Customer Reviews

VALIS

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I am a huge PKD fan, and I put this among my favorite of the man's work. It is a difficult work, yes. It took me 3 tries before I could get through the first 70 or so pages. I feel that many of the reviewers here are overlooking a major part of the story. Yes, it's full of endless religious speculation and it is terrifically solipsistic and postmodern, but beyond all that, it is one of the most heart-wrenching books about grief that I have ever read. VALIS is not about YHWH in pink lasers, or the Gnostic gospels (Well, _of course_ it's about both of those things, just bear with me), it is about a man who has lost, and because of that, is lost. He cannot allow himself to understand death and goes on a quest to understand everything but. It's a brilliant novel, not one for everybody, but certainly one for the ages.

This book comes from the later stages of PKD's career, when he probably didn't even care about making his books accessible to the masses. That's something that up-and-comers have to do, and by this point PKD was surely trying to sort out his own personal philosophies in narrative form. You can see the websites for several different PKD fan clubs for speculation on what was going through his mind when he wrote this one. Here we have musings on religious visions, spiritual quests, and arcane ancient Greek and Gnostic Christian philosophies. Obviously one would also suspect experimentation in the arts of mind expansion, though in real life (if such a thing exists) PKD hated to be branded in that way. These are all played out by the typically off-center characters and curveball speculative plotlines of classic PKD.

This book can be quite frustrating at times, with long philosophical passages that are merely a mishmash of ideas PKD had come across in his personal studies, and that lead to philosophy overload but with little direction or grand overall insight to be found. Plus you have to wonder if this book is a literal or merely mental autobiography, or not an autobiography at all but one of PKD's subversive storytelling techniques, designed to warp the reader's mind. This book is told in both first and third person by the same character, a schizophrenic with two personalities that operate simultaneously and even interact with each other (a feature of several PKD stories). Here one of the two selves is the increasingly insane Horselover Fat and the other is his sane alter ego, who happens to be the author PKD himself. Ultimately, the mass philosophical confusion of this novel morphs into sheer fascination, albeit in a pretty cluttered way.

Note that the make-believe movie seen by the characters in this book was expanded by PKD into another novel - *Radio Free Albemuth* - which was not published during his lifetime. A story within a story within a quasi-mental-autobiography, as it were.

Before this, he had written about a robot-hunter who suspects he may be a robot himself and a world in which people age in reverse, but Valis is the point where Philip K. Dick really got weird. Based on a supposed experience of the author himself, Valis is the story of Horselover Fat, a man who God (or some being of the sort) contacted using a pinkish ray of light. Fat is a 60s burnout trying to survive in the 70s and this encounter encourages him to write an exegesis, explaining the workings of the universe which apparently include a race of three-eyed creatures and an elaborate system of holograms. Fat is egged on by a group of friends including the Catholic David, the cynical Kevin, the cancer-ridden Sherri and a science fiction named Philip K. Dick, who freely admits he is also Horselover Fat (It will almost make sense after you have read it). Valis is part postmodern experiment, part philosophical treatise and even part science-fiction novel. For people who like their literature inventive, pensive and consciously bizarre (and that is how most Dick fans like their literature), Valis is sure to be a winner.

Philip K Dick experienced something profound in 1974 after a long battle with drug addiction, depression, and paranoia . . . what that experience was can best be described as a hallucinatory encounter with God. This book may be fiction as it's labeled, but more likely it's as close to autobiography as Dick could remember of his life from 1974 to 1978.

Many people consider this to be an unreadable volume because of its surreal journey through the mind of one with some sort of severe psychosis, and of its wild switches from first to third person, not to mention the confusion with which Dick puts himself in the plot as both the protagonist and narrator, but those being two different people. Add to that a heavy dose of gnostic gospel and widely varied obscure theological elements from many cultures, and you have a book few can even understand in the first reading.

That said, I loved it. Why? Because its actually a journey of awareness through a universe where time doesn't really exist, chaos reigns because the creator is insane, and Philip K Dick has trouble keeping it together yet manages to birth an entire religious awakening at the same time.

