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A review by johnclough
VALIS by Philip K. Dick
4.0
https://jdcloughblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/philip-k-dick-valis/
VALIS is beaten only by The Third Policeman to the title of most psychedelic novel I’ve ever read. However, where The Third Policeman delivered unrelenting, perfectly constructed surrealism, Philip K Dick’s VALIS instead takes the reader into a world of actual insanity imposed onto something that may or may not resemble reality. VALIS is essentially Dick’s autobiography of madness. In spite of his madness, Dick’s relentless intelligence and creativity shines through, leaving a tale replete with spiritual experience, conspiracy, and disconcertingly well-realised rationalisations.
It’s impossible not to be drawn in by Dick’s idiosyncratic, vast and lively intellect. This is the first novel I’ve come across with footnotes citing Plato, extended quotations from the likes of Schopenhauer, and protracted, wild analyses of ancient mythology and Christian theology. All this intellectualism is intended to give a sort of credence to Horselover Fat’s – aka Philip K Dick’s – absolutely whacked theory of time, space, the creation of the universe and the existence of the supernatural. To a significant extent it’s totally baffling, at times bordering on total nonsense. However, I found it fascinating to see the inner workings of a mind so unusual. It was also a reminder that however irrational and bizarre people’s views of the world may seem, they often have a somewhat tangible internal logic. Thinking about it, Horselover Fat’s exegesis isn’t drastically more crazy than many religious doctrines which continue to enjoy broad acceptance across the world.
The fact is that we can’t easily disregard all that happens to Horselover as psychotic machinations. Dick really did have an all-encompassing hallucinatory experience lasting over a month in which, among other things, he believed he was being communicated to by a transcendent external intelligence. As in the novel, this intelligence – which Horselover ascribes to God – correctly informed him in detail of an undetected life-threatening health problem with his child – probably saving the child’s life. I’ve no interest in indulging in supernatural speculation, and I’ve no doubt the positivist priests of our demythologized culture would be quick to come up with a fairly meaningless ‘rational explanation’ for all of Dick or Horselover’s extremely bizarre and vivid experiences. I don’t think such explanations matter. From a psychological perspective I found it interesting to see the ‘proofs’ we can find to provide legitimacy for what may or may not be delusions. From the perspective of the novel, I loved the way Dick embedded ‘real’ experience with the indulgent flights into the seemingly more apparent terrain of science fiction. It was an extremely effective and unique way of treating reality in a novel. Rather than demanding of his readers a conventional suspension of reality, in VALIS Dick instead demands his readers to question reality, to be puzzled by it for the duration of the novel, and to absolutely receive no resolution by the end.
So far I’ve been skirting around the actual content of Horselover’s exegesis, not least because I feel woefully ill equipped to attempt to even succinctly summarize his worldview. Given that it’s the main subject of the novel, however, it really needs discussing. As mentioned, there are vast swathes of discussions focused on esoteric elements from both Eastern and Western mythology and theology, coupled with baffling science and hints of Soviet brainwashing. At the core, however, is Horselover’s perception of God, which is quite distinct from any of those traditions or theories. Horselover perceives God as a sort of artificial intelligence, that comes to be called VALIS, and that has access not only to vastly more knowledge than man, but has also transcended human limits of space and time. This God communicates with a select few, such as Horselover, imparting wisdom, and also loosening the bounds of time and space. Thus, Horselover knew of his son’s undiagnosed illness, and also came to believe that he was somehow mentally connected to an early Christian living in 70AD who had also managed to transcend time (something Dick also believed). God is occasionally represented on earth by prophets or saviours, including Jesus and Buddha. God’s next representative becomes an important subject of the novel.
It was only as the novel progressed that I began to glean the significance of God being characterised as an artificial – as opposed to wholly transcendent – intelligence. There’s a couple of red herrings involving the Soviets and the possibility of aliens. What it actually indicates, though, is that all the deranged theology Horselover distracts himself with hides a fundamental humanism. As this humanism unfolds, it reveals two key implications in VALIS – the first is simply that everything is all in Horselover’s head. As we knew from the start, he is profoundly mad. This isn’t like a movie twist in which ‘it was all in your head after all’, though. Dick’s profound resemblance to Horselover means that reality is never so clearly brought into focus as to provide the reader with any idea of its actual character within the novel. In fact, knowing that everything is in our heads simply raises more questions about the character of reality, not least inviting thoughts of solipsism. The second implication is to drive home the acid-tinged humanist message of the novel, which can be best summed up by the words of the spokesperson for VALIS herself: “Man is holy, and the true god, the living god, is man himself. You will have no gods but yourselves; the days in which you believed in other gods end now, they end forever”. Thus, the ‘artificial’ intelligence, the God we see, that’s us. Here is not really the place for an extended discussion of this sort of humanism that elevates humanity above nature. It was extremely interesting, however, to discover at the core of this seemingly theological and mystical journey a humanist core. So unexpected was it, in fact, that part of me can’t help thinking that it’s just another layer of Horselover / Dick’s self-delusion; how else but delusion could a being so profoundly out of control of his mind and the world around him come to the conclusion that he was a god?
What I’m sure this review will show is that VALIS is an absolute trip of a novel. At times it’s difficult and absolutely baffling, and I feel like more time could have been spent on building a narrative. There is nonetheless something about VALIS that means when you finish, you know you have experienced in vivid clarity the mind of a genuine genius, albeit a genius detached from any sense of reality that most of us would be familiar with.
