NP,ex- Very Misc. : On Philip K. Dick

[Robin Landseadel]

PKD relates to Pynchon in their shared obsessions with Gnosticism.  
Probably in both cases the authors experienced a cosmic flash they  
interpreted as gnostic. This has been well documented in PKD's case.

	The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation
	From Exegesis, by Philip K. Dick
	The Gnostic Christians of the second century believed that only
	a special revelation of knowledge rather than faith could save a
	person. The contents of this revelation could not be received
	empirically or derived a priori. They considered this special
	gnosis so valuable that it must be kept secret. . . .

	http://deoxy.org/gnosis10.htm

More from PKD's Exegesis

	http://www.philipkdick.com/new_ex-thereisadirect.html

On Jun 12, 2009, at 10:40 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

The exegetical material figures heavily in Dick's last novels,  
particularly VALIS, The Divine Invasion & Radio Free Albemuth. But my  
favorite—and the most Pynchonian/paranoid—is "A Scanner Darkly."


> "The real question (as I see it) is not, Why theophanies? but, Why  
> aren't there more?---from Dick's "Valis" 1981
>
> Full disclosure: I've only sorta read one, one-and-a-half P. Dick  
> novels....I'm thinkin' on changing that due to a confluence of  
> reasons........so, the above quote and what else I type here comes  
> from an article The Transmigration of
> Philip K. Dick by a Philip Youngquist in the Spring 2009 issue of  
> The Common Reader.
>
> But I know some p-listers have read him a lot.
>
> Which article I recommend not least because of its focus on two  
> levels of literature: a canonical mainstream and "
> "a subliterate tradition, for instance, of vernacular prophecy in  
> America. Surfacing..in African-American and poor-white preaching, in  
> outsider art, in street graffiti and on television."
>
> The writer sees Dick as in the tradition of "dissenting  
> Protestantism(!) that sustained Blake's visionary experience..."
>
> "With satirical intensity and spiritual extravagance, his books  
> propound vernacular prophecy to a secular world."...
>
> THAT sentence, the theophany sentence and the Pynchon 'dissenting'  
> Protestantism tradition, perhaps, might be applied to further  
> understanding of C of L49?
>
> OBA surely read him, cult pulp writer as he [Dick] was, yes?
>
>
> More Misc. in a 1969 novel, Ubik, Dick hints that God might come out  
> of an aerosol can....!
>
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