Philip Kindred Dick and his twin sister Jane Charlotte were born 6 weeks prematurely in an apartment in Chicago in the month December 16, 1928. Their father Edgar was worked for the Department of Agriculture and served in the Marines in the first world war. Both Edgar and his wife Dorothy were from Colorado and born to farming families. Both Philip and Jane were very underweight and to make matters worse, Dorothy was not producing enough milk for both infants. However, no one would realize this until it was too late. Philip's life was saved when a nurse conducted a home visit in January of 1929 and realized what was going on. It was too late for Jane however and she would die on route to the hospital, not even 2 months old. She was brought to Colorado and buried in a small grave. This tragedy would be in many ways the foundation of Philip's life. He would remain obsessed with his twin until his death. He would invent imaginary friends who took her name and his imagined likeness of her. He would claim as an adult that he could hear her voice and would at times have visions of her as a full grown woman. Keep this in mind because I'll come back to this.
“I heard about Jane a lot and it wasn't good for me. I felt guilty. Somehow I got all the milk” Philip K Dick on his sister.
Edgar blamed his wife for the death of his daughter, and when Philip was about 4 years old divorced Dorothy. Dorothy kept custody of Philip however and went to work to support herself and her child. Like his father, Philip blamed his mother for Jane's death and their relationship was a deeply troubled one. While Philip admired his mother, calling her strong and intelligent, he also accused her of being a terrible Mother who was always trying to keep him down. Part of this was the insistence of many learned men (who due to the prejudices time would never bother actually caring for an infant) who insisted that it was best not to coddle infants and toddlers but to treat their physical needs without to much affectionate physical contact (which frankly explains a lot about that generation and certain things in our society I think). Dorothy being an intelligent, well-read woman whose confidence as a Mother had taken a near fatal hit, followed their proscriptions to the letter in an attempt to prevent her only remaining child from growing up into a damaged person. This not only backfired terribly but also in my view led to a lot of the issues that would prevent them from having a good relationship. Dorothy would be incredibly supportive of Philip the writer and he would constantly turn to her for advice and constructive criticism on his work but he would repeatably state his belief that Dorothy just didn't love him and was incapable of loving her children. Edgar on the other was an infrequent presence in his son's life and while Philip believed in his father's love, he also believed that his father was a weak man and not very bright. He would always maintain that Dorothy was the smarter and more driven of the two. Not that Philip was completely starved for affection, as after the divorce Dorothy's mother came to live with them, along with his aunt Marion. Philip's Grandmother treated him with the affection that was missing from his relationship with his Mother but there was a cost. Philip's Grandfather. A rather shiftless man who drifted into and out of his family's life as he saw fit, Philip's Grandfather would intrude on this life and become a figure of terror to Philip and was often abusive. While never proven, there is some evidence that his Grandfather may have sexually molested Philip as well. By the time Philip was seven however Dorothy packed up her son and moved to California, Berkeley California.
Philip would grow to adulthood there, his school attendance was a bit erratic but his grades were fairly good but by his own admission, they were never outstanding. Philip also developed a number of mental problems, he would first display the acrophobia that would haunt him on and off for the entirety of his life as well as issues swallowing food and a complete dread of eating in public (he would be able to combat this in his adult life but have relapses). Dorothy treated him in a fairly adult manner at this time, which did seem to keep him stable. It was here at the age of 12 in the year 1940 that Philip had his first experience with Science Fiction, buying an issue of a magazine titled Stirring Science Stories. He started devouring the pulps, reading any he could get a hold of. When World War II kicked off, Philip rooted for the allies but was always suspicious of FDR and the American government, wondering just how much he was told was actually true. He would start hearing voices, for example during a physics test he had a panic attack when he couldn't remember the theory the test was based on. He would then report hearing a voice that explained the theory and guided him step by step in problem-solving. He would pass the test. After high school, he moved out as soon as he could believing he needed to escape his mother's influence. He moved in with a bunch of artist friends and through them begun an exploration of classical music and literature that would continue until his death. He also started working in a record store at the age 15, where his boss Herb Hollis would become the model for a number of protagonist and antagonist. Herb lived a life of craftsmanship (the store would repair and rebuild radios as well as sell them), small business over large corporations and valuing personal loyalty, these values would really resonate for Philip and he would champion them often. That said Herb wasn't perfect, he fired Philip for consorting with another worker who was fired. I'll admit that rankles me on Philip's behalf since my view is that my employer pays me for my labor and has a right to it (the labor I mean) but doesn't have the right to dictate anything about my life outside of the time I'm being paid but let's move on. Philip would also be in and out of therapy throughout this time, seeking treatment for his phobias. Unfortunately, the understanding of the mind of the time wasn't up to the task and the therapists would often make things worse.