Before reading it, please familiarize yourself with Taoism, Buddhism, Gnosticism and even Jungian Psychoanalysis as well as various creation mythologies - perhaps a little light reading in the Joseph Campbell library - then dive in and see what can happen when this is all revealed to one man in a beam of light.

- CV Rick

Best read after Dick's other phenomenological novels (such as Eye in the Sky, Three Stigmata, and Ubik) because of its complexity, Valis is destined to remain Dick's most controversial book. Here the author steps outside the conventions of fiction to inform the reader that he, Philip K. Dick, has had visionary experiences, information beamed directly into his brain from a godlike extraterrestrial entity named VALIS. But he does so in such a way as to distance himself from the revelation. His dreaming, visionary alter ego, Horselover Fat, is another side of the character Phil Dick's psychotically split personality. Fat keeps a journal, the "Exegesis" (as Dick did in real life), in which he theorizes that we are all parts of a cosmic brain; everything, including ourselves, is information in this brain. He believes that the universe is an illusion but that God (or VALIS) is giving him glimpses of reality in the form of holograms produced by a beam of pink light aimed at his brain. When, late in the novel, as autobiography changes to science fiction and Fat is healed by the divine child Sophia, he "remembers" his true identity as Phil Dick, and Fat is incorporated and reintegrated in Phil's personality. You can call this a metafiction, but it transcends even that category, for the author neither tries to subvert the novel form nor to convert the reader to his fractured vision. Rather, it stands on the literary landscape a self-existent monolith, like those in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. More than any of Dick's other novels, it stretches fictional conventions to give the reader a virtually inexhaustible text that will simulataneously support and deny any interpretation.

I love works of art that divide people into two groups like some kind of Zoroastrian razor.
A lot has been said about this book in the reviews.
I think this is mind-altering writing. Really. You cannot read this book *and enjoy it* without having your attitude shifted.
Dick writes in such a way that there is always an elliptical dialectic between what is "real" in the context of the fictional reality and what is not real. In the end none of it is real, because it's just a science fiction book, or is it? The book's overtly autobiographical theme (the two main characters are "Phil" a science fiction writer and "Horselover Fat", which is a pseudonym which literally denotes the meaning of the names "Philip" and "Dick") adds a rather usettling third element to the dynamic. I find it dizzying to think that Dick's obsession with secret codes and subliminal messages and secret signs and societies may have led him to conceive of this book as a calling to an imagined elect out there who would read this book and have "anamnesis" triggered in their minds in much the same way Fat's was triggered by a fish sign on a prescription delivery woman's necklace. The tractate at the end of the book lies there like some kind of chunk of radioactive matter, somehow totally separate from any sense of fiction one could have had from the story itself. As if Dick really did write his own personal exegesis that he had wanted published but could not unless he made it into sci fi.
One of my private little delights is how Dick uses names in his stories....Eric Lampton? Ha Ha! Its so obvious and stupid but still its great.
I keep imagining this book as a film; some kind of cross-breed between The Man Who Fell To Earth (I recall this movie specifically in the way I imagine the film Valis from the book to have been presented) and The Dead Zone, which unfortunately in terms of comparison were based on books very much unlike VALIS. Maybe Stanley Kubric could have handled it very well, with access to the kind of significant budget that a film like that would take to do with success. Stanley Kubric is dead, alas.
Some movies kind of daze you for a while afterwords, and reality kind of feels a little different. Valis is one of those books that have that same effect, if you end up enjoying it.
*Its also crushingly depressing, as any suicidal rumination will tend to be.

This is perhaps the densest, hardest to penetrate book I've ever read. And I've read a lot. Essentially autobiographical, sprinkled with fictional elements to create a small semblance of "plot", Valis is Philip K. Dick trying, through writing, to find out what the hell happened to him in the 70's. It can be nearly impossible to follow at times. And reading the Tracate sprinkled throughout the book (and in an appendix at the end of the novel) one truly has to wonder if the man was insane. But if you dig below the surface, and see what Dick's really getting at here, you will find that the book is worth the trouble it takes to read it. No doubt you'll never understand all of it. That's not the point. I would not recommend this book for everyone, it's dense and hard at times to follow and not at all written in a conventional style (not that much PDK is.) However, if you are tired of mainstream literature and long for something more, or perhaps answers to the BIG questions, then this book is for you. Also, an absolute must-read for Dick fans, personal and wonderful as it is. If Valis turns you off at first, don't worry, stick with it, it's worth the rollercoaster ride it takes you on.

