist' but it is a good read nonetheless and it's a shame that this was languishing as a manuscript on one of Dick's bookshelves until after his death.
It's set in the 50's, it has a purposeful main character in his mid-twenties who has that same horrible awareness of bad interpersonal situations that can be found in 'Confessions of a Crap Artist'. It's a good quality novel that you'll look back on and like.

This realist novel, written in 1958 and not published till 1985, is a concise, ironic story, set in Idaho, of the marriage of Bruce, a young man, to Susan, his former fifth grade teacher, and his devastating experiences in trying to run her business. Milton Lumky, a dumpy, red-faced salesman with a penchant for outrageous remarks, is not the main character in the novel, but he has center stage whenever he is on. Dick wrote In Milton Lumky Territory under the influence of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Both works deal with the tragedy of the common man, making the point, as Dick quoted in an interview, that "attention must be paid to this man." Like Willy Loman, Milton Lumky is a man of essential goodness who has been beaten down by what he has come to see as the degrading nature of his job. His Idaho is a provincial world of small towns, small minds, and a certain unrelieved nastiness. The only reprieve from the dreariness of this barren land and culture is to be found in the felicities of the heart, which Bruce and Susan take refuge in at the end when they move out of Milton Lumky territory.

First read all Dick's science fiction starting with Ubiq and then Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Then read his many post-death published works (huh?- how did that happen?). Then read In Milton Lumky Terrritory and realize that it was all there at the beginning but you couldn't have noticed it then. The difficulty, the humor, the unknowability- the real conflated with the unreal and surreal- the confusion of how reality such as it is, is (how is it?). Life, space, time. How all is a symbol for all and there is no such thing as itself. As you read Lumky realize its conection to the scene in Ubiq where a table disappears and a paper falls to the earth with the word' 'table' written on it. Then at the end of your reading admit that you don't know whether all the time you've existed did exist or only seemed to (but to whom?). Horselover Fat(see Valis)- the true genius of 20th century letters. Oh if you've time- see the massive number of movies based on his work- from Alien to Bladerunner to Eternal Sunshine to Minority Report to Vanilla Sky to The Truman Show to Total Recall to Scanners to Next ... to Black Swan(?) He's great- good luck- but it will take work and many years. Too bad if you don't live that long but at least you started.

Would someone please explain to me how Philip K. Dick got so knowledgeable about the life and experiences of traveling salesmen? His biography is very clear; he supported himself (not well, but sufficiently) by his writing for just about his entire adult life and rarely held a day job. Even when he did, it was a stationary employment - he worked for some time as a clerk in a classical-music record store, for example. So where did he pick up the sharp detail of where a traveling salesman might go, who he might see, what he might think about? It's all right there in this novel, and for all I know it might be totally inaccurate, but it sure seems real.

PKD was, of course, a master of the imagination in the science fiction realm, and we can see with "In Milton Lumky Territory" that his imagination was no less powerful in mainstream fiction. Take, for example, the fact that the book's setting restricts itself primarily to small-town Idaho; I have been unable to confirm that PKD ever even visited that area, but it rings true all the way from the weathered porches to the yellow-winged flies. All the more impressive, this, when you consider that almost all of the man's work is set either in California or on some other planet. There are also the thoughts and actions of Bruce Stevens, the novel's hero, as he considers balance sheets, job lots, consignments and franchises, trying to make a go of it as a store owner.

Unlike many of PKD's stories, this one is pretty simple and straightforward, so there's no need to go into a lot of detail. Suffice to say that Bruce, a traveling buyer for a discount warehouse who talks a good postwar American Century line, stumbles into a relationship with Susan, his old fifth-grade teacher of all people. The two of them buy out her partner in a kind of 1958 version of Kinko's (carbon paper rather than copiers), and Bruce starts looking around for something to sell. That's when he meets Milton Lumky.

Milton is a paper salesman who travels all over the Pacific Northwest and as far inland as Boise, which means that Bruce is - you got it - in Milton Lumky territory. No big deal, you might think. Guess again; here's where PKD heads off into one of his patented paranoid flights of fancy. Turns out that life in Milton Lumky territory is a constant struggle with decay, disease, long hours on the road in the days before the Interstate Highway system, and of course the possibility of economic and marital ruin. The most surprising thing is this: When PKD, in his brief introduction, insists that "In Milton Lumky Territory" is a funny and upbeat book, he's quite right. You find yourself liking these people and wishing them well, despite - or maybe because of - their less-than-kindly ways with each other.

