reviews
Valis
by Philip K. Dick
Valis is the first of Dick's final three novels (two others
being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy
Archer), all drawing inspiration from a mystical experience Dick
had in March of 1974. Dick described his encounter as "an
invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind."
Valis invites the reader not only to explore and understand this
experience, but to share it.
Horselover Fat, the ostensible protagonist of the novel,
leads us into the labyrinth. Distraught from his inability to
prevent the suicide of his friend Gloria, Fat teeters on the
brink of madness and oblivion. It is at this lowest of lows that
Fat has an epiphany. He is struck by a pink laser and his mind
is shot full of information from an unknown source. The
information is both metaphysical and practical. He is given
specific medical knowledge relating to his son's health. With
Fat's help, doctors are able to identify and eliminate an
otherwise fatal problem in his son. The bulk of the information
is much less straightforward. Fat is granted special insight
into the structure and possible meaning of the universe. His
vision, though, is always partial. Fat believes the information
to be divine in origin. God is alive in the information; God, in
fact, exists as sentient self-directed information. Drawing on
linguistic, historical, and literary clues embedded in the
information, Fat becomes convinced that the fate of his world in
the late twentieth century is somehow inextricably bound to the
hidden knowledge of the Gnostics, a long dead and persecuted
sect of Christianity. They were imbued not simply with divine
knowledge but with God itself as knowledge. Somehow, this
knowledge was lost, until Fat's epiphany. In order to try and
make sense of the unconnected dots in his mind, Fat writes an
exegesis entitled Cryptica Scriptura, the entire text of which
is included as an appendix in the book. Through his text,
Fat begins to challenge the very foundational assumptions
upon which we build our understanding of the universe and our
place in it. The phenomenal world, in other words, is not what
it appears to be. There are worlds of knowledge hidden and
separate, influencing our world. His knowledge imcomplete, Fat
sets out to find its source, in essence, to find God.
Fat's quest is derided by his friends as a fool's errand, the
product of an unhealthy and undersexed mind. Dick himself
appears in the novel as Fat's closest friend. Even he counsels
Fat to look for a more measured response to his mounting mental
crisis. Then Kevin, another of Fat's friends, is exposed to a
science fiction film entitled Valis. The text and symbolic
subtext of the film describe the same principles and theories
Fat has been espousing. Fat's experience, put simply, must have
been shared by others. Fat's friends help him to locate and
communicate with the people behind the film.
The novel folds in upon itself when Fat is brought face to
face with Valis, a sentient entity of pure information, housed
in the body of a young girl. A second epiphany occurs, this time
on the part of the reader. We learn that Fat himself is
schizophrenic manifestation of Dick's own mind. Fat simply
ceases to be and Dick is left to grapple with Fat's special form
of knowledge. Dick, the author, enables the reader to see
that while Fat himself may be a fictional projection, the
information and questions raised by Fat remain. In the end, the
untimely death of the young girl housing Valis, prompts Fat to
return to Dick. Our drive for metaphysical understanding and
knowledge can drive us to destroy it and shatter our very notion
of the self.
Valis is the product of a beautiful and complex mind. The
book itself shoots information at the read like the pink laser.
It asks fundamental questions about the nature of madness,
death, and religion. And it forces us to entertain the
possibility that even the most foundational assumptions we have
about life and meaning are simply the products of a grander form
of collective delusion. This book is an inspired treasure. Its
mysteries and insights will grow deeper with each reading.
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