Vox Nova at the Library: Valis

Vox Nova at the Library: Valis January 20, 2008

valis.jpgI just finished reading the novel Valis by Philip K. Dick, finding it more than a little confusing. Was he trying to claim that the events in it actually happened? It sure seemed like he was, especially since the Dick is a character in the story (actually, he is two characters – one, Horselover Fat, the name being a play on words based upon his real name, the other Philip K. Dick, science fiction author), and the book represents the religious and philosophical ideas that the author held. Crazy ideas. The novel tells of the insane spiritual quest of Philip K Dick and how he got some of his friends to join him in it.

Horselover Fat seems to hate life, finding the world he lives in irrational. He tends to do things which hurt himself; he has a history of heavy drug use, but more importantly, trying to help people who not only do not want it, but resent him for it. People he seems to care deeply for, but they hate him, hate life, and ultimately, kill themselves. When one of them do this, this makes Horselover Fat also try to kill himself. He fails; often, he should not have, but it was as if divine intervention kept him alive. Only later will Dick reveal that Fat was actually himself, a psychological projection he created to deal with tragedy. But that is after Fat has had some sort of divine revelation given to him, a revelation which shows validity because he learns things he shouldn’t know (like how to save his son’s life from a disease no one knew he had), a revelation which makes him go on a quest to discover what is going on in the world, to discern if the world is rational, and to discern what it was which had contacted him. This is after Dick, as Horselover Fat, finally convinces his friends (who know of Dick’s split personality) that something is up. Even if he is slightly insane, they come to believe that something happened to him after they find out others had similar revelations giving similar messages with them.

Philip K. Dick was a famous science-fiction writer whose stories inspired movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. In real life, he seems to have been truly insane. He believed that he had been given special communication from God — showing him the universe we live in is fake and is being invaded by God to destroy it while saving those within it who can be saved (i.e., he was Gnostic). He believed that time had stopped in AD 70, but it started back up in the 20th century. He believed that Nixon represented the Roman Empire, was the Roman Emperor, and had been taken out by God. He also believed that each time God came into the world, he created an incarnation, there have been four, and a fifth was born in 1974 (August 1974, to be exact).

I really would not recommend the book unless one had reasons to read the rantings of a lunatic, or they were interested in the effects of heavy drugs can have on one’s mind, or if they were interested in reading the writings of a modern Gnostic. Dick’s mind was clearly messed up. But the book seems to draw the reader into his world, into his psychosis, and that’s what is dangerous about it. Dick as Gnostic seems to have engaged in using the kind of mind-tricks that ancient Gnostics used. And it is why, for me, it was a fascinating read, trying to see the mind of a modern Gnostic, and I think it helps explain the kind of person who might have become a Gnostic in the ancient world.

How does one rate a book like this? It is compelling, and yet it is flat; it is full of vulgarity, yet it is full of strange, speculative notions of reality. I give it a 7/10, and it has made me want to read other works by Dick, though I wonder how much of it has been from the influence of some nasty Gnostic magic.


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