Of course, as in any decent novel, there's conflict galore in Bruce's story. He's gearing up to run a small business, after all, and building a new relationship with an older woman at the same time. This would be complicated enough without Milton Lumky, who is old, sick, dissatisfied with his life and profession, jealous of Bruce's relationship with Susan, full of unsolicited business and personal advice, and yet seems genuinely interested in seeing Bruce succeed. As Bruce makes his way from Boise to Reno to Seattle and back on the lonely Pacific Northwest roads, you can see him beginning to turn into a Milton Lumky himself, only perhaps without the older man's more generous impulses. Uh-oh.

So what's so funny and upbeat about this story? That depends on how you look at it. PKD, as always, loves these characters and can smile at their more juvenile tendencies - the way they stumble through their lives, changing their minds about pretty nearly everything, giving each other the silent treatment when they don't get their way, seeking petty revenge for perceived slights, and yet really needing each other, for company if nothing else. In reading "In Milton Lumky Territory," you're watching a group of people trying very hard to grow up. It's not always enlightening, but it can be quite moving at times.

Besides, like many children, they get themselves into such scrapes. Wait until you read about what happens to Bruce at the beginning of the story, when he drops in on an old girlfriend hoping for some action.

And then there's the curious influence of PKD's interest in paranoia on what seems like a perfectly innocent mainstream tale. What, after all, do you do when you have to spend hours on the road just on the off chance of finding something you can make a living at? You start to daydream, of course. If you're not careful, you end up like Bruce; in this novel we can see him beginning to take his darker daydreams seriously, and attributing evil motives to pure coincidence. Then along comes Milton, much more advanced on the same dangerous route, and you see what's so painful about getting too deep into Milton Lumky territory.

Turns out that PKD always knew how thin is the line between imagination and lunacy, not only on Mars, but also in whitebread Middle America. His fans know that in his later years his mental processes got a little dicey. You have to give him credit, though; in his mainstream work and in his sf, he dove into the world of the imagination and came up brilliant. Looks like he was even braver than we thought. For all their complaining and misbehavior, so are these characters.

Benshlomo says, We all want to avoid trouble, but that's where the treasure is.

The question is: Who is Milton Lumky? I read Dick's novel expecting to find out but came to the end without this question being answered. OK, so maybe Milton Lumky is not so much a character in this novel as device concocted by Dick to reveal the persona of Bruce "Skip" Stevens, a young man trying to find his way in life. Within a few pages we see that Bruce is immature socially and intellectually. Not much more is revealed about Bruce even with the, sometimes painfully, detailed interaction with Milton Lumky. So we are still left with a lot of questions. But... perhaps this is exactly as Dick intended.

Even though there is almost no action in this story, the book draws you along with expectations and a kind of morbid curiosity. Bruce Steven's life unfolds as many others do, with a purposeless but inexorable impetus. As things turn sour for the young man, we can even sympathize to an extent, although Bruce is not the most engaging fictional character. I see this novel as a logical offshoot of the Existentialism of the 40's and 50's. It owes more to Sartre and Kerouac than Arthur Miller.

And the end is a shocker. Not because of any tragic or outrageous happening but because it seems totally contrived and, well, ersatz. I think it is Dicks raised middle finger to the literature of the day and perhaps to the reader that is expecting the happy resolution of the conflicts in the story. It provides the happy resolution in an unbelievable setting.

"In Milton Lumkey Territory" is in some ways unsatisfying and often troublesome to the reader but I believe that Philip K. Dick would not have it any other way. If you don't ponder circumstances in your own life when reading about Bruce Steven's, then there is something missing in your existence.

Am I the only one who realized that the supposed happy ending to "In Milton Lumky Territory" was merely Bruce fantasizing about what might have happened if Susan hadn't sold the typewriters back to CCB? The story really ends with Bruce lying in bed in a hotel room, reminiscing/fantasizing about his first day with Susan as his teacher. His rememberance morphs into an alternative-history fantasy, in which they make a fortune off of the typewriters he altered.

