A Scanner Darkly (Vintage)

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Philip K. Dick
Publisher:	Vintage
Release date:	03 December, 1991
List price:	~~$12.95~~
Our price:	$10.36 that is 20% off!

A Scanner Darkly (Vintage)

Average rating: Stars

Only got half-way through

I'm willing to get just about any book a chance. I've read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and enjoyed it. This book is just too weird and disjointed. I have no idea what's really going on. I have no idea what the book is driving at. There are sentences of dialogue and such that barely even make sense after I read them 5 times over. The concept of the scramble suit and everything is really fascinating. I had to give up on this book because it was just way too much effort. I wasn't really enjoying it on any level. I may try reading it again, but I doubt it. I hardly ever give up on books, so I'm actually pretty upset that I had to give up on this one. I would only recommend this book if you're an absolute hardcore Philip K Dick fan. Otherwise, it's just a lot of confusing dialogue and strange chapters that seem to go nowhere and are hard to follow. I wish I coulda given this more stars, but I have to be honest.

A Scanner Darkly (Vintage) - Philip K. Dick

Drug-induced paranoid fantastic hilarity

Not primarily a science-fiction novel, but a chronicle of the drug-crazed sixties based on personal experience. Includes a lot of very funny and witty conversations between the various drug addict characters. A Scanner Darkly is also a deeply felt elegy for Dick's friends who died or went crazy from drug use. The protagonist, Robert Arctor (actor), is an undercover drug agent assigned to spy on himself. He eventually becomes so alienated from himself from drug use that he doesn't even realize that he is spying on himself; he can't recognize himself or even remember his own name. Dick draws here on the tradition of the Double, found in Dostoevsky, Poe, Freud, and others. Classic questioning of our understanding of identity, showing how fragile and inessential our self is. Plenty of cosmic speculations on the soul, and many great moments of paranoia in which the reader and protagonist can't tell what's real or not. Often entertaining, this is not up to the high standards of Dick's best work, but still better than 90% of the science fiction novels out there.

Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly (Vintage)

You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now...

Reading a Philip Dick novel is like wading through waist-deep sand: as you encounter all of that resistance, you wonder to yourself "why am I doing this?" Maybe you hope to gain some satisfaction, a sense of perseverance by making your way through something almost unreadable. At least this is what happens every time I read a Philip Dick novel. The pace, story, details, dialogue, and characters all represent different degrees of resistance. It's a small wonder he was not recognized in his time because he's just not accessible.

But one component never fails in a Dick novel: the sheer imagination behind the initial idea. His plots never fail to astound me. Even while watching Paycheck at my local second run theater, I was intrigued by how such a complex story can be comprehended through its delivery. A Scanner Darkly follows an undercover narcotics agent through a maze of paranoia and self deception only to discover that this deadly addictive drug that he's been taking on the job has split his personality in half.

Philip Dick obviously had a rough history with drugs before he wrote this book. And although he admitted in the author's notes that there is no moral to the story, A Scanner Darkly has the word 'cautionary' stamped all over it. In fact, in those same author's notes, Dick proclaims that drugs use is not a disease, but a choice (he likens it to stepping in front of a moving bus). By the end, the reader is left with nothing but the pieces of a shattered life brought about by an addiction that seemed only recreational at the time. No moral to the story, eh? I don't think so.

One cannot deny the power and the emptiness felt once the story is over, but getting there is surely a chore. There is a generous amount of technical jargon (most likely made up by the ever-paranoid author on the spot) coupled with long-obsolete 70s slang.

Dick sure was a writer's writer. In case you don't know what that means, just try one of his novels. They are a bear. Hopefully the film version of A Scanner Darkly will see the light of day soon and help remove all of the awkward fluff that bogs down this otherwise compelling story.

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