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The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike
The Skull in the photograph was labelled Neanderthal Man...
He is too excitable and too pushy. His wife drinks too much. He may be a man of principle, but Leo Runcible of Runcible Realty is an outsider in Carquinez, Marin County. When he gets into an argument with his neighbour Walt Dombrosio, the resulting ramifications follow a bizarre logic of cause and effect to lead in entirely unexpected directions...
Front cover illustration by Neil Breedon
He is too excitable and too pushy. His wife drinks too much. He may be a man of principle, but Leo Runcible of Runcible Realty is an outsider in Carquinez, Marin County. When he gets into an argument with his neighbour Walt Dombrosio, the resulting ramifications follow a bizarre logic of cause and effect to lead in entirely unexpected directions...
Front cover illustration by Neil Breedon
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1984
22 people are currently reading
965 people want to read
About the author
Philip K. Dick
2,006 books22.5k followersPhilip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound philosophical themes, Dick explored the nature of reality, the boundaries of human identity, and the impact of technology and authoritarianism on society. His stories often blurred the line between the real and the artificial, challenging readers to question their perceptions and beliefs.
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
August 4, 2012
Philip K. Dick’s mainstream novels, all but one of which remained unpublished until after his death in 1982, are normally regarded as the poor cousins of his science fiction works. To an extent this attitude is justified, but some of his mainstream novels are better than he is normally given credit for. At the time they were written, in the 50s and the early 60s, these novels were seen as too strange and too bleak to be publishable (and too poorly titled: The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike; really, Phil?) But I for one find a lot to like in some of these novels, especially the later ones. Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a fine work, even if it is very despairing, and so is The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (henceforth Teeth).
This must be the second time I’ve read Teeth and the first was a decade ago, so I didn’t remember a lot about it except that it was really depressing. Well, it’s still depressing but not poorly written despite PKD’s sometimes clunky sentence structure. What I noticed this time around was that the book is primarily about the treacherous landscape of gender politics long after WWII but long before second wave feminism. It’s a book about the anxieties of masculinity and the manifold ways that men try to subjugate women: through keeping them jobless in the home; through defining success almost exclusively in career terms; through violence and, if worst comes to worst, through rape. There are some harrowing scenes, but PKD handles this dark material far more adroitly than he had done in the earlier Voices from the Street. In short, I think Teeth is due for some rehabilitation as a serious work not entirely dissimilar to Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road.
PKD almost always used a shifting third person point of view in his novels, and Teeth is no exception. Written when the young (31) PKD had had some minor publishing success in the ghetto of science fiction but none at all in the wider marketplace, the novel mirrors many aspects of PKD’s life at the time in Marin County, California, alongside third wife Anne (who would write of these years in her excellent memoir Search for Philip K. Dick 1928-1982). Here our main characters are two married (but, crucially, childless) couples by the names of Leo and Janet Runcible and Walt and Sherry Dombrosio. According to Anne, these characters are based on real people who lived in Marin County at the time of the novel’s composition. Anne and Phil’s scholarly disagreement over whether Neanderthals were meat-eaters or vegetarians (Phil contended, wrongly, that they were vegetarians) even managed to worm its way into Teeth.
PKD had this way, even in his supposedly straight-laced mainstream novels, of marrying seemingly unrelated elements into a bizarre but cohesive whole. Only PKD could produce a novel that is on one hand about the angst experienced in childless families, and on the other about a hare-brained scheme to fabricate a Neanderthal finding on US soil as a way of getting back at a hated neighbour, and have it make some kind of sense. Teeth weaves together disparate plot strands into a strange but oddly beautiful fabric, including: what it was like for a man to happily work for an advertising company until his wife gets it into her head that she wants a job there too; what it was like to be a Jew, and a relatively successful businessman, in mildly anti-Semitic America; semi-scholarly debate about the origins of the species; the problems of the water supply in Marin County and what fate might have befallen the area’s earliest White inhabitants. And it makes sense. Teeth is not a nice novel by any means, and it paints a gloomy picture of human relations on a number of levels, but it’s a fine novel all the same.
This must be the second time I’ve read Teeth and the first was a decade ago, so I didn’t remember a lot about it except that it was really depressing. Well, it’s still depressing but not poorly written despite PKD’s sometimes clunky sentence structure. What I noticed this time around was that the book is primarily about the treacherous landscape of gender politics long after WWII but long before second wave feminism. It’s a book about the anxieties of masculinity and the manifold ways that men try to subjugate women: through keeping them jobless in the home; through defining success almost exclusively in career terms; through violence and, if worst comes to worst, through rape. There are some harrowing scenes, but PKD handles this dark material far more adroitly than he had done in the earlier Voices from the Street. In short, I think Teeth is due for some rehabilitation as a serious work not entirely dissimilar to Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road.
PKD almost always used a shifting third person point of view in his novels, and Teeth is no exception. Written when the young (31) PKD had had some minor publishing success in the ghetto of science fiction but none at all in the wider marketplace, the novel mirrors many aspects of PKD’s life at the time in Marin County, California, alongside third wife Anne (who would write of these years in her excellent memoir Search for Philip K. Dick 1928-1982). Here our main characters are two married (but, crucially, childless) couples by the names of Leo and Janet Runcible and Walt and Sherry Dombrosio. According to Anne, these characters are based on real people who lived in Marin County at the time of the novel’s composition. Anne and Phil’s scholarly disagreement over whether Neanderthals were meat-eaters or vegetarians (Phil contended, wrongly, that they were vegetarians) even managed to worm its way into Teeth.
PKD had this way, even in his supposedly straight-laced mainstream novels, of marrying seemingly unrelated elements into a bizarre but cohesive whole. Only PKD could produce a novel that is on one hand about the angst experienced in childless families, and on the other about a hare-brained scheme to fabricate a Neanderthal finding on US soil as a way of getting back at a hated neighbour, and have it make some kind of sense. Teeth weaves together disparate plot strands into a strange but oddly beautiful fabric, including: what it was like for a man to happily work for an advertising company until his wife gets it into her head that she wants a job there too; what it was like to be a Jew, and a relatively successful businessman, in mildly anti-Semitic America; semi-scholarly debate about the origins of the species; the problems of the water supply in Marin County and what fate might have befallen the area’s earliest White inhabitants. And it makes sense. Teeth is not a nice novel by any means, and it paints a gloomy picture of human relations on a number of levels, but it’s a fine novel all the same.
October 22, 2025
My 10th PKD novel (reading in chronological order) and 2nd mainstream (ie. non-SF) one.
It's not bad, quite readable, set in 1950s northern California about conflict that arises between 2 men living in the same small town. Also about the stresses in their respective marriages. I've never been convinced by Dick's treatment of women in his novels, always seems to be rather misogynistic.
Still, not as awful as I had recalled from reading it many moons ago
It's not bad, quite readable, set in 1950s northern California about conflict that arises between 2 men living in the same small town. Also about the stresses in their respective marriages. I've never been convinced by Dick's treatment of women in his novels, always seems to be rather misogynistic.