Horselover Fat is your objective narrator. As an outside person, it is his job to tell the story in 3rd person. However, Horselover Fat is also your main character, who occasionally tells his story in 1st person. Therefore, the narration of the story routinely slips between 3rd and 1st person. In fact, Horselover Fat will routinely describe events concerning Horselover Fat while expressing his concern for Horselover Fat. It's quite entertaining, actually.

Mr.Fat is a sad man living in California in the 1970s. He survives multiple attempts to kill himself in this book, and though you are certain he is crazy, he will occasionally break through the nonsense with statements of rational clarity. He has a wife (who left him), and a son (who went with his wife), and several "friends". One of them has cancer and she loathes herself, and though Fat attempts to save her, he inevitably fails. During the first half of the novel he is working dilligently on his "exegis", a series of grammatically complex statements that have something to do with civilization, humanity, God, religion, awareness, existence, and maybe something else. In fact, several parts of the exegis are cited in the book, along with footnotes for further reference. Perhaps one of the most entertaining dialogues is between Fat and his therapist while they are discussing obscure references about existentialist ideas. His therapist replies to every odd question Fat proposes without missing a beat, and Fat finally feels as if he has met someone who understands him. Later, when Fat has left the mental hospital and moved on to other things, he realizes that his therapist had tricked him. Perhaps his therapist hadn't understood anything about Fat, but instead, by talking to him directly, he distracted Fat from his depression and let him focus on what he thought was important. After that, Fat went back to dilligently working on his exegis, thankful to his therapist for his genius.

If you are not prepared for it, you might find yourself getting lost in the first part of the book because Fat talks himself in circles and you begin to wonder if there is a point. After awhile, however, you start to pick up on an underlying theme. It has a lot to do with human existence, free will, and similar metaphysical concepts. When you finish the book, you may feel enlightened, confused, or both.

However, I wouldn't bash this book just because I didn't understand all of its subtleties. It made me think, and that's exactly why I started reading it in the first place. Therefore, I am satisfied. 5 stars for "Valis", I say, and hats off to the late Philip K. Dick for being so creative.

I approach this piece with fear and trembling. It's probably the most controversial novel of Philip K. Dick's career; if he had lived it doubtless would have boded a fundamental change in his style and themes. Some consider it such an inspired work of genius that it's practically a book of scripture - others say it's the most boring novel ever produced by a major writer. Step lightly as we peer in.

Look around carefully - it's not exactly science fiction, but it certainly isn't plain mainstream work. For the first several pages it concerns a figure named Horselover Fat, of whom the narrator informs us that he starts going crazy when a friend of his commits suicide. Tragic, but fairly standard fictional stuff, apart from the protagonist's name. Then we smack into the statement "I am Horselover Fat", and we have to start wondering whether this is the author speaking for himself or some fictional narrator playing tricks on us. Don't hold your breath - you are not going to find out.

You're going to find out plenty of other things, though, such as the fact that "Horselover Fat" is a clear pseudonym for Philip K. Dick himself, since "Horselover" is a translation of the Greek name "Philip", and "Fat" the English equivalent of the German "Dick". So far, we have three PKD's - the author of the novel, its narrator, and its subject. There's more going on here than meets the eye, but after all, this is PKD. You didn't come in here expecting reliable surface appearances, I hope. In any case, this protagonist seems at least as confused about his identity as you and I are.

When a loved friend commits suicide, surely a person needs to spend some time trying to fathom it. In "VALIS", Horselover Fat seizes the opportunity to construct an entire cosmology, a sometimes desperate effort to believe in a meaningful universe where good people kill themselves. Some later experiences convince him that his new, enlightened understanding of reality has been beamed directly into his brain by God Himself, via a Vast Active Living Intelligence System. VALIS. Which sounds like a lot of hooey to all of his friends and to the narrator of this novel, until evidence begins to arise that Fat may be right. So what do you say when a drug-eating lunatic relates to reality more powerfully than you do?

