NP: Man in the High Castle

[Joseph Tracy]

 I just finished the 10 episodes of the first season tonight. I haven’t read the novel but I did read 2 synopses which indicate that there are quite a few plot changes from Dick’s story. The changes seem to favor dramatic life and death struggles which can be a bit drawn out, and the police state atmosphere where no one can be trusted.  My general feeling is that the dramatic adaptation is intensely relevant thematically to todays political realities and choices.

 I really wonder how Dick thought about what he was doing. One way in which this alternate history makes sense to me is the sense in which The US did have parallels to the Reich, slipping into the role of colonial superpower, exacting violent suppression on all opposition to our version of capitalism. In our case the loss of constitutional liberties has been far easier to achieve than the post war generation would have thought.  How important really is the question of who won the war? Was  militarized corporatism simply bound to take the dominant role on the world stage?  The cold war between Russia and the US was much the same as the imagined tension between Japan and Germany.  

I don’t fully  get the role of the newsreels( I believe it was a book in Dick’s own version), but they seem to function as alternate realities, the dreams in which we imagine ourselves free from authoritarianism, racism, and violent conformity. They are a possible reality, but the overwhelming evidence is of a road not taken.  

Betrayal is a major theme,  and paranoia  dominates every level of society. 
  
> On Nov 22, 2015, at 1:49 PM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Anybody watching this? I caught a couple of episodes. A bit slow paced by current TV standards, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
> 

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l