Still, not as awful as I had recalled from reading it many moons ago
August 12, 2021
The is the first non-genre (or should I say mainstream) PKD books I have read and I have to say that I am still composing my thoughts which is rather strange considering I usually have a fairly good idea of what I want to say.
So what of it - well the book was from a number which were never published during his life time (the book itself was rejected for publication at the time in the early 60s and I believe was never reworked for further attempts). As such it portrays American life after the Second World War and how behind the curtain of receptible life's thin veneer lies a more unsavoury world.
Now this is the part I struggled with - could it be current attitudes have made certain aspects unsavoury and even unacceptable (if you have read this book you know that there are a number of them) or that fact that not one of the main characters comes away unscathed.
However is more a perceptive commentary on those who try and present an image they are not and this this really just a metaphor, after all what starts off as a disagreement turns in to a hoax and in the end turns in to something far more insidious.
I have to say that for a first read of this side of PKD I have to say its been an interesting read indeed.
So what of it - well the book was from a number which were never published during his life time (the book itself was rejected for publication at the time in the early 60s and I believe was never reworked for further attempts). As such it portrays American life after the Second World War and how behind the curtain of receptible life's thin veneer lies a more unsavoury world.
Now this is the part I struggled with - could it be current attitudes have made certain aspects unsavoury and even unacceptable (if you have read this book you know that there are a number of them) or that fact that not one of the main characters comes away unscathed.
However is more a perceptive commentary on those who try and present an image they are not and this this really just a metaphor, after all what starts off as a disagreement turns in to a hoax and in the end turns in to something far more insidious.
I have to say that for a first read of this side of PKD I have to say its been an interesting read indeed.
March 23, 2020
One of the many posthumously published 'non-genre' PKD novels; this one written in 1960. Out of the few I've read, this is one of the best and most interesting. These novels come from a strange place where so called 'regular' people interact in the strangest ways within their 'regular' world. This one covers such items as race issues in small town west coast of California via a Jewish Realtor, traditional 1950's male and female roles - who between the two are the primary bread winner and so on - "What will the neighbours think!?" We even touch on those ignored board old-timers who know the area intimately yet are forgotten during the onward march of progress in order to induce dollars in small-town California .
May 28, 2012
this is a book about a small town, and it makes me thank the gods i don't believe in that i don't live in one. a small town, not a book.
i've read Philip K. Dick's sf. this book is not sf. it does make me wonder why he never developed a mainstream following, if this is the caliber of his non-sf works.
the story follows friends and neighbors in the little town on Carquinez, circa 1960. two families are center stage: the Dombrosios and the Runcibles. Sherry Dombrosio wants a job; Leo Runcible wants to make a real estate killing. Walt Dombrosio wants to keep Sherry under his thumb and make a fool of Leo. Janet Runcible just wants to drink herself numb at every opportunity.
and it all comes together with a skull--an apparently Neanderthal skull found on Runcible's property.
if you're not old enough to remember those times, this book will be quite an eye-opener: racial prejudice, deep and ugly sexism, abuse of women. it certainly makes the necessity for events like the rise of feminism and the civil rights era clear. i am old enough to remember (with a shudder) many of the acts which were pretty much "normal" back then, but which would be considered deeply deranged now. and Dick does such a good job of making these people, bound by their times, seem pretty much sane by the standards of their day.
and for me, that's really the beauty of this book: he makes these people and their lunatic beliefs, if not entirely sympathetic, at least rational within their cohort. it is such a deep pleasure to look back and think, thank god we are not like that now.
a lot of people seem to think that, as a species, we are hopeless and will never improve. they think that we as a society are regressing, or are at best stagnant. i suppose if the sweep of your vision is only the last ten years, or even 20 years, you could perhaps be forgiven for this shortsightedness. but when i think of how far we have come, even in only my paltry lifetime, i am so astounded at how much we've changed.
if you don't believe me, read the book.
i've read Philip K. Dick's sf. this book is not sf. it does make me wonder why he never developed a mainstream following, if this is the caliber of his non-sf works.
the story follows friends and neighbors in the little town on Carquinez, circa 1960. two families are center stage: the Dombrosios and the Runcibles. Sherry Dombrosio wants a job; Leo Runcible wants to make a real estate killing. Walt Dombrosio wants to keep Sherry under his thumb and make a fool of Leo. Janet Runcible just wants to drink herself numb at every opportunity.
and it all comes together with a skull--an apparently Neanderthal skull found on Runcible's property.
if you're not old enough to remember those times, this book will be quite an eye-opener: racial prejudice, deep and ugly sexism, abuse of women. it certainly makes the necessity for events like the rise of feminism and the civil rights era clear. i am old enough to remember (with a shudder) many of the acts which were pretty much "normal" back then, but which would be considered deeply deranged now. and Dick does such a good job of making these people, bound by their times, seem pretty much sane by the standards of their day.
and for me, that's really the beauty of this book: he makes these people and their lunatic beliefs, if not entirely sympathetic, at least rational within their cohort. it is such a deep pleasure to look back and think, thank god we are not like that now.
a lot of people seem to think that, as a species, we are hopeless and will never improve. they think that we as a society are regressing, or are at best stagnant. i suppose if the sweep of your vision is only the last ten years, or even 20 years, you could perhaps be forgiven for this shortsightedness. but when i think of how far we have come, even in only my paltry lifetime, i am so astounded at how much we've changed.
if you don't believe me, read the book.
June 27, 2013
Wow this is clearly one of PKD's most underappreciated masterpieces. I went into it being worried I wouldn't like it because of the lack of any science fiction elements from which he became famous for but by the end I felt impressed. The book manages to entertain on the level of his actual science fiction books but rather than rely on fancy futuristic gizmos or alternate realities it relies on giving its characters very deep emotions which is very entertaining on a psychoanalytic level.
The novel takes place in a small town in the country near Californa, and revolves around the lives and feuds between two couples the Rucinables and the Dombrisos. Mr. Ruicible works as the local real estate agent and after a racist friend/costumer of his doesn't buy a house because Mr. Dombrisio has a black friend the fight ensues. Both do incredibly dirty things to each other to get back at each other and it effects their relationships with those around them including their views. The two main characters Mr Dombrisio and Runcible wind up being really hateful and nasty characters but you wind up sympathsizing with them because PKD does a good job at conveying how angry they are and how they have been hurt. You wind up getting emotional and hating things you normally wouldn't because of this. It shows the complication of situations and that sometimes everyone might just be wrong, there is no hero. Another thing that makes this even better (maybe worse) is that it's very clear in the detail that PKD describes this that he quite possibly went through experiences like this in his life which makes me feel sorry for him as well as the people around.
Because the book was able to capture me in such an emotional way that's why I gave it 5 stars. I've never been a fan of dramas or romance but this once was very good and if anyone is a PKD reader who likes his scifi I say give this one a try.
