TRP & PKD

[j minnich]

Paul writes:
>
>
>Foax--this looks like a gen-yew-wine find to me.  But maybe
>others hipper to TRP scholarship might know of a previous 
>citation.  Anyhow:
>One of the only Philip K. Dick books I had not yet read was his
>TIME OUT OF JOINT from 1959....Feedback, anyone?

_Time Out of Joint_ is a typical PKD blend of brilliance and lame drek.
After a strong start it gives way in the second half to the limpest of space
opera plots.  The themes of mental instability, solipsism, lechery, and a
manipulative, worried government are all familiar to dedicated readers of
Dick. The connection to Hamlet, from which the title comes (of course), is
tenuous or non-existent, it seems to me.  I think what I liked best about
_Time Out of Joint_ was the rilly bizarre notion of little slips of paper
suggesting "hot dog stand" or some such.  But as far as seeing any PKD
influence in Pynchon--well, I've never been struck by it, and I certainly
don't find any compelling resemblance, but then I've been known at times to
miss what's most obvious. As far as seeing any previous citations of _Time
out of Joint_ in the Pynchon crit., I can't recall seeing any.  By-the-way,
for PKD fans, there's a bar in Oakland (College Ave., near Berkley) called
"George Walt."  Haven't ever been inside it, though. 
                 - j minnich  
---------------------------------------------------------------
...The poet is dead.
Nor will ever again hear the sea lions 
Grunt in the kelp at Point Lobos.
Nor look to the south when the grunion 
Run the Pacific, and the plunging
Shearwaters, insatiable, 
Stun themselves in the sea.  
   -Wm. Everson