Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Time Out of Joint
Book Review: The journey is the destination
Summary: 4 Stars
One of many of PKD books that deals with the "what is reality" question. Thoroughly enjoyable and populated with wonderful characters though it takes a little while to move from the mudane story of some denizens of 1950s suburbian to the fun house mirror of what's REALLY going on beneath the surface. Dick really takes his time tantalizing you with clues that lead to the expected unravelling at the end like a good mystery writer and that really kept me on the hook. However, once the truth was revealed it felt hurried and a little confusing to me which was a small letdown even though I enjoyed getting there immensely. Like others here, I am definitely seeing this book's influence on films like The Matrix, The 13th Floor, and (especially) Dark City.Book Review: This is "The Truman Show"
Summary: 4 Stars
Finally found this book again, after so many years. My god, when I was watching Jim Carrys "The Truman Show", I knew exactly where the storyline had originated. Only hope the PKD estate got some thanks. I mean, cmon, the guy is living in the distant future, but has the life and is made to believe that he is in somebodys idea of nostalgia heaven. Anyway, PKD is the man, and more and more people now know it. The difference between geek and hipster really is only 20 years, not a bad clip.Book Review: Thoughtful perspective
Summary: 5 Stars
That Dick could be as popular as he is now without his works containing some literary merit seems impossible. The characters are drawn in settings with about as much detail as viewing them in immediate experience would provide. Words are twisted or invented to represent objects or ideas - real and familiar- though not previously experienced except on the printed page. Floods of recognition are released in the reader's mind by the loving representation of the "lowly" objects of everyday life. Dick becomes a friend invited into lunch discussions with colleagues, or to be "haunted" by when in moments of quiet contemplation. If you are at all thoughtful you will enjoys his writings. If these qualities are not representative of "literary value" they should be. For they are the qualities sought after by ordinary people - like me. Dick, as a philosopher, avoids the error commited by many of the "great" ones. Ideas cannot affect us only though the cerebrum and its logic. The limbic system and associated areas generating emotion are intimately intertwined with the cerebrum in development. The experience of reading the TIME OUT OF JOINT has left me with only one regret: how I wish Sammy could have known I was in the Tree House listening in on his crystal set.Book Review: Time out, period.
Summary: 1 Stars
This is Dick's most overrated single novel. PDK wrote a lot of stuff for a grand on the barrelhead to pay the rent (or alimony) and TOoJ is one of them. (Note that some humorist at Amazon has paired this one with "The Simulacra"--be forewarned.)TOoJ impresses the intelligentsia due to the fact that they think it's about the Cold War. Well, it is and it isn't. Granted that anything written in the immediate post-Sputnik epoch is going to be drenched in the quivering fear of the period. But the basic premise here is drawn from WW II, the "Special Talents" section of the OSS, which recruited everything from safecrackers to psychics to aid espionage missions. As for Ragle Gumm's existential predicament, this was a universal for Dick, not tied to any particular historical moment, as any examination of his novels of the next fifteen years clearly reveals.
A critic would say that this is a transitional novel between Dick's dystopian novels of the 50s and the false-reality stuff of the ensuing decade. All too true. One of the fun aspects of reading Dick is trying to guess what outlandish, wild-eyed explanation he'll come up with for his reality shifts. Here, there's no explanation whatsoever. Weird things happen (e.g., the disappearing hot-dog stand) and we're just supposed to roll with it. Dick was not quite ready to deal with the concept at this point. He got there, though.
Apart from that: horrendous writing, even by Dick's standards--at one point, Gumm comes across a photo of Marilyn Monroe (nonexistent in his 50s paradise) and immediately starts spouting like a psychology postgrad. Right--that's the first thing I'd think too. (Amusingly enough, this passage is quoted without fail in academic critiques of the novel.) Clumsy development unrelieved by Dick's wilder leaps of imagination, an extremely sketchy and cliched future history, an anticlimactic ending (The Big Surprise on the final page is something we were told about five pages earlier). This is Dick's version of a 50s potboiler.
You can do better. Dick produced good ones even this early, "The World Jones Made" and "Eye in the Sky" in particular. (This last is his earliest full-length assay into reality shifts, and one that puts TOoJ in the shade.) For the Truly Weird PDK that everyone swears by, see anything from the mid-60s to 70s. (You'd be well advised to leave "Three Stigmata" for last.)
No question that PDK was the American Borges. Of course, Borges didn't leave a trail of TOoJ's in his canon. But then, he had a day job.
Book Review: nothing's quite as it seems...
Summary: 4 Stars
This is not a PKD classic by any means - but it's a strong novel, well worth reading.Before I get into the plot, I'd like to point out how this book embodies the best aspects of PKD's writing. In the opening sequence, he sketches out the characters of the main players - Rigle Gumm, his sister Margo and brother in law Vic and their neighbours, the Blacks, with amazing vividity and economy.A few sentances is all he needs to make them real. Similarly, this book captures his ear for crisp, convincing dialogue. The economy of his writing again comes out in the fact that, even though he barely sketches in most of his settings, they are quite real in the reader's mental eye.
The plot centers around Ragle Gumm, WW2 vet, who lives with his sister's family, makes a lot of money solving newspaper puzzles and flirts with his neighbours wife. But there are subtle discrepancies. He sometimes sees objects vanishing. A radio his nephew makes enables him to listen to mysterious conversations,including one about him. He finds an old magazine which mentions a famous actress called Marilyn Monroe - but he's never heard of her. He finds an entire telephone directory full of numbers that don't even seem to exist. Perhaps he's just paranoid,cracking up? The truth is far stranger.
PKD masterfully explores the process by which the reality behind Gumm's oddly neat and tidy world is discovered -the conflict in Gumm's mind between the unfolding realisation, and the fear that perhaps he is just going mad.
The revelation, when it happens is fairly unexpected and satisfying.I won't go into the details, but it's about space - where we SHOULD be going, but apparently many people disagree.
So, this is a well-written, rewarding book. Not an absolute classic, but not one that's just for the PKD fans either.