The novel takes place in a small town in the country near Californa, and revolves around the lives and feuds between two couples the Rucinables and the Dombrisos. Mr. Ruicible works as the local real estate agent and after a racist friend/costumer of his doesn't buy a house because Mr. Dombrisio has a black friend the fight ensues. Both do incredibly dirty things to each other to get back at each other and it effects their relationships with those around them including their views. The two main characters Mr Dombrisio and Runcible wind up being really hateful and nasty characters but you wind up sympathsizing with them because PKD does a good job at conveying how angry they are and how they have been hurt. You wind up getting emotional and hating things you normally wouldn't because of this. It shows the complication of situations and that sometimes everyone might just be wrong, there is no hero. Another thing that makes this even better (maybe worse) is that it's very clear in the detail that PKD describes this that he quite possibly went through experiences like this in his life which makes me feel sorry for him as well as the people around.
Because the book was able to capture me in such an emotional way that's why I gave it 5 stars. I've never been a fan of dramas or romance but this once was very good and if anyone is a PKD reader who likes his scifi I say give this one a try.
April 12, 2015
Easily the WORST Philip K Dick book I've read. I have to say his non science fiction work is very disappointing. His scifi books have so much brilliant social commentary and subversive characters. His non-scifi books should be the same but they are not they are filled with the dullest and most annoying suburbanities. If anyone else had written this I would have given up after 50 pages because it was Philip K Dick I stuck with it and finished it but I really wish I hadn't bothered.
This book had a man Rape his wife to get her pregnant, because if she was pregnant she'd have to quit her job and he didn't want her working cause work was what a man was supposed to do and a woman had to stay home and if she wanted to work it was cause she wanted to be a man and emasculate him!!!! All things characters in this book Actually said and thought!!!! And the one woman who was a housewife was so depressed she just drank all the time and was totally mentally unbalanced! I would like to think Philip K Dick was trying to point out how absurd this was but there was just a bit too much sympathy for the total misogynistic assholes!
This book had a man Rape his wife to get her pregnant, because if she was pregnant she'd have to quit her job and he didn't want her working cause work was what a man was supposed to do and a woman had to stay home and if she wanted to work it was cause she wanted to be a man and emasculate him!!!! All things characters in this book Actually said and thought!!!! And the one woman who was a housewife was so depressed she just drank all the time and was totally mentally unbalanced! I would like to think Philip K Dick was trying to point out how absurd this was but there was just a bit too much sympathy for the total misogynistic assholes!
April 21, 2017
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, Philip K Dick, 304 pg.
This book is from PKD's selection of non-science-fiction stories. If I remember correctly, he wrote most of these stories early on in his career; they weren't very popular and remained unpublished until fairly recently. These books tell the stories of small towns in the mid-twentieth century. The people all know each other and nothing exciting really happens, but PKD is able to tell these stories with a high level of detail that allows these ordinary characters to shine. I am impressed that I end up genuinely interested in uninteresting people and things in each one of these books. The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is a pretty good book, but certainly isn't anything special.
This book is from PKD's selection of non-science-fiction stories. If I remember correctly, he wrote most of these stories early on in his career; they weren't very popular and remained unpublished until fairly recently. These books tell the stories of small towns in the mid-twentieth century. The people all know each other and nothing exciting really happens, but PKD is able to tell these stories with a high level of detail that allows these ordinary characters to shine. I am impressed that I end up genuinely interested in uninteresting people and things in each one of these books. The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is a pretty good book, but certainly isn't anything special.
September 22, 2018
Touched on a load of progressive issues for the time when this was written. Racism, religious bigotry, sexism, rape, and spousal abuse. But it was scattered in regards to the plotting and resultantly was a little slow. Thus far I much prefer my Dick novels with a science fiction bent.
January 30, 2021
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is the first non-SF Philip K. Dick I've read, and it was slightly disappointing if only because I was half-expecting it to turn out to be regular science fiction.
As it was, it felt like Philip K. Dick having a go at writing Revolutionary Road. For my money he does a better job than Richard Yates, but it's still... Revolutionary Road. Suburbia makes you feel unimportant! Marriages are unhappy! We commit our most terrible sins against those we love! Etc.
The bits of this I enjoyed most were the stray asides about the early history of California, and the feeling of a culture where people actually dug new drains and built new houses. "Imagine the horror of living in a community where real estate projects are going on, and occasionally someone is able to afford to build a new home or move into a house." Perhaps spooky at the time of writing, but right now I have to say it sounds great!
As it was, it felt like Philip K. Dick having a go at writing Revolutionary Road. For my money he does a better job than Richard Yates, but it's still... Revolutionary Road. Suburbia makes you feel unimportant! Marriages are unhappy! We commit our most terrible sins against those we love! Etc.
The bits of this I enjoyed most were the stray asides about the early history of California, and the feeling of a culture where people actually dug new drains and built new houses. "Imagine the horror of living in a community where real estate projects are going on, and occasionally someone is able to afford to build a new home or move into a house." Perhaps spooky at the time of writing, but right now I have to say it sounds great!
January 22, 2023
This book is about an isolated community in Marin County, California, where there are neighbors who don’t care for each other and hold grudges against each other. It concerns gender, racial and economic issues. About the only decent character was Mr. Wharton, the fourth-grade teacher. I found this title on a list of Dick’s best stories. I don’t know how anyone could consider this the best of anything. I found it boring and offensive and again, as with Confessions of a Crap Artist, disliked the characters. I know it was written in another time and place, but I could never recommend this book to anyone for any reason. After reading it, I now understand why publishers didn’t want to have anything to do with Dick’s mainstream stories. I haven’t given up on PKD yet, though, and will continue reading the “best of” books on my list.
August 31, 2023
Ugh, Well we will be doing a whole podcast about it soon. For completionists only. there were things I enjoyed and it will be an interesting episode I am sure. It does say something about Phil's life in 1960 Marin county.
-David
-David
September 21, 2024
Un sottile e spietato occhio satirico aleggia sopra alle righe di uno dei romanzi "non di genere" di Dick. La California degli Anni 50 viene crudamente rappresentata in un diorama di pregiudizio, paranoia e vendette personali. Crudo e geniale, soprattutto nei suoi significati stratificati e nelle sue metafore di forte impatto sociale.
July 29, 2012
This book is arguably the best of Philip K. Dick's mainstream literary works. In my opinion, the other that is closest in quality is "Voices from the Street". Both novels present stories that flow satisfyingly from their initial concept without their plots becoming forced, a significant problem in PKD's other mainstream literary works.
I place both "The Man Whose Teeth..." and "Voices from the Street" above "Confessions of a Crap Artist", the only one of PKD's mainstream literary works to be published in his lifetime (also not including the VALIS trilogy). "Confessions" has a quirkiness that made it attractive to publishers at a time when they wouldn't touch the rest of his mainstream literary works. Though being distinguished by publication during the author's lifetime, I do not find the story to be as good as "...Teeth..." or "Voices..." nor do I find "Confessions" to be as well written as its previously unpublished siblings.
