David Gill on the poor press surrounding the new Library of America Philip K. Dick collection. Jonathan Lethem makes a cameo appearance in the sidebar.
The problem with learning about an artist from the press is their allegiance to the bottom line; the urgency of finding a saleable angle often outstrips the less sensational but true facts : “Raving Lunatic Turns Out To Be a Visionary Genius!” “Author That Wrote a Lot of Movies That Made Money Must Be Good!” “The Library of America Release is the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread—You Really Ought to Buy One!” Instead, reviewers lazily regurgitated the same tired narrative that Dick's canonization was newsworthy because it was surprising: Who would have thought a science-fiction writer whacked out of his mind on drugs would have anything serious to say about anything? All the fanfare about the LoA release seemed to center on Dick's life, on his prodigious drug consumption, his lifelong battle with schizophrenia, his string of broken marriages and his "mystical experiences." What's more, the critics implied that Dick's genius was born of his insanity—he was great precisely because he was crazy. Dick's very best fiction in fact blurred the distinction between madness and sanity. It's profoundly ironic that these writers try to reduce Dick's life and work down to one half of a binary opposition he worked his whole life to undermine.
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