The Empire never ended!The English language sometimes fails us. There is a thing for which we need a word or two, and we just can't express that thought. Reviewing VALIS is not such an occasion. The words one needs are "lunatic" and "ravings."
Look, now, read my other reviews of his stuff. I LOVE Philip Dick. I think he was bloody brilliant, the very definition of insanely genius artist, the Van Gogh of post-war writing in more than one way. But there is less genius to this particular book and more crazy.
VALIS is an acronym representing the "Vast Active Living Intelligence System." Would we call this system "God?" Would we call it superpowerful aliens? We could call it any number of things. There are people who think that VALIS is the height of brilliance, that it was PKD's best book, that he had truly seen a glimpse of a hidden reality and reported it as a last and greatest act to cap a superlative literary career just a few years before he died. These people are mistaken.
I think any doubts that you may have that the author, who makes himself by clever naming transposition the protagonist of the novel, is suffering from schizophrenia will evaporate as you read VALIS. Have you ever met or spoke with a schizophrenic person? I have, and I find the experience, and therefore this book, mostly tragic. It is an illness which causes in some the effect that they believe they have perceived a secret truth that nobody else can see.
In Philip Dick's case this illness led to a streak of paranoia that was inseparable from his work and defined much of his personal life. It also was fully fleshed out as the basis of a number of novels, starting with Radio Free Albemouth, and finishing with the VALIS trilogy, comprised of this book, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which were the (in my opinion unfortunate) final works he produced while alive. Much of the inspiration for these works was taken from what Philip Dick called his "Exegesis," or his explanation of the hidden workings of the world and the universe, etc, which has recently been edited and published by Jonathan Lethem, the most important points of which are included as a (unsettlingly zany) postscript to VALIS. He regarded the plot of this story as a work of partial fiction, but much of the philosophy/cosmology/whateverology he reveals in it, particularly this postscript, represents his actual crazed view of reality, and that is the part of the work that makes the whole enterprise feel tragic, and gives me some mild discomfort in even contemplating enjoying it. I guess reading the book doesn't feel that far off from indulging in the suffering in a fellow human being.
[Tom Weiner was the best part of this. He's a great fit for sci-fi that's so crazy you can't turn away. More books read by him to follow!]
What to say of the work itself? I could tell you of the rock stars who are actually aliens or angels, of the extraterrestrial intelligence that helped bring out the truth in the Watergate scandal to depose the evil Richard Nixon, or of the continuing existence of the Roman Empire, and the salient meaning of this fact towards the protagonist's gnostic outlook on existence. But you know what? It grows tiresome because it's just batshit, and it is sad that it had to happen to such a brilliant man. The saddest, but perhaps best part of the work is that Philip Dick knew, or at least was aware of the possibility that the entire thing was a delusion created by his mind.
Do you want to know how truly unhinged Philip Dick's mind was when he was on a bad day? Read this book. Do you want to know why he was such a great writer? Read Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, or a short story collection.
If you are undecided, I can help make up your mind with a series of images taken from the emotional camera gallery of my mind while I read VALIS. For maximum effect, create a soundtrack by either putting on music by John Cage or just banging keys on a piano, scroll through the following images sloooowly, AND THEN SUDDENLY, and then slowly, and then go ahead watch Pink Floyd's The Wall afterward.
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