Like with all of PKD's mainstream works, "The Man Whose Teeth..." is the story of a creative man in his twenties who is not content with his job and has a disastrous love life. In this iteration of the PKD tale the hero is a commercial artist whose wife manipulates him into quiting his job so that she can go to work at the firm he leaves. While unemployed, the hero gets into a battle of wills with the local realtor. He uses his skills as a commercial artist to pull a prank that humiliates the realtor in front of the community.
A flaw that is difficult to take in this book, occurring in all or most of the mainstream books, is a dramatic presentation of domestic violence between a man and a woman. Another flaw is that Racial slurs of the time are bandied about in such a way that it is difficult to know how critical the author is of racism or if he is racist himself. An oddity is reoccurring discussions of the 'natural place' of men and women belonging within the workplace or the home respectively. The ideas might have been thought provoking or timely if they had been published when the books where written, but leave the contemporary reader interested in the book more as a historical document by which to see the development of Philip K. Dick as a writer than as a novel to be read upon its own merits. Finally, the conflicts are a bit underwhelming and petty in significance to the society they describe.
All of these observations are from a reviewer who really likes the book and encourages Philip K. Dick aficionados to give it a try if he or she is looking for the best of PKD's mainstream literary works. This book is extremely well written. The story leaves the reader more satisfied with the quality of the story and its presentation than with any of its mainstream siblings.
The mainstream novels boil down to a warning against attempting to fill the void in one's life with consumerism or career ambitions. Reading these books has led me to observe that the science fiction novels are about the same thing. The difference is in what PKD described as consumerism and ambition in the science fiction novels. PKD's genius was to make his tepid warning against consumerism fascinating by presenting consumerism as the method for monolithic corporations to use technologies that start as consumer products (androids, drugs, implanted memory, responsibility for military and police protection)to take over society and to run rough-shod over individuality and freedom.
The mainstream novels are interesting in their own way. Disastrous love relationships look the same in both the mainstream and science fiction iterations. The mainstream books probably would have been better if a publisher had taken an interest in them and given PKD appropriate advice for their improvement. If that had happened he might be remembered as a working-class John Updike.
As it is he was able to find his genius in science fiction, where he is one of he giants. It is the scale of the presentation of the same themes that made the mainstream novels underwhelming while the science fiction presentations are startling in their size and originality and make millions of us Philip K. Dick fans.
I place both "The Man Whose Teeth..." and "Voices from the Street" above "Confessions of a Crap Artist", the only one of PKD's mainstream literary works to be published in his lifetime (also not including the VALIS trilogy). "Confessions" has a quirkiness that made it attractive to publishers at a time when they wouldn't touch the rest of his mainstream literary works. Though being distinguished by publication during the author's lifetime, I do not find the story to be as good as "...Teeth..." or "Voices..." nor do I find "Confessions" to be as well written as its previously unpublished siblings.
Like with all of PKD's mainstream works, "The Man Whose Teeth..." is the story of a creative man in his twenties who is not content with his job and has a disastrous love life. In this iteration of the PKD tale the hero is a commercial artist whose wife manipulates him into quiting his job so that she can go to work at the firm he leaves. While unemployed, the hero gets into a battle of wills with the local realtor. He uses his skills as a commercial artist to pull a prank that humiliates the realtor in front of the community.
A flaw that is difficult to take in this book, occurring in all or most of the mainstream books, is a dramatic presentation of domestic violence between a man and a woman. Another flaw is that Racial slurs of the time are bandied about in such a way that it is difficult to know how critical the author is of racism or if he is racist himself. An oddity is reoccurring discussions of the 'natural place' of men and women belonging within the workplace or the home respectively. The ideas might have been thought provoking or timely if they had been published when the books where written, but leave the contemporary reader interested in the book more as a historical document by which to see the development of Philip K. Dick as a writer than as a novel to be read upon its own merits. Finally, the conflicts are a bit underwhelming and petty in significance to the society they describe.
All of these observations are from a reviewer who really likes the book and encourages Philip K. Dick aficionados to give it a try if he or she is looking for the best of PKD's mainstream literary works. This book is extremely well written. The story leaves the reader more satisfied with the quality of the story and its presentation than with any of its mainstream siblings.
The mainstream novels boil down to a warning against attempting to fill the void in one's life with consumerism or career ambitions. Reading these books has led me to observe that the science fiction novels are about the same thing. The difference is in what PKD described as consumerism and ambition in the science fiction novels. PKD's genius was to make his tepid warning against consumerism fascinating by presenting consumerism as the method for monolithic corporations to use technologies that start as consumer products (androids, drugs, implanted memory, responsibility for military and police protection)to take over society and to run rough-shod over individuality and freedom.
The mainstream novels are interesting in their own way. Disastrous love relationships look the same in both the mainstream and science fiction iterations. The mainstream books probably would have been better if a publisher had taken an interest in them and given PKD appropriate advice for their improvement. If that had happened he might be remembered as a working-class John Updike.
As it is he was able to find his genius in science fiction, where he is one of he giants. It is the scale of the presentation of the same themes that made the mainstream novels underwhelming while the science fiction presentations are startling in their size and originality and make millions of us Philip K. Dick fans.
June 6, 2011
I follow all the Tor Books Facebook feeds and one Sunday, they posted a giveaway where if you were the first person to comment, you got three P.K. Dick novels. I was that first person and that is how I got this book.
I knew P.K. Dick primarily for his science fiction work, particularly Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and it's movie adaptation, Blade Runner. None of the three books I got were science fiction, but I knew I liked his writing, so decided they were worth a try.
The book was written in the early sixties in CA and is set in that time period in Marin County. It is bascially the story of Leo Runcible, a middle class Jew living in a typical '60's WASP neighborhood near San Francisco. Leo is a real estate agent, the "new guy" in a town full of old timers, who have lived there all their lives. He dreams of being the one to bring development to the town, and turning it into a suburban mecca for San Franciscans looking to escape the city. And turning a nice profit for himself. He is set to close a deal on a house, when it is noticed that a nieghbor of his has a Negro as a guest at his house. The ensuing discussion turns racial, losing Leo both the deal and a friendship. In a fit of retailiation, he reports the neighbor, Walt Dombrosio, for drunken driving, causing Walt to lose his driver's license. All of this sets up a sort of fued between the two, and their wives.
Walt decides to have some work done on his septic field and uses the opportunity to set up, with some other townsmen, an elaborate practical joke on Leo. They plant what looks like the remains of a Neanderthal man on Leo's property and lead Leo to discover it after picking up some Indian artifacts at the leach field diggings. Leo believes he has a real archaeological find and calls in experts from universities to verify the finds. They, of course, identify them as faked. In tracking down the source of the actual skeletons used to make the fakes, it comes to light that there is a problem with the local water supply. What started as a neighbor's fued ends up affecting a whole town.
This was an interesting book. It was well outside what I normally read, but the characterizations are quite well drawn and have depth. The setting is very much a late '50's- early '60's lifestyle, with the morals and conventions of those time periods. Women were expected to stay home and raise children, or be active in local clubs and organizations. When one of the wives gets a job, it affects her relationships with her husband and the community. The racial prejudices of the day are present, though not a main theme in the story. They do drive some of the plot, and give insight into Leo's character.
