I finished four books in one weekend.

You wouldna unnerstand. Itza Gemini thing.

Philip K. Dick: I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

This was a book of many virtues. As always, Dick proves epigrammatic and quirky, and here gives rise to our new expression, "That really animates my shoes," which is to say that we find something very irritating. By we, I of course mean Robert. I only mention this because his complete lack of participation in the blog might lead you to wonder about my pronoun referent. Maybe snide digs such as this one will motivate him.

Dick is far more than another skillful, original writer, however. The best story in the book, "Holy Quarrel", is a perfect example of Dick's specialty, the prismatic metaphor. "What does it mean?" The reader asks in such situations, and Dick wryly answers, "Yes." The Genux-B computer is one such creation. In rapid succession, it becomes a symbol of five or six different philosophical paradigms, and each time the reader is tricked into thinking he or she has discovered Dick's meaning. Of course, the reader is always wrong, and Dick spills all your deep, ponderous wondering on the floor at the end, while coyly protesting, "What? It's just a cute little science fiction story."

Even the introduction to the collection is an insight-laden masterpiece. I found it most useful, considering I am about to embark on teaching Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. As obscure and opaque as he can be in his fiction, this essay--not really an introduction at all--lays his thinking bare. I think. "The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?". Bingo. Instant literary analysis. Of course, I don't trust him for an instant, but that gives my Seniors and Juniors something to wrap their minds around.

But the greatest pleasure the book gave me--and that any book could give for that matter--is that of reading me back. The last two stories in the book deal with a similar topic, that of constructed realities in a person's mind. This brings to mind Dick's semi-serious hypothesis in the introduction that there is only one time: 50 A.D.. all we have been doing since then is reliving and reinterpreting events. He uses as evidence his observation that many of the things he writes end up happened or proving to have happened. I found his arguments along this line rather specious and tiresome, and discarded them. Until I read "Rautavaara's Case" and the title story, pointedly reserved for the last word, no doubt, even though not, as I've said, the most enjoyable in the collection. As I put the book down, I found myself in it. I kid not, I was in the story, I was that character who was trapped in a world of his own mental creation, reliving versions of past events. In the space of an hour or so, I reenacted an entire month of my life, down to frighteningly small detail. I still unnerved and wonder how Dick did it.

Speaking of books that read back,

A Course in Miracles

If I had finished this on schedule, which is to say, last year, I would have had very different things to say about it. I would, in fact, have used the fact that it, as I say, reads me back to give it a place as a holy text on my bookshelf. The daily exercises, the insistence on release and forgiveness, all very appealing. It seems like a non-fiction version of The Celestine Prophecy, or perhaps the eponymous prophecy itself.

But Now I have read the smallest fraction of the Buddha's sayings. A Course in Miracles seems unnecessary by comparison. And was it necessary to write all 1300 pages in a caricature of iambic pentameter? Was that meant to give it artistic verisimilitude? 'Cause it was just ponderous and drowsy.

John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces.

This may be a first. My brother, not exactly a literary person, swore to me that, although "it will be terrible if you ever get my hands on this book," It was the best book he had ever read, andI simply had to read it.

Having read it, I see why he thought I would like it. The egoistic, blustering, obese, lazy, stagnant hero of the book is probably close to the version of me he knows. I even could put items from his fictional journal side by side with passages from this very blog and challenge you to say which was which. And I would, except that I have to go now to demonstrate my mental and moral superiority at the local Pub Trivia night, and must finish up here.

Suffice it to say that, although it was not the best book I ever read, I have no doubt that it was the best he has ever read, and I am glad for him.

update 3-18-08
The following passage--from this very blog, in fact--may give the educated reader an idea of the extent to which my own writing parallels Ignatius':

"I like to think that Isaiah is either two different people, or else suffering from multiple personality disorder. He seems to have two diametrically opposed viewpoints on every topic. For instance, there is the subject of prophecy, central to the gravitas of the book. At one point, Isaiah seems to agree with Boethius that God's power of prophecy stems from his perception of time as simultaneous, instead of linear. It is thus that he is able to reveal the future to his prophet, as though withdrawing a curtain."

Vladimir Nabokov: Invitation to a Beheading

What can I say except that this novel shows, as Lolita did not, why Nabokov is considered the best author of the last century. I must read it more before I am fit to write about it. And I have to go play drunk trivia.