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I am Alive and You are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick
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Product Description
For his many devoted readers, Philip. K. Dick is not only 'one of the most valiant psychological explorers of the twentieth century' ("New York Times") but a source of divine revelation. Dick, whose work inspired such films as "Blade Runner", "Total Recall", and "Minority Report", dedicated his life to solving one ultimately unanswerable question: what is real? In the riveting style that won accolades for "The Adversary", Emmanuel Carrere follows Dick's strange odyssey from his traumatic beginnings in 1928, when his twin sister died in infancy, to his lonely end in 1982, beset by mystical visions of swirling pink light, three-eyed invaders, and messages from the Roman Empire. Drawing on interviews as well as unpublished sources, Carrere traces Dick's multiple marriages, paranoid fantasies, and vertiginous encounters with the drug culture of sixties California. He vividly conjures the spirit of this restless observer of American postwar malaise, whose more than fifty novels subverted the materials of science fiction - parallel universes, intricate time loops, collective delusions - to create classic works of contemporary anxiety. As disturbing and engrossing as a novel by Philip K. Dick himself, Carrere's unconventional work interweaves life and art to reveal the maddening genius whose writing foresaw - from cloning to reality TV - a world that looks ever more like one of his inventions.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #319873 in Books
- Published on: 2005-06-06
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
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
Guardian
‘Compelling … This book should convert a few more readers’
Uncut
‘***** You’ll want to go back to the novels, or envy those about to read them for the first time’
Customer Reviews
A Convincing & Compelling Portrait
This is a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in sci-fi guru Philip K Dick. Not only does it provide a moving account of Dick's 53 years on earth, but explores in detail how the author's personal circumstances influenced his writings - and not just the ones you'd expect (i.e. VALIS).
The story is frequently disturbing - especially as it chronicles the most bizarre epoch of Dick's life, spent in a house with drug-dependent young people, who inspired the characters for his 70s masterwork A SCANNER DARKLY.
Negatives: The book does spend perhaps too much time on simply retelling the plots of various PKD novels (though some of this is certainly needed); photographs would have aided the account; a bibliography would have been good also.
Good Points: The biographer conveys events in a literary yet lucid written style and cleverly mixes demanding passages with lighter anecdotes.
I have never read anything as compelling as this about Philp K Dick.
Will alter your perception of Philip K Dick
Writing a biography is one thing, getting inside Philip K Dick's mind quite another. In this novelisation of the science fiction writer's life the biographical facts are incidental, and reconstructing the amphetamine fuelled thoughts that drove him to write, divorce (four times?), attempt suicide (twice), and invent and inhabit his own fantastic and fear-filled worlds is M. Carrere's objective.
He succeeds brilliantly. It's astounding that in his paranoid delusional state Dick achieved so much, although paradoxically that's what drove him. It's a testament to M. Carrere's skill that his portrait is so lucid. His book could so easily have fallen apart, as Dick did.
If you've seen some of the films (Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly) or read some of the books (The Man in a High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubiq) reading this book will enhance your appreciation of them. You'll suddenly realise what Dick was getting at, where before you'd enjoyed the ride.
It left me wanting a 'proper' biography (which exists, it's by Lawrence Sutin). That's not a criticism, Dick's universe had little room for reality. He discards the bit players in his life when they cease to be relevant. Now I'd like to know about Dick, as they saw him. The 'real' Dick, perhaps.
Gripping, but . . . is it really a biography?
The book reads well, and is terribly gripping. I have just one problem with it. How true is any of what it says? The reason for this concern is that there is no critical apparatus, and no information providing sources for various assertions.
For example, some material that is presented as biographical is clearly derived from Dick's fiction. There is a long section which consists of incidents from 'A Scanner Darkly', but told as if they happened to Dick (and not told as if they are actually part of the novel). Now, maybe they really did happen to Dick, and he decided to incorporate them into his novel. Or maybe the author of this book decided for reasons of his own to claim that they happened to Dick. Without discussion of sources, there's no way of telling.
Similarly, there's a lot of material which would appear to me supposition, as it is presented first person from Dick's perspective, telling us what Dick thought and felt at that moment. Now, Dick was very chatty about himself, leaving reams of semi-autobiography behind, but unless the material is properly referenced, I simply cannot tell whether this is fact or supposition.
So, we're left with a putative 'biography' which is written in a novelistic style and contains none of the apparatus that is expected in a good biography, or even any discussion of what is verifiable and what is supposition. Therefore, I cannot help but wonder if the book is possibly simply a novelised version of Dick's life, in which case it is still very interesting, but it isn't a biography.