Philip's first and second marriages kinda come from that radio store along with a good amount of characters and stories. His first marriage occurred before he was 21 and was over in a matter of months, the breaking point being when his wife informed him that she was going to keep seeing other men. Philip then went back to college and... Dropped out of college. He began to dream of mainstream success as a writer, this was something that always eluded him. He wrote a number of books that would be considered mainstream but... No publisher would touch them. Between marriages, he engaged in a number of romances, including with the woman he would bemoan as his great lost love Betty Jo Rivers. That relationship ended when she won a grant to study for her master's thesis in France and Philip asked her to choose between marriage to him and France. Betty chose France. He would then met his second wife and the editor that would help start his career. Kleo Apostolides would meet Philip in 1949 and marry him in 1950. They would remain married for 8 years and quite frankly they were likely the most peaceful years of Philip's life. Additionally, through a writing class his mother Dorothy was taking he met Anthony Boucher (who was teaching the class) the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Mr. Boucher convinced Philip to give science fiction a shot and damn if those stories didn't sell. Philip sold his first story for 75$ (for comparison his monthly house payment was 27.50, we will now pause while all the millennials pull themselves together after having a fit of envy over that). Philip began churning out science fiction short stories at a rate that I only envy and fear. In 1952 he produced and sold 4 stories, in 1953, he sold 30 (7 of which he produced in the month of June alone). In 1954 he took it easy and only produced 28. These stories can best be viewed as dry runs for the works he would produce later but they're still mostly solid tales if products of their time. Philip would quarrel with the pulp edits at times because most of them had no problems simply altering his stories, he would often demand they stop doing so or he would sell to someone else. This tactic met with mixed success.
By 1954 Philip decided to turn his hand to novels. This was a good choice since this was the year that the pulp magazines would meet their deaths. Not for a lack of sales but because the main distributor of all the magazines, American News Company was dismembered by corporate raiders who were more interested in the company's warehouse spaces than anything else. The pulps who despite a wide readership didn't have much in the way of liquid capital were then destroyed as no other distributor was interested in picking them up without a large up-front payment. The publishing company Ace books would buy the novels but at frankly rock bottom prices. This left Philip combating poverty and he felt a deep sense of shame about it, something that his wife Kleo didn't share but it inflamed a number of his mental disabilities, leading to him experiencing out of body episodes. Part of the problem was the status of science fiction at the time. Ace Books was the only company for a time that published science fiction on a regular basis and the genre was disdained to depths that would seem silly today but keep in mind this is before Star Trek, Star Wars and other shows and movies would really carve out a space for science fiction in the American mind. In the 1950s, science fiction was often widely derided as a childish concern at best (I would note some people still hold that view) or the sign of a disturbed mind. Additionally, he had his only confirmed brush with the FBI, due to a number of his friends being activists. The FBI even offered him a job at the University of Mexico if they would spy on communist students according to him and Kleo. They turned it down. Philip would spend the rest of his life convinced that the FBI was tracking and spying on him looking for an excuse to kill him That Philip K Dick could only sell science fiction stories while his more mainstream works went ignored and unpublished would also eat at his self-esteem. So, of course, he began to engage in self-destructive practices. He cheated on his wife Kleo twice, the first time the marriage survived but then they moved out of the Bay area and Philip met Anne, his 3rd wife. It was 1958 and Philip was about to plunge into the best and worst of the 1960s.