All in all, it was an interesting read. Not an easy one and you will have to think a bit while reading. For those who only know Dick for his science fiction, this early work shows a different side of the author and his talents.
I knew P.K. Dick primarily for his science fiction work, particularly Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and it's movie adaptation, Blade Runner. None of the three books I got were science fiction, but I knew I liked his writing, so decided they were worth a try.
The book was written in the early sixties in CA and is set in that time period in Marin County. It is bascially the story of Leo Runcible, a middle class Jew living in a typical '60's WASP neighborhood near San Francisco. Leo is a real estate agent, the "new guy" in a town full of old timers, who have lived there all their lives. He dreams of being the one to bring development to the town, and turning it into a suburban mecca for San Franciscans looking to escape the city. And turning a nice profit for himself. He is set to close a deal on a house, when it is noticed that a nieghbor of his has a Negro as a guest at his house. The ensuing discussion turns racial, losing Leo both the deal and a friendship. In a fit of retailiation, he reports the neighbor, Walt Dombrosio, for drunken driving, causing Walt to lose his driver's license. All of this sets up a sort of fued between the two, and their wives.
Walt decides to have some work done on his septic field and uses the opportunity to set up, with some other townsmen, an elaborate practical joke on Leo. They plant what looks like the remains of a Neanderthal man on Leo's property and lead Leo to discover it after picking up some Indian artifacts at the leach field diggings. Leo believes he has a real archaeological find and calls in experts from universities to verify the finds. They, of course, identify them as faked. In tracking down the source of the actual skeletons used to make the fakes, it comes to light that there is a problem with the local water supply. What started as a neighbor's fued ends up affecting a whole town.
This was an interesting book. It was well outside what I normally read, but the characterizations are quite well drawn and have depth. The setting is very much a late '50's- early '60's lifestyle, with the morals and conventions of those time periods. Women were expected to stay home and raise children, or be active in local clubs and organizations. When one of the wives gets a job, it affects her relationships with her husband and the community. The racial prejudices of the day are present, though not a main theme in the story. They do drive some of the plot, and give insight into Leo's character.
All in all, it was an interesting read. Not an easy one and you will have to think a bit while reading. For those who only know Dick for his science fiction, this early work shows a different side of the author and his talents.
June 12, 2010
I'm a PKD fan, but there's a good reason his mainstream fiction didn't sell while he was alive.
The first half of this book really bored me, although I found the second half much more interesting, up until the end which was a bit flat. He seems to write the same, unsympathetic tedious characters across all of his non-SF. The characters in this book are largely indistinguishable from those of other non-SF books he wrote, such as In Milton Lumky Territory or Puttering About in a Small Land.+
The first half of this book really bored me, although I found the second half much more interesting, up until the end which was a bit flat. He seems to write the same, unsympathetic tedious characters across all of his non-SF. The characters in this book are largely indistinguishable from those of other non-SF books he wrote, such as In Milton Lumky Territory or Puttering About in a Small Land.+
July 24, 2023
Even if I'm a realtor-[?]
The cover on this edition is priceless.
A fairly anodyne but memorable example of one of PKD's less-exciting "real life" stories published posthumously.
There is a fascinating account circa pp. 136 of an entirely internal tortured journey of madness and despair, which feels autobiographical.
The cover on this edition is priceless.
A fairly anodyne but memorable example of one of PKD's less-exciting "real life" stories published posthumously.
There is a fascinating account circa pp. 136 of an entirely internal tortured journey of madness and despair, which feels autobiographical.
January 23, 2020
212 POSTED - allcaps formatting came too soon
Funny having Drake mentioned when the last book I read was Dr Futurity, in which they go back in time to intervene with Drake's landing
Funny having Drake mentioned when the last book I read was Dr Futurity, in which they go back in time to intervene with Drake's landing
October 21, 2020
Written just before The Man in the High Castle, The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is another of Dick’s early non-sf novels that didn’t see the light of day till the mid-80s. What Dick does well in his non-sf novels is chart the peculiar paths middle-class people took in their quests to fulfill the good life in suburbia. While there are no overtly autobiographical elements in these novels (that I’m aware of), they speak to Dick’s keen observation of what was transpiring around him while he was trying to make a go of married life and his efforts to be a literary writer.
The story in The Man Whose Teeth is one of small-town relations surrounding a rivalry between two relative new-comers to the fictional Marin County community of Carquinez, just north of the Tamalpais Mountains, not far from the real-life coastal community of Stinson Beach, circa 1958. Leo Runcible is a Jewish realtor with ambitions to make Carquinez a San Francisco breakfast community, and Walter Dombrosio is a commercial designer who works in San Francisco. An unlikely set of circumstances pit the two against each other, and Dombrosio manufactures a Neanderthal skull to confound Runcible and make him look a fool. Runcible too eagerly takes the bait, and he becomes obsessed with proving the skull genuine. Finally convinced of a hoax, Runcible’s later efforts to understand the disfiguration in the remains Dombrosio used as the basis for his ersatz Neanderthal uncovers a potential water pollution problem in Carquinez.
This story of small-town conflict introduces a dozen or so different personalities, each of them with distinctly different perspectives about the events surrounding them. These characters contribute to the action and/or offer chorus-like interpretation. The most charged conflict resides in a significant subplot about Dombrosio and his wife, Sherry, a stylish, well-bred, well-educated woman who wants to work and takes the opportunity of doing so while her husband waits out his six-month license suspension. The tensions between Dombrosio and his wife are realistically nuanced, tainted with shifting irrationalities that define larger conflicts with social norms. The last we see of these two, Dombrosio is gloating about having made his wife pregnant, causing her to lose her job, and she is reluctantly coming to terms with her fate as an expectant mother.
The concluding chapter fails to tie up all the loose ends (or even hint how that might be done). In the aftermath of all the feuding between the novel’s two principals, the self-proclaimed “principled” realtor Leo Runcible has drawn on all his resources to fund a water improvement scheme on his own, without the backing of the community’s older, richer residents (who refused to help). At the Christmas party he and his wife are hosting, he attempts to sway potential clients to move to Carquinez, even as he realizes that he is himself no longer solvent. The novel’s irresolution appears to tilt towards an assimilation of conflicts and a restoration of the status quo, with all of its personal and social limitations. At the same time, there’s intimation that the fracas has left too many hard feelings, that consciences and consciousnesses have ever-so-slightly shifted. Dick’s odd little story with its rich specificities of event, character, and location offers up no morals, instead ends as a vibrant, colorful snapshot—unique but representative—reminder of a time and place that in some odd fashion leads to the present.
