Confessions of a Crap Artist

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1. madaxe_againMar 2023
   I’m working on pretty much the same thing with my therapist, who I unfortunately seem to enjoy confusing and evading with my freeform personality more than I do being therapised by them. Shit, it’s my money.

   VALIS and the Exegesis are a good look at his end state, but some of his non-sf work also gives a pretty clear insight into the man - “Mary and the Giant” and “Confessions of a Crap Artist” spring to mind. Actually so do “The Broken Bubble” and “In Milton Lumkey Territory”.

   They’re all deeply uncomfortable and utterly palpable works - there’s real pain and anguish and alienation graved into the platens, stories of closeness morphing into terror and estrangement as a natural result of intimacy.

   His whole thing was Baudrillardian, the real versus the consensus, perception versus reality - and his non-SF works lay it out bare, without any of the allegorical window dressing.

   I love the man, and feel real empathy for him, as many of the questions which plagued him are those which are also ever present in my mind.

   Should we ever have met, I am certain we would have hated each other, lovingly.

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2. geekraverAug 2021
   At age 57, it's easier for me to point to books, and I think there's three main inflection points for me. When I was about 15 I read Philip K. Dick's "Confessions of a Crap Artist", which really opened my eyes to how we each live in our own subjective version of reality. At age 17, I read Ram Dass's "Be Here Now", which exposed me to eastern spiritual traditions (I'm an atheist, but this was still very eye opening and, with Dick, made me realize that religions can be interesting and valuable while also being full of bullshit). Much later in life, learning about Robert Kegan's theories of adult development helped me understand people better and be a much better coach and manager (a good practical introduction is in Jennifer Garvey-Berger's "Changing on the Job"). And a book I really like for having a lot of condensed wisdom is Laurence Endersen's "Pebbles of Perception".
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3. madaxe_againJun 2020
   Don’t know if you ever read any of his non-SF stuff, but it’s worth a pop - Confessions of a Crap Artist and Mary and the Giant stand out as the most interesting to me. Both follow the same vein as his SF work, insofar as he takes a reasonable premise (mid-century America in this case), strips it to its symbols, and then parades them in front of you as a banal pastiche which improbably anneals into tantalising insight of the mindsets, wants and desires of the characters, who are transparent avatars of their culture. Mary, for instance, could almost be a piece of paper with “MARY” printed on it, but through that empty vessel one understands the thingness of the characters’ perceptions.
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4. madaxe_againJun 2018
   If that’s the only book of his you’ve read, you’re really missing out - it’s good, but not his best.

   I would recommend, and you are welcome to ignore should you choose:

   Ubik

   Flow my tears, the policeman said

   Dr Bloodmoney

   Radio Free Albemuth

   Time out of joint

   A scanner darkly

   Mary and the giant

   And finally as an aside, 334 by Thomas Disch.

   Fun fact: Dick shopped Disch to the feds for in his view pedalling anti-American views. These letters are fascinating - and Radio Free Albemuth might ring some bells.

   http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/07/neo-nazis-syphilis-and-...

   PKD has an uncanny grasp on the reality-busting nature of our current reality, and the above books are a decent primer in his way of thinking. The list is by no means complete, just what trips out of my head as “Good PKD”.

   His non-sf works, like Mary and the Giant and Confessions of a Crap Artist, I did not understand in the slightest as a younger man. Now I read them, and their realities are palpable, sordid, tawdry, and utterly real.

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5. mac3nOct 2024
   "I am made of water. You wouldn’t know it, because I have it bound in. My friends are made out of water, too: all of them. The problem for us is that not only do we have to walk around without being absorbed by the ground but we also have to earn our livings."

   -- Confessions of a Crap Artist, PKD

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6. vinnyvichyJul 2024
   >[1]

   not sure why you had to prefix.. :)

   Thanks for the PKD tip!!

   (EDIT: this is the only dried bark PKD in my possession, which suggests that while PKD admired the schizos he might have selfdiagnosed as OCD?)

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Crap_Artist)

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