VALIS is beaten only by The Third Policeman to the title of most psychedelic novel I’ve ever read. However, where The Third Policeman delivered unrelenting, perfectly constructed surrealism, Philip K Dick’s VALIS instead takes the reader into a world of actual insanity imposed onto something that may or may not resemble reality. VALIS is essentially Dick’s autobiography of madness. In spite of his madness, Dick’s relentless intelligence and creativity shines through, leaving a tale replete with spiritual experience, conspiracy, and disconcertingly well-realised rationalisations.
It’s impossible not to be drawn in by Dick’s idiosyncratic, vast and lively intellect. This is the first novel I’ve come across with footnotes citing Plato, extended quotations from the likes of Schopenhauer, and protracted, wild analyses of ancient mythology and Christian theology. All this intellectualism is intended to give a sort of credence to Horselover Fat’s – aka Philip K Dick’s – absolutely whacked theory of time, space, the creation of the universe and the existence of the supernatural. To a significant extent it’s totally baffling, at times bordering on total nonsense. However, I found it fascinating to see the inner workings of a mind so unusual. It was also a reminder that however irrational and bizarre people’s views of the world may seem, they often have a somewhat tangible internal logic. Thinking about it, Horselover Fat’s exegesis isn’t drastically more crazy than many religious doctrines which continue to enjoy broad acceptance across the world.
The fact is that we can’t easily disregard all that happens to Horselover as psychotic machinations. Dick really did have an all-encompassing hallucinatory experience lasting over a month in which, among other things, he believed he was being communicated to by a transcendent external intelligence. As in the novel, this intelligence – which Horselover ascribes to God – correctly informed him in detail of an undetected life-threatening health problem with his child – probably saving the child’s life. I’ve no interest in indulging in supernatural speculation, and I’ve no doubt the positivist priests of our demythologized culture would be quick to come up with a fairly meaningless ‘rational explanation’ for all of Dick or Horselover’s extremely bizarre and vivid experiences. I don’t think such explanations matter. From a psychological perspective I found it interesting to see the ‘proofs’ we can find to provide legitimacy for what may or may not be delusions. From the perspective of the novel, I loved the way Dick embedded ‘real’ experience with the indulgent flights into the seemingly more apparent terrain of science fiction. It was an extremely effective and unique way of treating reality in a novel. Rather than demanding of his readers a conventional suspension of reality, in VALIS Dick instead demands his readers to question reality, to be puzzled by it for the duration of the novel, and to absolutely receive no resolution by the end.
So far I’ve been skirting around the actual content of Horselover’s exegesis, not least because I feel woefully ill equipped to attempt to even succinctly summarize his worldview. Given that it’s the main subject of the novel, however, it really needs discussing. As mentioned, there are vast swathes of discussions focused on esoteric elements from both Eastern and Western mythology and theology, coupled with baffling science and hints of Soviet brainwashing. At the core, however, is Horselover’s perception of God, which is quite distinct from any of those traditions or theories. Horselover perceives God as a sort of artificial intelligence, that comes to be called VALIS, and that has access not only to vastly more knowledge than man, but has also transcended human limits of space and time. This God communicates with a select few, such as Horselover, imparting wisdom, and also loosening the bounds of time and space. Thus, Horselover knew of his son’s undiagnosed illness, and also came to believe that he was somehow mentally connected to an early Christian living in 70AD who had also managed to transcend time (something Dick also believed). God is occasionally represented on earth by prophets or saviours, including Jesus and Buddha. God’s next representative becomes an important subject of the novel.
It was only as the novel progressed that I began to glean the significance of God being characterised as an artificial – as opposed to wholly transcendent – intelligence. There’s a couple of red herrings involving the Soviets and the possibility of aliens. What it actually indicates, though, is that all the deranged theology Horselover distracts himself with hides a fundamental humanism. As this humanism unfolds, it reveals two key implications in VALIS – the first is simply that everything is all in Horselover’s head. As we knew from the start, he is profoundly mad. This isn’t like a movie twist in which ‘it was all in your head after all’, though. Dick’s profound resemblance to Horselover means that reality is never so clearly brought into focus as to provide the reader with any idea of its actual character within the novel. In fact, knowing that everything is in our heads simply raises more questions about the character of reality, not least inviting thoughts of solipsism. The second implication is to drive home the acid-tinged humanist message of the novel, which can be best summed up by the words of the spokesperson for VALIS herself: “Man is holy, and the true god, the living god, is man himself. You will have no gods but yourselves; the days in which you believed in other gods end now, they end forever”. Thus, the ‘artificial’ intelligence, the God we see, that’s us. Here is not really the place for an extended discussion of this sort of humanism that elevates humanity above nature. It was extremely interesting, however, to discover at the core of this seemingly theological and mystical journey a humanist core. So unexpected was it, in fact, that part of me can’t help thinking that it’s just another layer of Horselover / Dick’s self-delusion; how else but delusion could a being so profoundly out of control of his mind and the world around him come to the conclusion that he was a god?
What I’m sure this review will show is that VALIS is an absolute trip of a novel. At times it’s difficult and absolutely baffling, and I feel like more time could have been spent on building a narrative. There is nonetheless something about VALIS that means when you finish, you know you have experienced in vivid clarity the mind of a genuine genius, albeit a genius detached from any sense of reality that most of us would be familiar with.