The story in The Man Whose Teeth is one of small-town relations surrounding a rivalry between two relative new-comers to the fictional Marin County community of Carquinez, just north of the Tamalpais Mountains, not far from the real-life coastal community of Stinson Beach, circa 1958. Leo Runcible is a Jewish realtor with ambitions to make Carquinez a San Francisco breakfast community, and Walter Dombrosio is a commercial designer who works in San Francisco. An unlikely set of circumstances pit the two against each other, and Dombrosio manufactures a Neanderthal skull to confound Runcible and make him look a fool. Runcible too eagerly takes the bait, and he becomes obsessed with proving the skull genuine. Finally convinced of a hoax, Runcible’s later efforts to understand the disfiguration in the remains Dombrosio used as the basis for his ersatz Neanderthal uncovers a potential water pollution problem in Carquinez.
This story of small-town conflict introduces a dozen or so different personalities, each of them with distinctly different perspectives about the events surrounding them. These characters contribute to the action and/or offer chorus-like interpretation. The most charged conflict resides in a significant subplot about Dombrosio and his wife, Sherry, a stylish, well-bred, well-educated woman who wants to work and takes the opportunity of doing so while her husband waits out his six-month license suspension. The tensions between Dombrosio and his wife are realistically nuanced, tainted with shifting irrationalities that define larger conflicts with social norms. The last we see of these two, Dombrosio is gloating about having made his wife pregnant, causing her to lose her job, and she is reluctantly coming to terms with her fate as an expectant mother.
The concluding chapter fails to tie up all the loose ends (or even hint how that might be done). In the aftermath of all the feuding between the novel’s two principals, the self-proclaimed “principled” realtor Leo Runcible has drawn on all his resources to fund a water improvement scheme on his own, without the backing of the community’s older, richer residents (who refused to help). At the Christmas party he and his wife are hosting, he attempts to sway potential clients to move to Carquinez, even as he realizes that he is himself no longer solvent. The novel’s irresolution appears to tilt towards an assimilation of conflicts and a restoration of the status quo, with all of its personal and social limitations. At the same time, there’s intimation that the fracas has left too many hard feelings, that consciences and consciousnesses have ever-so-slightly shifted. Dick’s odd little story with its rich specificities of event, character, and location offers up no morals, instead ends as a vibrant, colorful snapshot—unique but representative—reminder of a time and place that in some odd fashion leads to the present.
January 12, 2023
One of the final remaining PKD novels we hadn't read yet. Many tend to discount PKD's realist/non-scifi works, but we're big fans! Confessions of a Crap Artist is still probably the top of this side of his oeuvre, but this one was really good- all despicable characters bumbling along into a fittingly vague denouement. Good audiobook production as well- just the right amount of character affectation.
September 26, 2018
Underwhelming
Read
January 27, 2021This is bizarre contemporary at best and shouldn't be in the science fiction shelf...
July 9, 2012
My Philip K. Dick Project
Entry #18 - The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (written early 1960, published posthumously Jun. 1984)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is another solid, entertaining “realist” novel from Philip K. Dick, nearly as good, in my opinion, as Confessions of a Crap Artist. Confessions was about many things, its chief theme being that everyone is probably crazy. Teeth is about causality, how little things we do snowball and affect others around us, and how impossible it is to see where it’s all going.
By now, Dick’s “realist” novels are much tighter and better constructed than his early efforts, and the writing is much better, too. More and more, Dick’s humor shines through. His characters’ frustrations and tirades make for entertaining reading. In fact, like all of Dick’s mainstream novels, this book certainly has its moments of disturbing darkness, but this may be his funniest book yet. The dialogue and the character’s inner monologues are some of his best.
With only occasional passages devoted to their wives, the book jumps from the perspectives of Jewish Leo Runcible, a big-shot realtor, and Walt Dombrosio, a graphic designer, neighbors in Carquinez, near San Francisco. The night Leo has an old friend over to close a deal on a house nearby, Walt happens to invite his black mechanic over for dinner. When Leo’s friend makes an issue out of it, Leo, enraged, ends the friendship and loses the deal. That doesn’t stop him from having it out with Walt, however, and their argument starts the chain of bizarre occurrences that culminate with a publicity storm over supposed Neanderthal remains found on Leo’s property, Walt’s wife getting pregnant, and Leo buying a failing water company.
Dick has never been shy about dealing with race relations in his novels, and he takes it for granted that racism is wrong, without being didactic or feeling the need to explain why. In this novel, race plays a large role. Much is made of Walt’s comfort around black people, as well as Leo’s Jewishness. Yet Dick handles it deftly, illustrating its realistic impacts on society. How different the 50s were from today. Once again, Dick really brings to life 1950s California.
The characters are well sketched out, as well. Leo, obsessed with his principles, is an upstanding man, but can become a vindictive ass at times, too. Walt, on the other hand, is more of an unassuming guy, but lets his neurotic insecurities get the better of him. The interaction between these two is really great, and Dick has a good supporting characters in driven, spoiled Sherry (Walt’s wife, and another manipulative Dick woman), Janet (Leo’s lushy wife), and Wharton, the fourth-grade schoolteacher who fancies himself as the town historian and intellectual. Watching them all bounce off each other is a real delight. In particular, as in Confessions of a Crap Artist, Dick has a real gift for getting into the strange and endlessly complicated workings of the relationships between men and women.
Finally, after all the hoopla surrounding the skulls in question (which is really a hilarious sequence), we end up with our four, their lives going on, but they will not be quite the same. In the final chapter, Walt reflects on the crazy chain of events that brought them here, and can’t help but be amused, although he has a disturbing vision of the future to come. However, perhaps my favorite line in the book opens the last chapter. “At their Christmas Eve party, Janet Runcible became drunk and talked to everyone about personal problems.” It sums it up perfectly. Their lives may be different than before, but they aren’t. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
My edition: Paladin Grafton books, paperback, 1984
Up next: “Vulcan’s Hammer”!
July 9th, 2012
Entry #18 - The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (written early 1960, published posthumously Jun. 1984)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike is another solid, entertaining “realist” novel from Philip K. Dick, nearly as good, in my opinion, as Confessions of a Crap Artist. Confessions was about many things, its chief theme being that everyone is probably crazy. Teeth is about causality, how little things we do snowball and affect others around us, and how impossible it is to see where it’s all going.
By now, Dick’s “realist” novels are much tighter and better constructed than his early efforts, and the writing is much better, too. More and more, Dick’s humor shines through. His characters’ frustrations and tirades make for entertaining reading. In fact, like all of Dick’s mainstream novels, this book certainly has its moments of disturbing darkness, but this may be his funniest book yet. The dialogue and the character’s inner monologues are some of his best.
With only occasional passages devoted to their wives, the book jumps from the perspectives of Jewish Leo Runcible, a big-shot realtor, and Walt Dombrosio, a graphic designer, neighbors in Carquinez, near San Francisco. The night Leo has an old friend over to close a deal on a house nearby, Walt happens to invite his black mechanic over for dinner. When Leo’s friend makes an issue out of it, Leo, enraged, ends the friendship and loses the deal. That doesn’t stop him from having it out with Walt, however, and their argument starts the chain of bizarre occurrences that culminate with a publicity storm over supposed Neanderthal remains found on Leo’s property, Walt’s wife getting pregnant, and Leo buying a failing water company.
