Valis

Philip K. Dick
Valis Cover

Valis

tbritz13
10/23/2018
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I'm not sure how to talk about this novel. It is a mind trip on one hand and a deep slog through religion and the second coming on the other. Philip K. Dick was a brilliant writer and possibly a genius. This novel is completely different than anything else I've read by PKD or anyone else. It is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, in fact PKD plays two distinct characters.

The novel starts out with Horselover Fat and how he slowly begins to lose his mind when his life starts to go south, first with his wife taking his son and leaving him, then a good friend of his commits suicide, which triggers his own attempt. Horselover Fat, it turns out is the meaning of Philip Dick from the Greek, so Korselover is in fact Philip K. having a mental episode. The first half of this book is slow and bogged down with reams of religious dogma and Horselover's dementia. After the halfway mark the novel does pick up pace and it actually brings all of the first half into play. By the end it is a fully satisfying novel of one man's search for the meaning of God and his "creation".

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