VALIS

Where does one begin? How can anyone--be they fan, critic, or casual observer--truly summarize and capture the essence of a book so profoundly groundbreaking? No matter how poetic, how honest, how brilliant, there appears to be no way. Still, I’m willing to give it my all.

VALIS may be one of the most critical novels in the Philip K. Dick library in assisting us to understand the writer himself. While The Man In the High Castle alludes to his part-time job with his wife as a crafts artist (jewelry) during 1964, A Scanner Darkly to his involvement with drug addicts in a rehab center in Canada as well as his sympathy for/association with the repressed youth of the early 1970’s, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich to his crisis of theological beliefs, no other work truly immerses us in the world he once lived in. A world where God--or VALIS, Zebra, and all the other terms used in the novel--is beaming vast amounts of information via a pink laser into the mind of an already mentally unstable man named Horselover Fat. Fat happens to be the multiple personality of Dick, who is also a character in the novel (referred to only as Phil). Early on, Dick reveals what’s going on:

,centerI am Horselover Fat, and I am writing this in the third person to gain much-needed objectivity.

Instantly, we are swept away into a world uniquely similar to ours. But, strangely, from the perspective of drug addicts and their frighteningly cynical friends, the world is turned on its ear. Suddenly, the care-free 70’s are cut short by the chime of reality. It kicked in just in time for some--that is, for Horselover Fat. His nervous breakdown, minor recovery, attempted suicide, and revelation after revelation are originally triggered by the death of a friend: Gloria.

And yet the novel tries to steer clear of negativity. While the prose is delivered with directness almost to the brink of constant irony, we are always in touch with the often devastating effects of reality. And, to Fat, understanding that reality that is whipping him back and forth from madness to constant fantasy to sharp logic, is the key to peaceful survival. But that knowledge does not come easy.

And thank God for that! Because the information that God is beaming into Fat’s fuzzy mind is scanty and complex, the theological journey to discover the true source of that notorious pink laser flip-flops us from the Rosicrucians to the Taoists; Kabbalah to Parzifal; Gnosticism to Zoroastrianism and back again. The connects are made. The information is finally laid bare. But the understanding we expect to immediately follow is slow to react. And even with the close of the book, we still have our doubts as to what we have learned.

In the grand scheme of things, the most rewarding part of the book is its inability to be categorized. There are really no science fiction elements hear, beside the normal Phildickian off-kilter reality template, nor are there any significant fiction elements. The book straddles the two like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. And, more importantly, Dick teaches us that fiction (no matter how many other literary genres it dips into) can be philosophical and spiritual without the loftiness of Umberto Eco, or the pretentiousness of Hesse. In fact, it can even be adventurous.