Dick has never been shy about dealing with race relations in his novels, and he takes it for granted that racism is wrong, without being didactic or feeling the need to explain why. In this novel, race plays a large role. Much is made of Walt’s comfort around black people, as well as Leo’s Jewishness. Yet Dick handles it deftly, illustrating its realistic impacts on society. How different the 50s were from today. Once again, Dick really brings to life 1950s California.
The characters are well sketched out, as well. Leo, obsessed with his principles, is an upstanding man, but can become a vindictive ass at times, too. Walt, on the other hand, is more of an unassuming guy, but lets his neurotic insecurities get the better of him. The interaction between these two is really great, and Dick has a good supporting characters in driven, spoiled Sherry (Walt’s wife, and another manipulative Dick woman), Janet (Leo’s lushy wife), and Wharton, the fourth-grade schoolteacher who fancies himself as the town historian and intellectual. Watching them all bounce off each other is a real delight. In particular, as in Confessions of a Crap Artist, Dick has a real gift for getting into the strange and endlessly complicated workings of the relationships between men and women.
Finally, after all the hoopla surrounding the skulls in question (which is really a hilarious sequence), we end up with our four, their lives going on, but they will not be quite the same. In the final chapter, Walt reflects on the crazy chain of events that brought them here, and can’t help but be amused, although he has a disturbing vision of the future to come. However, perhaps my favorite line in the book opens the last chapter. “At their Christmas Eve party, Janet Runcible became drunk and talked to everyone about personal problems.” It sums it up perfectly. Their lives may be different than before, but they aren’t. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
My edition: Paladin Grafton books, paperback, 1984
Up next: “Vulcan’s Hammer”!
July 9th, 2012
January 17, 2020
Phil wrote some shoddy books early in his career but good god does this one take the cake. Want to spend 300 pages with unlikeable characters that don't act like "normal" people would? Want to spend that time with characters who constantly flip between extreme emotions without anything really happening? Tedious inner monologues and feats of "logic" that has people doing mental gymnastics that would put the most ardent of apologists to shame. Characters acting like spoiled children. Four main characters and all of them were so unsympathetic that it leaves me thinking it had to be intentional, but then you ask, why spend your time with such people? Why indeed.
It might have been a big mistake to read PKD in chronilogical order, as he wrote his books, because while I was aware, that the start will be rough, I had such high hopes for his later stuff that I was not prepared to get such tedious and just generally bad writing at the start.
This has to be a book for fans only, seeing how many PKD readers give this a high rating. Maybe one day I will look back on it with fond feelings, at the moment I'm just disappointed.
*spoiler*
Man drinks. Man drives his car. Man gets caught by the police and loses licence. Man never takes responsibility. Man loses job because of hissy fit. Man blames wife for everything wrong in his life. Man rapes wife and gets her pregnant. Man physically abuses wife for thinking about abortion. Man says he loves wife, says he hates her, then back to loving her and then threatens to kill her. In the end, man gets what he wants and sits on his high horse. No lessons learned, no knowledge gained. A fruitless effort, a wasted life.
Neither of the men in this book ever accepted any responsibility and always blamed others while both of the women blamed themselves for everything that was wrong. The end.
It might have been a big mistake to read PKD in chronilogical order, as he wrote his books, because while I was aware, that the start will be rough, I had such high hopes for his later stuff that I was not prepared to get such tedious and just generally bad writing at the start.
This has to be a book for fans only, seeing how many PKD readers give this a high rating. Maybe one day I will look back on it with fond feelings, at the moment I'm just disappointed.
*spoiler*
Man drinks. Man drives his car. Man gets caught by the police and loses licence. Man never takes responsibility. Man loses job because of hissy fit. Man blames wife for everything wrong in his life. Man rapes wife and gets her pregnant. Man physically abuses wife for thinking about abortion. Man says he loves wife, says he hates her, then back to loving her and then threatens to kill her. In the end, man gets what he wants and sits on his high horse. No lessons learned, no knowledge gained. A fruitless effort, a wasted life.
Neither of the men in this book ever accepted any responsibility and always blamed others while both of the women blamed themselves for everything that was wrong. The end.
December 11, 2009
This book dates to the earlier part of Philip K. Dick's career, and surprise, it is not a science fiction novel. This novel reveals the intricacy of marital relationships in their sickest moments; alcoholic wife, workaholic money making husband. In another couple, the reader sees the husband who cannot stand to have a wife who is capable of thinking for herself, to the point of completely prohibiting her to work - mind this novel is set in the late fifties. She defies him by getting a job at the company he works for, thus causing a rift both in his career and their relationship. To exact his revenge, the husband resorts to violence and rape in order to force his wife to conform to his standards, which she does in the end.
Surrounding everything we find a feud between neighbors, and deceit lies at the bottom of the plot. P.K.Dick reveals his mastery of plot development, and flawed characters that do not bring any sympathy from the reader. There is no hero in the point of view of this reader, but one may sympathize with Runcible, even though he is of the magnitude of Shakespeare's Shylock.
This is definitely a masterpiece.
Surrounding everything we find a feud between neighbors, and deceit lies at the bottom of the plot. P.K.Dick reveals his mastery of plot development, and flawed characters that do not bring any sympathy from the reader. There is no hero in the point of view of this reader, but one may sympathize with Runcible, even though he is of the magnitude of Shakespeare's Shylock.
This is definitely a masterpiece.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 30, 2009
A thoroughly enjoyable early Dick book, at least for Dick's fans. While at some points the scenario *almost* seems to be all over the place, there are lots of Dick's later ideas spurting up: authenticity/reality, the oppressive wife and the broken man, defeat in life...
While there's no real culmination (and even the supposed focal point, the teeth, appears very late in the book), the story is interesting and well described.
On one hand, one feels pity for Dick's failure as a mainstream literature author; on the other hand, it's quite obvious that what he lacked was the SF perspective.
While there's no real culmination (and even the supposed focal point, the teeth, appears very late in the book), the story is interesting and well described.
On one hand, one feels pity for Dick's failure as a mainstream literature author; on the other hand, it's quite obvious that what he lacked was the SF perspective.
January 22, 2015
It's a bit sad to think that Dick wanted to be recognized as a talent by mainstream literary critics. His power is in his unique "what if" ideas and storytelling skills, not in his prose. This was an okay read, but I'd only recommend it to hardcore fans looking to be a completist. If you're interested in sampling one of his non-speculative novels, I'd strongly recommend Confessions of a Crap Artist instead of this. I'm not saying it was awful, I'm just saying it wasn't great, and I do still want to read more of his mainstream novels so I can continue to honestly call myself a Dickhead.
November 18, 2023
Recently, the more I like the book, the less I feel worth saying about it, except for direct quotes out of it. I've started to read this one following my sci-fi kick. I wanted cheap thrills and maybe laser guns, some preferably soul-crushing trip to another world. Sci-fi kick removed the soul-crushing expectation as I have this not very good (neither to me as a reader, human, nor as a person who forgot the name of the thing that he has to write) attitude. Getting out of curly brackets my mind can remember the word - condescending! I tend to think that it's all gonna be a bit naive, an easy-read, pulp-ish fiction for a good stool. But somehow it was and was not.