There's a great deal to say on the subject, which is part of the problem with "VALIS". The middle chapters are full of Horselover Fat's notes on what God, or VALIS, has revealed, and his discussions with friends about the same. So you read and read, gradually realizing that this is one of those novels with little or no story as such, and you start to get into the philosophical and religious constructs in view, and then about 50 or so pages before the end you crash into a plot. Kind of knocks the wind out of you.

It's almost like PKD began this novel as a way to work out his feelings of rage and helplessness, then at some point said "Oh, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be writing a story!" Sounds pretty disorganized, but a good portion of this material first showed up in the earlier "Radio Free Albemuth", unpublished during the author's lifetime. That being so, we have to assume that PKD had his ideas pretty well worked out when he started on "VALIS", but it can take a lot of digging to prove the truth of that assumption. Nevertheless, and despite the apparently loose construction, "VALIS" shows definite signs of careful authorial shaping.

For instance, PKD played "pull the rug out from under the reader" plenty of times in earlier novels, but never with such subtlety as he did here. As narrator, he claims that he is Horselover Fat, dividing himself as a way of working out his pain, and with every page Fat and "Phil" get farther apart. You find yourself coming to accept them as separate characters. Then, within the story itself, the two characters unite again and you realize you've been tricked. The astonishing part is that the trick doesn't seem cruel or cheap - instead, it's a form of healing.

There's another force at work here that shows PKD's control over his story. It's very easy for an author to perform narrative experiments, or stuff loads of philosophical ideas into a story (that's not even necessarily a bad thing, as fans of "The Da Vinci Code" know), but those kinds of maneuvers tend to reduce a novel's emotional punch. The narrative tricks and exposition in "VALIS", on the contrary, actually add force to the wallop, maybe because it feels earned. If you process the hard stuff and really try to understand it, the feeling in the work means more. A passage early on tells us that for two months after his friend's suicide, Horselover Fat "cried and watched TV". Any author who can pack that much loneliness and grief into four words is doing something right - somehow that little passage made me want to jump into the book and give the guy a big hug. There's really not enough of that sort of thing in "VALIS", but there's just about enough.

In short, as many a knowledgeable authority said, Philip K. Dick was a national treasure because he found a way to examine deep and sometime dangerous issues in a popular format - in a word, pulp science fiction. That's certainly true here. More than just about any other PKD novel, though, "VALIS" requires a couple of readings to sink in - like a lot of great literature (and I use the word advisedly), this book makes you work. On one level, that's a weakness. On another, considering what's available in this book, to what better use could you devote your reading time?

Benshlomo says, God speaks - all you have to do is listen.

The first time I tried to read this, I made it to about page fifteen before giving up. I couldn't get past the fact that there were two characters (Dick and Fat) inhabiting the same body. Okay, I could understand that there was one guy with another guy living inside his head, but the other characters talked to both of them!

I picked it up a year later after experimenting with some mind altering substances, and what can I say? This book changed my life. This is the ultimate exploration of schizophrenia, not multiple personality disorder, but split personality disorder, the theme that dominates most of Dick's great works (Scanner Darkly, Flow my Tears).

This book is about identity, the ultimate philosophical question. Not the identity of the main character, but identity in general, what is it?

This is Dick's most important work, even though I found Palmer Eldritch and High Tower to be better overall fiction. As has been noted, this is almost a religious treatise, although the religion it describes is unique to Dick. The numbered notes scattered throughout the book and collected in the end are amazing enough to buy this book solely for the purpose of analyzing them. For example, his idea that we're all moving backward in time except for men like St. Paul is fascinating, and explains why Paul would have such a unique view of God that so few can seem to relate to.
Also, his Black Iron Prison concept is DEAD ON, and we are living in it, my friend. The Roman empire still exists, it's called the USA, and another term for it would rightly be the Fourth Reich.

Read Radio Free Albemuth first to warm up to the general concepts framed in a more conventional novel, then read VALIS to blow yourself away.