Humpty Dumpty in Oakland
by Philip K. Dick
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Book Summary Information
Author: Philip K. DickEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-02
ISBN: 0765316900
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Tor Books
Book Reviews of Humpty Dumpty in Oakland
Book Review: 3 and 1/2 Stars
Summary: 4 Stars
Philip K. Dick died in 1982 on the cusp of science fiction fame, but his real ambition when he began writing more than thirty years prior was to become a successful and acclaimed mainstream writer. To this end he wrote about half a dozen contemporary realist novels through 1960, the rejection of which led him to turn full time to SF. Only one of these works (Confessions of a Crap Artist) came out during his life, and he surely died thinking they would never see light. However, the immense rise in his commercial and critical reputation that began almost immediately after his death has led to the eventual publication of all his fiction. Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, his last realist novel, was published in the United Kingdom in 1986, where it got almost notice. American publication finally came in 2007, where it received renewed attention by the ever-growing legion of Dick fans and critics.
Its publication is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, of course, it is a treasure for fans and scholars who want to read everything the master wrote. It also helps further move Dick beyond the science fiction stereotype, showing his range and an important point in his writing development. Conversely, it is a very minor work that adds little to his canon artistically. Unlike some of his other recently published realist work, which were among his first novels, this was finished in 1960 - after Dick had several science fiction novels and many SF stories. The last of several in a row, his continuing to write mainstream novels despite a growing SF reputation shows his determination. Humpty was in fact written just before The Man in the High Castle, which established his reputation as an SF master though it really had no SF elements other than being alternate history. This unsurprisingly convinced Dick to concentrate on SF, which he did not really begin to leave until his genre-bending late works.
One can tell that Dick had learned a lot about writing by comparing this to early realist works like Voices from the Street. Humpty is significantly more concise and focused; it seems to have far more of a purpose and is tightly concentrated on a small number of themes that came to dominate Dick's writing. That said, those who read Voices, first published earlier in 2007, before this will suffer strange déjà vu because it starts out very similarly with a character of the same name doing nearly identical activities in an apparently identical setting with repeated descriptions. It turns out not to be the same person, and the setting is not admitted to be the same. Dick was probably consciously recycling from a book already abandoned, but it ironically gives a strong sense of the unreality prominent in his best writing.
There is little to recommend Humpty in itself; it is below not only later greatness but even much of the SF Dick had already written. The book has almost no plot, the dialogue is bland, and it offers no major artistic innovation or overarching message. Even Dick's biggest fans can admit it is the work of a young writer still getting his proverbial feet wet. It would be hard to deny that those who declined it were right, and the book almost certainly would never have been published without interest in Dick having grown so exponentially. Indeed, it says much that wide publication took as long as it did even with this; certainly it would not have come out under almost any other name.
However, it has much to offer fans and scholars. Several Dick trademarks are already very prominent. There is an incredible abundance of black humor in both dialogue and action; this may even be Dick's funniest book. Thematically, there are many familiar elements, including paranoia, the existential problem of individuality vs. the unseen vastness of the powers that be, poverty, mental illness, etc. Typical minor factors - a focus on non-mainstream music, low-grade businesses, etc. - are also to be seen. Even the title is deliciously representative Dick weirdness - though here it almost seems weird for weirdness' sake, as it has little real relevance, and the one reference to it in the text is almost comically contrived. The paranoia theme, dramatized so brilliantly in later Dick, is particularly well-done; we can see more than an inkling of later masterworks here. Like many Dick protagonists, Humpty's Al Miller is a self-consciously humble, depressed, mentally unstable less-than-Everyman who stumbles on a world beyond his understanding, much less his experience. In contrast to SF Dick, it is the relatively mundane corporate world of financial mystery, but Al, again like many Dick characters, believes he sees a conspiracy behind it. Indeed, in contrast to Dick's other non-SF fiction, "realist" is really a misnomer here. The coincidences are improbable, and Miller's actions, especially their effects, become more and more unbelievable. This is in strong contrast to, say, Voices, which is so realistic as to be dull at points. Humpty sometimes threatens to recede into this with extremely detailed descriptions of mundane events such as driving, but one can at least argue such scenes have a purpose, e.g., showing characters' inner instability. Dick was clearly moving away from conventional realism and working toward a sort of synthesis with, if not SF, at least some of its elements - which many think he perfected in The Man. His primary goal may have been to depict mental instability, always one of his core concerns, particularly how a large, powerful organization can be seen through the eyes of a desperate, paranoid. He succeeds to a large degree, and though it hardly makes a conventionally compelling novel, it gives a fascinating peek into his methods and development. As usual in Dick, the existence or non-existence of the conspiracy is never established with anything like clearness, and we are left wondering just how mentally unstable some of the characters are. Dick buffs will enjoy this and will enjoy even more the glorious sense of unreality when Miller is being told about his new job - a semi-realist version of how solid reality suddenly disappears in many a Dick SF work, leaving protagonist (and reader) in disconcerting shock. A more overt SF connection will delight fans - a hilariously tangential segment where a minor character goes on a rant about the pros and (mostly) cons of pulp SF. It is an excellent in-joke and an interesting self-rebuke. On another front, though depressing, Humpty is less so than his other non-SF books, which also shows change.
There is also more than a little for non-Dick fans, even if there is not a great book. Humpty can now almost be seen as a historical novel, a first-hand look at the San Francisco Bay area of the late 1950s/early 1960s. This time and place has been almost entirely overlooked historically and otherwise because of the area being the headquarters of the hippie movement a few years later. Dick's near-pedantic realism in geographic and other minutia thus has a certain value where it would probably have been nothing but dull at the time. There is much valuable material about how it looked and what it was like to live in, and it is fascinating to see how passing descriptions of things like construction turned out in reality. This is particularly so since, like Dick's other non-SF fiction - nay, like nearly all his writing - it deals with society's dark underbelly, which was not even admitted to exist and is still widely denied by the many who see the 1950s as a sort of Golden Age of economic prosperity. Most of the characters are in dire poverty, and there is much valuable commentary on the psychology of such individuals as well as a strong undercurrent throughout that can be called at least semi-Marxist. More importantly and interesting, Humpty deals quite overtly with race - particularly notable considering when it was written. There are many black characters and, while they are certainly not politically correct by our standards, Dick was surely trying to portray them in a way he thought was accurate. Much sympathy shines through for them, however unconventionally. Insightful comments about their plight are present, and several of the black characters are not only absorbing but quite likable, including the hilariously perverse Tootie. This is now near-obligatory for PCness but almost remarkable for the time. The book indeed ends with Miller finding at least temporary salvation, perhaps even love, in a black character he has long admired. A Greek character is also beguilingly, if far less sympathetically, portrayed - a potential goldmine for fanatics, given Dick's many Greek connections, including one of his wives. It would have been very interesting to see how all this was taken if Humpty had been published.
These factors give historians, sociologists, and others with no interest in Dick reasons to read the novel. Fans and scholars will of course do so anyway - and will be significantly rewarded. The casual and curious should certainly read Dick, but this should be one of their last stops.
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