Anne Dick , the third wife ofPhilip K. Dick , still populate in the house she partake in with the fabled and mysterious writer . I visited her there to talk about her fresh memoir , The Search for Philip K. Dick .
The sleepyheaded townsfolk of Point Reyes Station rests 90 mo north of Oakland . There Anne still dwell in the same house where her recent husband wrote The Man in the High Castle . When Anne casually wandered over to the small-scale cottage rumor to be the home of a newly - local writer in 1959 , she had no idea her visit would start an acute and turbulent sexual love function that would both exalt and haunt her for the rest of her life . As Anne and I sat in the Northern California sunshine on her back patio , drop the field of honor where Dick reportedly saw a giant mask of evil in the sky , I kept remembering the line from Parsifal that Dick quotes repeatedly in VALIS , ‘ You see , my son , here clock time change into distance , ’ and I was think about how in traveling those shortsighted 90 minutes north , I had also traveled backwards in time , nigher to Phil , and nearer to unravel the Gordian greyback that was his life .
Anne witnessed first - hand the most prolific geological period in Dick ’s career , a five year reach from 1958 – 1964 during which time Phil write many of his most celebrated novels including : The human race in the High Castle , The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch , Martian Time - Slip , Confessions of a Crap Artists , Dr Bloodmoney , We Can progress You , Now Wait For Last Year , and The Simulacra . Their marriage oscillated between pastoral scenes of the family line at nighttime beside a vernal pond on the property , eating fudge and mind to the local frogs ’ intricate songs , and dark struggles for power that push Dick to commit Anne to a psychiatric hospital ( she was let go of two week later ) .
Anne set about work on her memoir , The Search for Philip K Dick , more than two tenner ago , but until latterly the book was only useable in an extremely rare and pricy edition be more than a hundred dollars . Now , give the ease of self - publication , Anne has revised the book and made it well available for the first clock time ever . Anne is currently publicizing the release of her retool memoir , a book that may leave many of Phil Dick ’s referee to discover anew that the generator ’s most gonzo worlds were in fact inner landscapes .
Q. Why did you write this book ?
When Philip left in 1963 and filed for divorce I thought we were deeply in love and had a committed matrimony and I could n’t make common sense of what had happened . I was deeply emotionally involved with Phil for years although I picked up my aliveness and went on for the saki of my four daughters and succeeded for the most part . Philip ’s death in 1982 was a frightening shock absorber to me . Since nothing had ever been resolved between us I make up one’s mind to hear to write about what had occurred in our marriage and perhaps then I would be able to understand . Search ended up being a full biography as well as a memoir . It was the first affair I wrote aside from letter and grocery lists and I rewrite it fifty times trying to get it right . When I was litre finished three twelvemonth later I still did n’t sympathize what had occur . I did figure thing out to some extent when I revised the book in 2009 . Even then Phil remains a mystery . Such a complicated man .
Q : Why have you chosen to revise the work and self - publish now ?
A top scientific discipline fable factor , Virginia Kidd , picked Search up . She thought the book was going to be a heavy success and I would presently be on a talking to duty tour throughout the country . She place it to Philip ’s editor in chief at Doubleday , the consistent place for it to be published , but because of some inauspicious literary politics it did n’t happen . Virginia send out it to all the top house but Philip was n’t that well known in the mid-1980 ’s – we get great rejection letter but it did n’t sell . I receive some negative feedback from male Quaker of Phil ’s – Phil was their hero and they did n’t want to read anything bad about him . It ’s a love book but it is an honest book too . Phil ’s different personality were too much for some of his friends to manage with and I sure as shooting can sympathise with that .
Having write one book more or less successfully I keep to spell . If I ’d had the braveness , I would have started writing much earlier in my living ; I ’d attempt a few times over the years , did n’t wish what I had written , and gave up . After writing Search I started on a personal Memoir that I am still working on . I indite two science fiction novels . I ’m forge on a literary novel . I ’m hoping to write my granddaddy ’s letters . I ’ve written a lot of verse form . The experience I had with agents over the years were frustrative . They would keep a book for a year or two , saying encourage thing , and then reject it – a immense waste of time . I decide to self - issue my own work start up with some poesy I had written in 2001 and 2002 . I sent the poetry off to an excellent poetry teacher for feedback and he had it for so long that I initiate revising Search for Philip K Dick . The edited poetry come back but by then I was take with Search and pass the next nine month on this revision . I am very satisfied with the mode the ego - published script looks and record .
