Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ONE OF DICK'S BEST, March 23, 2001
A tire-regroover named Jack Isidore is an eccentric fellow. He believes that sunlight has weight, cows have four stomachs, the earth is hollow, and by the way, the world is going to end on April 23rd. But the weirdest part of the story is this: his "normal" sister and brother-in-law and some friends of theirs are even STRANGER than he is. In this book Philip K. Dick explores what it means to be normal. Are we any different from the people in the mental institutions? Unlike some of PKD's books, this one is very consistent and keeps your attention the whole way through. I was very pleased with it. Sure, it's more fiction than science fiction, but it proves how versatile an author PKD really is. This is definitely one of his best books, and I've read about half of his novels.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dick's mainstream attempt that bites deep, November 15, 2001
Over the last two decades Philip K. Dick has slowly gained in repute as one of this centuries' most inventive and prolific authors: a sci-fi auteur who cranked out pulp masterpieces by the dozen while surviving on horsemeat and methamphetamine. There are several themes prevalent in the majority of Dick's oeuvre: paranoia, drugs, the nature of God, schizophrenic time/space variations, aliens, semi-tragic characters in often archetypical clothing. _Confessions of a Crap Artist_, however, contains almost none of these bizarre themes; as one of Dick's stabs at the mainstream, _Confessions_ is a straightforward examination of life in Southern California the 50's, with `normal' people co-existing by `wackos,' both of whom, in typical Dick fashion, change places over the course of the novel.Jack Isodore is a crap artist, a collector of crackpot theories and useless junk, a man endlessly fascinated by the world's unexplained secrets be they legitimate or not. But he is also happy and fairly satisfied by his life, something that cannot be said for his sister-in-law Judy and her husband Charlie, painted in broad strokes as a shrew and the man she uses, respectable on the surface but narrow-minded and demented when closely examined. Their `American Dream' lifestyle, the house and the farm and the three little kids, is altered/destroyed by manipulation and dissatisfaction with said `Dream', and when set in place next to Jack's lackadaisical routines and surprisingly strong moral fiber, the line between crazy and normal blurs with rapid intensity. Along with _The Man in the High Castle_, this is among Dick's most lucid works, and probably the place novices should start first. Though a quick read, the implications and undercurrents of _Confessions of a Crap Artist_ should resonate within the reader for some time after completion, which, in my opinion, is the truest mark of a worthwhile book. Recommended.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Different Kind of Dick, April 22, 2002
Darkly funny, slightly sad, brutally honest, and philosophically deep, Confessions of a Crap Artist merits the distinction of being among Philip K. Dick's best novels, despite its prima facie dissimilarity to PKD's main body of work. Ostensibly a chronicle of the disintegration of a middle class family (a rather banal and hackneyed gimmick in contemporary American fiction), Confessions is at heart an inquiry into the nature of reality. PKD fans will immediately recognize this as the motivating theme of the author's career.The protagonist is the mildly schizophrenic Jack Isidore (recognize that name from anywhere?), whose obsessions with pulp mags, pseudoscience and new age detritus render him an ineffective, if harmless excrescence on mainstream society, and enlighten the novel's title. After being arrested for shoplifting a can of chocolate covered ants, Jack is "rescued" by his sister Fay and her husband Charley Hume and brought to live with them in their ostentatious Marin County home, where Jack earns his keep by scrubbing the floors, feeding the livestock and babysitting the Humes' two daughters. Liberated from the household and parental obligations that had theretofore been the weak glue of their relationship, the Humes' marriage promptly falls apart. Fay's overweening selfishness and Charley's pathetic ineffectiveness as a husband come to the fore, resulting in infidelity, public scandal, and death. Meanwhile, Jack falls in with a local UFO cult peopled by Marin County housewives. (PKD devotees will recognize the cult's leader, Claudia Hambro, as an incarnation of the perennial dark-haired girl). Jack's hallucinations provide escapist counterpoint to the novel's bucolic 1950's setting, and parallel the more meaningful contrast PKD is trying to convey: that of superficial bourgeois respectability straining to conceal dysfunction, conceit and vulgarity. Thus, Confessions is not merely a family chronicle; it is social satire, an indictment of a distinctly American flavor of hypocrisy. Placed in the broader context of PKD's oeuvre, however, satire takes a backseat to the author's overriding philosophical query: What is reality, and what is the relationship between perception and reality? Jack, whose quirky hallucinations give the novel a fantastic element, nevertheless perceives the Hume family dynamic with great clarity. And when his cult-inspired eschatology fails to materialize, he makes the ultimate confession (that he is a nut), but insists that "the blame [is] spread around fairly." That is to say, he insists that the reader recognize his nominally sane sister, her husband, and her lover Nathan Anteil as equally nutty. The problem of perception is further illustrated by the novel's shifting narrative style. While it is nominally Jack's confession that we're reading, the point of view actually alternates among the four leading dramatis personae. Interestingly, the first person voice is used for both Jack and Fay, while Charley's and Nathan's perspectives are presented in the third person. This suggests the possibility that PKD intended Jack and Fay to be literary alter-egos. It's a shame that Confessions is marketed as a science fiction novel, because it could and should serve as a bridge connecting readers of general fiction to an author whose talent was too big for his genre.
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