Anne Rubenstein was a young widow with 3 daughters and Philip fell head over heels in love with her. They began an affair and after Philip divorced Kleo, married. Their relationship was turbulent at best, much of that driven by Philip schizophrenia but it was here that he wrote such works as The Man in a High Castle, The Martian Time-Slip and others that would build in the New Wave movement of science fiction (I discussed that a bit here in my writing on Cyberpunk so I won't repeat myself). It's here that Philip really began to develop his themes and ideas that would run throughout his notable works. The question of what is and what isn't real? How flexible is identity? A preoccupation with trying to figure out what makes human's... Human and a struggle over religious experiences and ideas. Along with his life long experiments with the I Ching, which he would at times use to plot out novels. There are also some unpleasant strains that show up, Philip was capable of writing women characters of depth and agency but often during this time period they would be single dimensional characters and increasingly any woman who was a wife existed in these stories to cause problems and trails for their long-suffering husbands. In real life, he would accuse Anne of being overly controlling and a spendthrift, despite the fact that she was running a successful jewelry business. He would also accuse Anne of killing her first husband and plotting to kill him. Some of this likely comes from his increasing abuse of amphetamines and speed, which lead to nervous breakdowns of ever-increasing intensity. Philip would also start throwing LDS on the fire. Interesting enough, it's through Anne that Mr. Dick began his relationship with the Episcopalian Church. He and Anne started attending for both reasons of wanting to experience spirituality and to network with the local community. Religious thoughts and themes would often show up in Mr. Dick's work, you can see a prime example in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
It's here that we see the pattern that would emerge in his two future marriages to Nancy and Tessa. The beginning of the relationship starts with Philip being heads over heels, insanely charming if slightly smothering and moving heaven and earth to make his love happy. Then as time goes on he becomes increasingly demanding, expecting his wife to function as a caretaker and being jealous of her time. Both Nancy and Tessa were also decades his junior at the time of their marriages to him and that added another level of strain. As time goes on he becomes increasingly critical of his wife until the relationship cannot bear the strain and breaks apart. That's not to say that his wives were saints. Anne by her own admission would throw things and pick fights, another wife would cheat on him but between Philip's visions, drug use, and erratic behavior, he was the single strain on any relationship. Another cycle we see is that Philip would always loathe whatever state he was in. When a bachelor he would be on a frantic quest for a wife and would wallow in the gutter, he would open his home to young people mostly fellow drug addicts and throw himself into unhealthy relationships where he would attempt to rescue young women. It's from these periods we see novels such A Scanner Darkly and Flow My Tears the Policemen Said. Which deal heavily with the self-destruction of drug use mixed in along themes of government heavy-handedness and fears of a police state. I should note that one strain in his 4th marriage especially was the fact that the IRS was after him for back taxes, which he compounded by joining a movement pledging to not pay taxes until the Vietnam war ended. When he was married, however, he would decry living in what he considered a plastic stale existence and often state that he found marriage suffocating despite his rush to be married. Despite this, his 3 stepdaughters with Anne, two daughters (Laura with Anne, Isa with Nancy) and his son Chris all describe him as a good father if somewhat inconsistent. What I got out of this was that Philip was hunting for happiness but had no idea what would make him happy. I’m not going to criticize him for this because frankly, I think it’s an issue for at least 3/4ths of America and who knows how much of the rest of the planet. It’s more pronounced in Mr. Dick’s life than the rest of us.
However, he would attempt to at least learn what would make him happy. He would also wean himself off of drugs and after the collapse of his 5th marriage try to learn with live with himself without the distraction of crowds of junkies and squatters in his home. He settled into an apartment and started trying at least to break his more self-destructive patterns of behavior. A chance encounter with a young lady wearing an ornate necklace with a Jesus Fish on it would cause him to have visions that he considered divine encounters. Now Mr. Dick had experienced visions and heard voices before but in this case, he was convinced that it was an outside force speaking to him. It is possible that a prior friendship with Episcopalian Bishop named Pike influenced this. Bishop Pike was on a quest to find and understand the historical Christ and often discussed his thoughts with Philip K Dick during Mr. Dicks marriage to Tessa. Throughout his later life Philip would struggle to explain and understand just what it was he was hearing and seeing. He would claim it was his long passed sister Jane, a divine force, an alien, visions from his past life as Simon Magnus, a Christian Saint Thomas. None of these explanations seemed to stick for long. Even his last unfinished novel is a struggle to understand just what he is experiencing. You can see this in the novels he did complete before his death such as Valis, Radio Free Albemuth, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Philip would die from a stroke that led to complications in 1982.
Before his death, he would publish 44 novels and 120 short stories in 30 years of labor. Many of those would go on to have profound influences on the world of science fiction. In addition, he would leave behind 2 daughters and a son. There are worse legacies to leave the world. We'll start by looking at Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Next week and after that examining the Blade Runner movies that were inspired by the novel.
For a more detailed look at Philip K Dick's life, I would encourage readers to try Divine Invasions A life of Philip K Dick. Which I read before typing this essay. As always keep reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment