aw. PKD (was: V-2nd: Something in Blue (Adams & Monk)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Laura sez:

>
> Great find, Kai!
>

Thank you!
 
>
> And enjoy the, uh, Dick.
>

Joe asks:
 
>
> Which one?
>
 
 
"THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE" [1962], with an introduction by Eric Brown
from the year 2001 (Penguin Classics).

Again, like with Vonnegut's "Mother Night" [1961] - both paperback covers
show on the stripes one bzw. several swastikas instead of stars -, it's
striking how much Pynchon obviously learned from the book.

"Yet, there was after all something humorous about it, the picture of
stolid Germans walking around on Mars, on the red sand where no humans
had ever stepped before. Lathering his jowls, Frink began a chanting
satire to himself. GOTT, HERR KREISLEITER. IST DIES VIELLEICHT DER
ORT, WO MAN DAS KONZENTRATIONSLAGER BILDEN KANN? DAS WETTER IST SO
SCHÖN. HEISS, ABER DOCH SCHÖN ...
The radio said: 'Co-Prosperity Civilization must pause and consider
whether in our quest to provide a balanced equity of mutual duties
and responsibilities coupled with remunerations ...' Typical jargon
from the ruling hierarchy, Frink noted. ' ... we have not failed to
perceive the future arena in which the affairs of man will be
acted out, be they Nordic, Japanese, Negroid ...' On and on and
on it went.
As he dressed, he mulled with pleasure his satire. THE WEATHER IS SCHÖN,
SO SCHÖN. BUT THERE IS NOTHING TO BREATHE ...
However, it was a fact; the Pacific had done nothing towards colonization
of the planets."

Sounds like Pynchon in a nutshell to me. And though it was written earlier
this is more actual (Mars!) than the "new kingdom of death" parts from GR
where Pynchon is writing about the moon that is no longer the moon anymore.

Dick is most def not soft on Germany ("Prehistoric man in a sterile white
lab coat in some Berlin university lab, experimenting with uses to which
other people's skull, skin, ears, fat could be put. Ja, Herr Doktor. A new
use for the big toe; one can adapt the joint for a quick-acting cigarette
lighter mechanism. Now, if only Herr Krupp can produce it in quantity ..."),
but appears [I just started to explore this writer who is new to me except
for what I've read here on the P-list] to be more a global (in the normative
sense; is this because of the SF genre?) moralist than Pynchon who - at least
since VL - turned more and more to Patriotism with a big p. Dick's characters
are "human-all-too-human". Frank Frink has a problem with African Americans,
Robert Childan (another male protagonist) thinks, at least for a moment,
that Nazi Germany did a good job in Europe, and is ambivalent about Japan.
But after all there is, already very early on, a decidedly universal dimension
in this book. Perhaps Utopian, but there it is:

"Place difference did not have the significance for them.
It will end, Childan thought. Someday. The very idea of place.
Not governed and governing, but people."

A complete German translation did, for understandable historical reasons,
not appear until the year 2000. 

Kai


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle

----------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 07:38:57 -0500
> Subject: Re: V-2nd: Something in Blue (Adams & Monk)
> From: joeallonby at gmail.com
> To: lorentzen at hotmail.de
> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
> Which one?
>
> On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:29 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> wrote:
>>
>> http://howardm.net/tsmonk/adams.php
>>
>> Perhaps "V"'s Pynchon is - read the article's first sentence! - the missing link?
>>
>>
>> Kai (who just started his very first Philip K. Dick novel this morning)
>>
>