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

by Emmanuel Carrere (Author), Timothy Bent (Translator) "On December 16, 1928, in Chicago, Dorothy Kindred Dick gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl..." (more)
Key Phrases: Phil Dick, Palmer Eldritch, Point Reyes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'Emmanuel Carrere'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. Carrere, 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' Harper's US 'Startling Carrere gets so far inside the head of the deeply troubled author the resulting text is remarkably vivid, intimate, often haunting ' Philadelphia Inquirer 'What Dick thinks and feels as man and writer is richly developed in this riveting biography. Mr Carrere's book is mesmerizing. Seldom have I read a biographer who drew me so deeply into his subject's world' New York Sun 'Every whorl of Dick's mind, every delusion, every leap through the looking glass, is chronicled. The effect is powerful ' Boston Globe --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador (May 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312424515
• ISBN-13: 978-0312424510
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #149,253 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carrere provides non-judgmental look at Dick's life, November 14, 2006

By	Alissa (NJ) - See all my reviews

I Am Alive and You are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere has been on my books to read list for awhile. I have a weakness for biographies and autobiographies of writers, and if it's a writer who I all but worship as a god, well, all the better.

Philip K. Dick is one of those writers who, once I discovered all those years ago with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, felt compelled to read every book I could get my hands on. There are a few here and there that I have missed, but I have read the vast majority of Dick's works, and perhaps none was more haunting than Valis, particularly the author's introduction to the novel. Not having any use for religion myself, I felt a bit betrayed that a writer I idolized could have written something so strangely spiritual. It seemed like it had to be all a joke. I know exactly how those French fans felt at that science fiction conference,Carrere describes in I Am Alive and You are Dead because I have been there. If anything, though, it was Valis that made me want to read more about the life of Philip K. Dick.

Carrere calls the biography he's written "a peculiar book," and says he has attempted to portrary Dick from the "inside." I can't say whether this is the result, but the book chronicles Dick's life with an empathy that seems born of a true fan, who wants to understand this writer and share his story with the world.

He tells the story of Dick's decent into madness with honesty, and yet avoids passing judgment. It is a tragic story and a dark story, all the more disturbing because it is a true story and not a work of fiction.

I have seen what madness can do to a person firsthand, and I'm always the last person to classify what others call crazy as insanity. Sure it sounds crazy that Jesus could appear in some girl's toilet bowl, but then millions of people go off to church each Sunday, many of them believing in things that look a whole hell of a lot like insanity - a virgin that gives birth to a semi-divine child, a person turning into a pillar of salt, a dead person disappearing from a tomb. When it comes right down to it, The Bible is full of as much weirdness as say, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I appreciated the fact that Carrere never tried to paint a caricatureof Dick, but presented the man as he was, and showed the way he struggled to understand the seeming insanity taking over his life.

Carrere also does his best to link the different epochs in Dick's life with the books he was writing at that time. He doesn't cover all his novels, but a fair number. The result is that the reader can see the inspirations behind some of the themes, and in some cases the outright autobiographical nature of the works.

I have read no other biographies of Dick's life to date, and so, have nothing to compare this book with, but found it a solid and well-rounded effort. It may not be quite as page-turning as one of Dick's novels, but it is written in a way that is engaging and entertaining.

6 of 6 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 (REAL NAME)

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.