Keep in mind, his solution is far more moral than Susan's. He wants to convert the typewriters into something genuinely useful; she merely wants to pass the deception onto a larger company. In his fantasy, he does all the right things, including sending the $500 to Lumky's widow, even though it was a gift. Read the ending again--it's clearly a fantasy.

I think it was always Philip K. Dick's aspiration to be a mainstream writer, but he would only find success in the genre of science fiction. Dick's loss is the world's gain, for his science fiction is recognized as some of the best in the field. His mainstream works would, with one exception (Confessions of a Crap Artist) remain unpublished in his lifetime. As I've noted with other of his posthumously released mainstream works, there's probably a reason why most of this wasn't published: they just weren't the same caliber as his science fiction.

That isn't to say they're bad, but they don't stand out like his sci-fi does. In Milton Lumky Territory is a fitting example: it is good, but not great. It is the story of Bruce Stevens, who in late 1950's Idaho, comes back to his hometown for a visit and winds up staying. Bruce's intent is to visit an old girlfriend while on a business trip, but when things don't go as planned, he winds up meeting Susan Faine. Susan's not only ten years older than the 24 year old Bruce, she's also his former fifth grade teacher.

Susan has just gotten out of her second marriage and is looking at Bruce as a manager for her small office supply store. He not only takes the job, but he winds up marrying her as well. Throughout much of the book, he will try to improve the store, but ambition will sometimes exceed business sense. In addition, Bruce will deal with the strains of a hastily entered marriage and a friendship of sorts with the title character, a garrulous salesman.

This is not a particularly memorable book, but it is decent. Dick rarely wrote poorly, but this is primarily only of interest to his fans. Others should probably sample his science fiction to see what him so special.

Bruce Stevens travels all over the West coast via car, working as a buyer for a discount house. While stopping near his hometown in Idaho, he reconnects with a woman who was once his elementary school teacher, and they begin a relationship. As her new partner in love, Bruce is also invited to become a partner in her typing business. After seeing how shoddy the management of the business has been, Bruce throws himself into efforts to revitalize the business, causing conflict with his new wife and some business associates he makes along the way.

This was boring. It was short, which is why I finished it and why it has 2 stars instead of 1, but it was boring. Tedious. I had no interest in any of the characters and by the end of the book, I actually seriously disliked many of them. If it wasn't for the fact that I think I already have Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in my physical TBR pile somewhere, I wouldn't care if I never opened another Philip K. Dick book. I'm glad he has a following, I'm glad he's successful, but I am definitely not adding my name to the roll-call.

Mid twenties Bruce Stevens lives in Reno working as a buyer for Consumers Buying Bureau. It is one of those new establishments: a discount place. He stops in Montario, Idaho to buy Trojans; planning to use them when he visits Peg Googer. However, Peg has company including Susan Faine, who looks familiar, but he cannot place her. Susan runs a typewriter rental service mostly used by male lawyers and has just obtained a divorce from Walt in Mexico. He leaves for Boise but forgot his coat so he returns to Peg's house; only Susan is there as the others went out. As he leaves again, he is attracted to Susan before realizing that she was Miss Reuben, his fifth grade teacher at Garret A. Hobart Grammar School in Montario back in 1944.

Ten years his senior, Susan and Bruce marry giving him an instant family as she has a stepdaughter and her typing business to run while he is on the road a lot as he does the circuit between most of the major cities west of the Rockies. His western travels lead to his meeting older traveling paper salesman Milton Lumky whose depressing look at the American conditions haunts Bruce as the middle aged seller pontificates negatively about traveling salesmen being a dying dinosaur with the discounters on the rise. Meanwhile, Susan's fears that Bruce will leave her for some younger female he meets on the road harm their relationship while his misperceptions about families hurt their marriage further.

Although written as a late 1950s contemporary, IN MILTON LUMKY TERRITORY has the deep feel of a well written character driven historical that feels so apropos today with the dramatic demographic shifts in employment skills. Bruce is actually the prime player with Milton and Susan providing strong support mostly insight into the lead character or his work. Philip K. Dick shows his versatility and currency with this fine tale that holds up well as both a historical and as a deep look at people struggling with radical societal changes in their lives.

Harriet Klausner