Q. Was this an easy book to write ? Why or why not ?
By now I ’ve been write Search off and on for 27 years ! Sam Umland , a prof at the University of Nebraska went over it with me , and it was he who format for the 1993 Mellen publication . I had good feelings about that – contemplating a New York publication of a book about my family problems and Philip ’s problems was daunting as much as I would like to have been a published writer back then . Now that I ’ve revolved around the sun for eighty two years , I ’m not as horrendous of the truth . The truth is the truth and we ’re all a little weird and strange way down underneath .
Q. How do you want Philip to be remembered ?
I ’ve developed much more understanding of why Philip ’s work is important and of the amazing creative deduction he achieved in his science fiction novel and fib . As far as how he is remembered , I sense Philip has gone far beyond any influence I might have on his posthumous image . He lived in his books and he ’s remembered by his readers . In my syndicate my girl and I remember him kindly despite the problem at the end of our marriage and the downward path of his next few years . As a mortal he was delightful to be around and know with , although I think something dark hang around his living too .
Q. I know that in researching your memoir Search you read each of Philip ’s novels twice . What was that experience like for you ?
I was stunned , when I translate them in the rescript they were written , to find that they were a surreal autobiography . I loved the black sociological and political humor . I love his imaginativeness . His novels and stories make me express joy out loud . The books deal with dark subject but they are full of brightness . They prophesied the future both specifically and generally . The world has become Dickian or some say phildickian . I did n’t like how he portrayed relationships between men and women . I liked the Point Reyes novels and the 1950 ’s level the skillful . I did n’t care the later ace as much but I admired Scanner Darkly . I never did like Valis all that much . So much hype over that Bible and Phil ’s pinkish light experience . Philip severalise his longtime friend Ray Nelson that the pink beam of light occurred when two girl lookout sell cooky come to the door and a pink beam flash from one of their crank . I love that sort of Phildickian humour . I liked the woman in Timothy Archer , the first positive portrait of a female somebody .
Q. Finally , what do you call up Philip would make of his current literary winner ?
He was such a different person later on on it ’s gruelling to say . I ’m sure he would be pleased . I think it was a little sad when he receive a big sum of money for his writing [ in the former 80s ] and all he could think of to do with it was buy a ham actor sandwich . It was nice he contribute money away . He enjoyed seeing an early version of Bladerunner .
Q. Most of Philip ’s fans that have say The Man in the High Castle know that you run a jewelry occupation for a time . Can you tell us about your esthetic effort ?
Phil wrote in The Man in the High Castle about the beginning of the jewellery business enterprise precisely as it happened . I lead off the business with Phil ’s assistance in 1960 when Laura was brook and continued for 47 years until 2007 when I sold it . I ’m somewhat hump in the craftsmanship world . I ’ve sold to some of the top galleries in the US , and to museum stores , and upper end gift store . I had 13 people , some of them part fourth dimension , working for me at one decimal point . I was the turgid employer in our town . ( It ’s a very small town . )
The Search for Philip K Dick is available for rules of order atPoint Reyes Cypress Press .
David Gillis a Philip K Dick scholar who writes the Dick - centeredTotal Dick - Headblog , and teach literature and piece of writing at San Francisco State University . Excerpts from Anne ’s memoir are currently featured on the Total Dick - Head web log .
Photos , from top :
1 . Anne and Phil at a friends home early 60s .
2 . Dicks in front of Point Reyes theater , most likely take away in 1963 towards the final stage of the marriage . In the back row Anne , Phil , and Anne ’s daughter Hatte , in the front row Tandy and Laura ( Hatte and Tandy are Anne ’s daughter from her first married man Richard Rubenstein ; Laura is presently helping to execute the Philip K Dick Trust ) .
3 . Anne Dick in front of one of her many sculptures . This photograph was probably taken around 1970 .
playscript
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and acculturation intelligence in your inbox daily .
intelligence from the future tense , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
