The Dice Man (Paperback)

by Luke Rhinehart (Author) "I am a large man, with big butcher's hands, great oak thighs, rock-jawed head, and massive, thick-lens glasses..." (more)
Key Phrases: Miss Welish, New York, Miss Reingold (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879518642
• ISBN-13: 978-0879518646
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #225,934 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lucky Luke aka Don Psychote, May 2, 2003

By	Boris Bangemann "boyse" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

According to Time Out, this book was one of the most fashionable novels of the early 1970s; and Anthony Burgess, the author of the unsettling "A Clockwork Orange" (1962), graced it with the comment "touching, ingenious and beautifully comic."

"The Dice Man" is a dark comedy, violent and hilarious at the same time; an upbeat precursor to the much grimmer "American Psycho" (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis, and the similarly satirical "The Elementary Particles" (1998) by the French author Michel Houellebecq. With a light touch and in mischievously entertaining fashion, the book plays with the fundamentals of the way we understand ourselves: rationality, identity, reality; in sum, all the ways in which we construct coherence from chance, or something from nothing.

Luke Rhinehart, the author (in fact, the real author's pseudonym) and narrator of the book, is the ultimate unreliable narrator. Luke's actions are largely dictated by chance. He writes down alternative actions and then tosses dice to determine which action to take. The result, he claims, is freedom to live different sides of his personality. As an author, for example, he lets the dice decide what he should write in his fictional autobiography with the title "The Dice Man" and what not; and the dice decide when he should lie and when not. Consequently, he announces on page one that he is the author of "the lovely first-rate pornographic novel, Naked Before the World" only to reveal much later in the book that the dice ordered him not to write about this piece of fiction in "The Dice Man." Too bad, dear reader.

The book works not only as a send-up of the psychoanalytic profession and the counter-culture of the late 1960s, it also succeeds at creating its own twisted reality - as attested by all the readers who felt that their view of the world had been profoundly changed by this novel.

It is ironic that "The Dice Man" has a cult following while the book makes fun of the cult of Dice Living created by the fictional Luke Rhinehart. In a sense the cult following includes the real author himself who produced a couple of sequels to this book. The irony should not come as a surprise, though. Authors who are seriously unserious run a high risk of creating ironic side effects. One of the earliest examples is the Daoist philosopher Lao-Tse (born BC 604). He blissfully ignored the irony in his "Dao De Jing," a book that declares in the first sentence "the Dao that can be told is not the real Dao" and then goes on for some 5,000 words to explain what the Dao is.

In sum, "The Dice Man" is recommended for readers who are willing to suspend the sense of their own importance for the sake of enjoying a fictional world, and to tolerate an alien system of morality for the time it takes to read this original and amusing satire.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dicy, May 11, 2000

By	Ville Halonen (Helsinki, Finland) - See all my reviews

As usual, the dice said I should tell you what I thought about this book. There are several me's, and each one has a different opinion, or at least would like to say some things to you.

So I take a pen and a piece of paper and write down the options. If I roll...

1-4) I play around a little, and say this book was terrible, no explanations. There's that little part of me that likes to do a few pranks. 1 star.

5-6) I choose to take a civilized and wannabe-pro approach and use a lot of difficult words describing how intelligent and witty The Dice Man was. 5 stars.

7-17) I say that I really loved this book. I go to the extremities and use a whole lotta superlatives and exclamation marks. It was hilarious at most times, and thought-provoking at all times. The thing about giving your every side a chance to live it's life, to deliberately submit to a sort of a schitzophrenia being a good thing...interesting, most interesting. 5 stars, absolutely!

18-29) I take a very dice man-ish approach and choose to tell you my opinion on this book by describing the selection process. 5 stars.

30-32) I give up and never say an opinion on The Dice Man.

33) I "accidentally" write about a wrong book.

34-35) I write my review always one key stroke to the right. Q is W, W is E, E is R and so on.

36) I write my review in the same manner as described in one part of the The Dice Man.

Then I take two green dice, say a little prayers for the Die and throw them. 21. The Dice have ruled that I should write about my decision-making experience.

Although I'm here violating the laws of all uncertainty, I'd suggest you don't leave whether you read this novel or not to the whims of the dice. It might open up many doors. And change your life.

Or offer a new way of having fun, at least. 1) Read it. 2) Read it. 3) Read it twice. 4) Read it. 5) Read it. 6) Read it.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back in print! This weird book will set your mind spinning!, January 15, 1999

By A Customer

I feel about "Dice Man" a bit like I feel about Ayn Rand's novels: Both begin in our real world and proceed to carry us towards an alternate (superior?) life structure envisioned by the author. I can't see either vision as a complete blueprint for re-forming my life, and yet the ideas are extremely thought-provoking and powerfully expressed. I'm glad I read "Dice Man"; it's unique. It's also very enjoyable, if you have a taste for dark and absurd humor.

Interestingly, the story is told from the first person point of view of a New York psychologist named Luke Rhinehart. That's the name of the actual author of the book (a pen name). There is also a sequel, "Search for the Dice Man", although that is only in print in England. You can get it from Amazon's United Kingdom store, www.amazon.co.uk.