Voices From the Street [Hardcover]

Philip K. Dick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2007

Stuart Hadley is a young radio electronics salesman in early 1950s Oakland, California. He has what many would consider the ideal life; a nice house, a pretty wife, a decent job with prospects for advancement, but he still feels unfulfilled; something is missing from his life. Hadley is an angry young man--an artist, a dreamer, a screw-up. He tries to fill his void first with drinking, and sex, and then with religious fanaticism, but nothing seems to be working, and it is driving him crazy. He reacts to the love of his wife and the kindness of his employer with anxiety and fear.

One of the earliest books that Dick ever wrote, and the only novel that has never been published, Voices from the Street is the story of Hadley's descent into depression and madness, and out the other side.

Most known in his lifetime as a science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick is growing in reputation as an American writer whose powerful vision is an ironic reflection of the present. This novel completes the publication of his canon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This previously unpublished novel is remarkable for a number of reasons, probably the least of which is novelistic merit. Stuart Hadley is a young man born to privilege; he is handsome and educated; his pregnant wife is devoted to him; he has worked his way up from salesman to manager of a television and radio shop, but he wants more. The more he wants is not clear, even to him, and his existential crisis involves him with a shady, quasi-religious sect, the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus, led by a charismatic evangelist. Stuart's flirtation with the movement soon leads him away from his placid middle-class life into a sinister association with a mysterious femme fatale, Marsha Frazier. His decline is accelerated by psychotic depression that spirals into life-threatening self-destruction. Like much of Dick's fiction, the plot skims ambiguously along an abstract surface, only occasionally revealing concrete motivation or linear connection. But that's what endears Dick's novels to millions of readers nearly 25 years after his death, and that's what makes him a significant postwar American novelist. Shallow characterization and crude dialogue show a young novelist groping for style. Still, echoes of Dick's contemporaries such as Ralph Ellison, Richard Yates, Rod Serling, Raymond Chandler and early Kurt Vonnegut Jr. resonate, and a bonus exists in Dick's impeccable eye for detail. Apart from creating an ambience that complements the novel, he provides a veritable literary museum of the early 1950s, replete with the period's social and political attitudes and dozens of references to everyday items, commonplace practices that underscore and illuminate this significant transitional period in American culture. Literary critics will have a field day; Dick fans will be in rapture. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Almost 25 years after his death, Dick is enjoying a revival of interest in his work that most of his surviving peers in sf might envy. His stories have been the bases for six Hollywood movies--most recently, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly--and almost every scrap of his writing has been spirited back into print. While this heretofore unpublished novel from Dick's early years is strictly mainstream fare, it foreshadows themes that appear later in his speculative fiction, particularly those concerning madness and alienation. In many ways, the central figure here, Stuart Hadley, lives the ideal American dream, working as an electronics salesman and married to a beautiful woman in a tony district of 1950s Oakland, California. Like many of Dick's iconoclastic protagonists, however, he is also a dreamer, an idealistic artist, and ultimately a dropout from lockstep social conformism. The novel follows Hadley's descent into depression, madness, and eventual return to sanity. Surprisingly well written for a formative effort, it is a welcome addition to its author's large and brilliant canon. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (January 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765316927
• ISBN-13: 978-0765316929
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #645,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quietly chilling, perhaps his best "writing", February 10, 2007

By 

Lonson E. Armstrong "Lon Armstrong" (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voices From the Street (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel, though I have to say it has disturbing moments (some may not "enjoy" being disturbed in reading, I have to say that I do).

I found myself both identifying with and repelled from Stuart Hadley, the centerpiece character in the novel. This created moments of reading the novel that were surprising and moving. Though the overall tone of the novel is dark, and much of Dick's characteristic humor is not as overtly drawn as in other novels, the subject matter will interest fans of his work, especially fans of his posthumously published "mainstream" novels. (Mainstream? Hardly. That was the problem for publishers!)

My guess is that this was written in the Point Reyes Station period, around "The Man in the High Castle" and "The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike" (maybe this should be titled "The Man who Was So Afraid to Risk" or some similar title!) The writing I feel is a superb example of what Dick was capable of creating with patience and passion. Descriptive passages evoke sudden moods, action sequences race or crawl appropriately with swift shifts that jar and disturb. I am not sure if there was much editorial revision or intervention at play in this manuscript, I suspect perhaps not, and it may well be better for it. It seems to take just the right path and pace to unfold.

Recommended for Philip K. Dick fans. I view it (right at this moment) as one of his best. (Scandalous?)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, June 3, 2007

By 

Brian Wibecan (Montgomery, AL, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voices From the Street (Hardcover)

The characters are almost uniformly annoying; there were many points in the book where I wanted to throttle one of them. It's a depressing story with a depressing ending.

Nonetheless, this was a captivating book, quite well written. Watching these nuanced characters try to make a buck, try to figure out the world, try to figure themselves out, was fascinating. I would recommend it to Philip K. Dick fans and to others. I don't think I'd put this book among Dick's absolute best, but it is quite good.

(In case someone reading this thinks PKD only wrote science fiction: that's not the case. He wrote a number of books that are not even remotely science fiction, and this is one of them.)

Early in the book there are various anti-Semitic and racist comments that I found jarring. I initially dismissed them as products of the time. They turned out to be precursors to important plot points. Lots of issues are explored, agonized over. Few if any are resolved. The book stimulated a lot of confusing thought for me, part of what I really liked about it.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sad Story About Sad People, May 2, 2007

By 

Louis N. Gruber "Author of Jay" (Lexington, SC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Voices From the Street (Hardcover)

Stuart Hadley is a nice-looking young TV salesman who hates his job and everything else. Jim Fergesson is the owner of the store where Stuart works. Ellen is Stuart's long suffering wife. A number of other characters buzz in and out of Stuart's life, as he grows increasingly dissatisfied, yearning for something he can't name. For a brief time he thinks he's found the answer in a millenial Christian cult, but that doesn't last long. Stuart treats the people in his life abominably. Eventually he flames out in an orgy of violent, self-destructive rage. In the last chapter, after an enforced period of psychiatric treatment, Stuart is just beginning to get a grip. He's badly injured, but for the first time he is content to work on small, realistic goals.

There's not much more to say about the plot. There are many characters, all terribly flawed and with few redeeming features. The author seems to have little affection for any of the characters and it was hard for this reader to like them either.

Apparently this is one of PKD's early novels, never published in his lifetime, and now available to the public for the first time. I could see why it wasn't published earlier. Except for the author's well-deserved fame, it would never be published now. It's poorly written, loaded with cliches, bogged down in long, rambling conversations that are hard to believe, one-dimensional characters without depth, and a lead character who inspires little empathic response from the reader. Why is he so unhappy? Why does he whine so much? Still, there are flashes of the great author's later brilliance. And powerful descriptions of the time, the place, and the ambience. I kept reading, hoping things would get better, and eventually, in the last few pages, they did. Sort of. If you're a PKD fan, you might want this one to complete your collection. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.