It was in a sense of pages are thin and you're dying to flip it to know what next. Not, in a sense that it's not even a sci-fi: no galaxies, no magic, none of that. This is sci-fi in a way Jesus is Jesus in Tolstoy's Gospel: human to the perfection of the comic book, but the good one. The comic book that marks the most important thing, exaggerates them, revealing. I couldn't imagine Dick doing that in a way that I would expect from Gass or Vollmann, but it is the vibe. Americana, south, it's greed and emptiness, poor men and their poor slaves wives. The narrator's perspective shifts from chapter to chapter. All is very believable, good. The book even has passages that could be from Bell Jar. The text is dense and has a lot of currents, each "chapter host" adding their pity worries. and next I shut the fuck up to list my favourite quotes, that make a narrative on its own. Here we go:
* the ground was — a dense, rich layer from which new life came, lived out its span, and then sank back. All of it was natural and regular. The dead had merged. From bacteria to plants to small animals to man; all lay beneath their feet.
* A man who did not narrate the truth perhaps could not distinguish the truth, he reflected. So their minds might work, when applied to him and his tales. And in his work, being able to tell fact from fiction had grave economic significance — at least by extension.
* We should be wary of being positive in this world
* She could really have had a career ... but she decided to get married instead. Like a lot of women.
* The house stirred with things done wrong and not done at all.
* But I can tell you this: if you go to bed, if you aren't here to greet the Wilbys, I'll make it tough for you the rest of your life.
* There isn't anybody any more who reads good books but me.
* She calls that pornographic rubbish from the book club good books. ... And it's women like her who keep those book clubs in business, he thought. Getting their kicks secondhand, out of books.
* If nature stirs you, she thought, you're not an artist; you're merely sentimental.
* Detaching himself from the embarrassment.
* You want me to serve you. Can't I emerge as a person, into the light for once?
* He's stuck in the drainage ditch, she thought. It goes all along under the road, down to the b
* An exception to this was a man living on Bass Pool Road who was suspected of being a Communist. The other exception was Leo Runcible.
* It's hard to think of something to do.
* But it's fine if you do it cold-bloodedly.
* Apes more advanced in some respects than men.
* If it destroys me, it does so only because I believe it does.
* The flush of hate.
* No matter how dreadful their financial situation she could not go out into the world and compete.
* She was doomed all her life, until the grave came and got her.
* That's a woman's job. Not working side-by-side in a factory, like some big slob of a Russian peasant woman, calling everyone "Comrade."
* What you have to do is fight back; you have to not acknowledge the guilt. ... If I have to take it, he thought, I'll take it in Bruegel pictures.
* The man must see the world as composed of either friends or enemies.
* They lead simple lives and anything that upsets them scares them.
* This isn't a conversation. It's an attempt; I want to find out: where are we?
* I consider pity a degrading emotion.
* If I get pregnant — what about my job?
* The crime is to be weak; is that it? If you can be beaten you deserve to be beaten.
* Maybe the reason our ancestors had time to paint those superb bulls on their cave walls... maybe they had slaves. This." He tapped the skull. "An inferior race to do the menial work for them, to free them.
* "The crimes we've committed," Freitas said. "The crime of life, I suppose. Supplant the weak. Kill and enslave the inferior. The crime is to be weak; is that it? If you can be beaten you deserve to be beaten. Christ was a sinner par excellence, then." He glanced at Runcible with a wry grimace.
* Excuse me. You already have your attitude on that dictated for you.
* The banality of his thoughts horrified him, the dreadful emptiness.
* That graveyard, he thought, belongs to us all; it's part of the historical background of this area, and no one was using it.
* The poorest graves. They probably figured those were fair game. No one would care.
* There are some things for the good of the area that aren't worth making public.
You have to hush it up. We live in this area. We have our homes here. Our kids go to school here, Am I right? Says one of the characters on the news that everyone was drinking contaminated water for years and years. Let us hush now.
It was in a sense of pages are thin and you're dying to flip it to know what next. Not, in a sense that it's not even a sci-fi: no galaxies, no magic, none of that. This is sci-fi in a way Jesus is Jesus in Tolstoy's Gospel: human to the perfection of the comic book, but the good one. The comic book that marks the most important thing, exaggerates them, revealing. I couldn't imagine Dick doing that in a way that I would expect from Gass or Vollmann, but it is the vibe. Americana, south, it's greed and emptiness, poor men and their poor slaves wives. The narrator's perspective shifts from chapter to chapter. All is very believable, good. The book even has passages that could be from Bell Jar. The text is dense and has a lot of currents, each "chapter host" adding their pity worries. and next I shut the fuck up to list my favourite quotes, that make a narrative on its own. Here we go:
* the ground was — a dense, rich layer from which new life came, lived out its span, and then sank back. All of it was natural and regular. The dead had merged. From bacteria to plants to small animals to man; all lay beneath their feet.
* A man who did not narrate the truth perhaps could not distinguish the truth, he reflected. So their minds might work, when applied to him and his tales. And in his work, being able to tell fact from fiction had grave economic significance — at least by extension.
* We should be wary of being positive in this world
* She could really have had a career ... but she decided to get married instead. Like a lot of women.
* The house stirred with things done wrong and not done at all.
* But I can tell you this: if you go to bed, if you aren't here to greet the Wilbys, I'll make it tough for you the rest of your life.
* There isn't anybody any more who reads good books but me.
* She calls that pornographic rubbish from the book club good books. ... And it's women like her who keep those book clubs in business, he thought. Getting their kicks secondhand, out of books.
* If nature stirs you, she thought, you're not an artist; you're merely sentimental.
* Detaching himself from the embarrassment.
* You want me to serve you. Can't I emerge as a person, into the light for once?
* He's stuck in the drainage ditch, she thought. It goes all along under the road, down to the b
* An exception to this was a man living on Bass Pool Road who was suspected of being a Communist. The other exception was Leo Runcible.
* It's hard to think of something to do.
* But it's fine if you do it cold-bloodedly.
* Apes more advanced in some respects than men.
* If it destroys me, it does so only because I believe it does.
* The flush of hate.
* No matter how dreadful their financial situation she could not go out into the world and compete.
* She was doomed all her life, until the grave came and got her.
* That's a woman's job. Not working side-by-side in a factory, like some big slob of a Russian peasant woman, calling everyone "Comrade."
* What you have to do is fight back; you have to not acknowledge the guilt. ... If I have to take it, he thought, I'll take it in Bruegel pictures.
* The man must see the world as composed of either friends or enemies.
* They lead simple lives and anything that upsets them scares them.
* This isn't a conversation. It's an attempt; I want to find out: where are we?
* I consider pity a degrading emotion.
* If I get pregnant — what about my job?
* The crime is to be weak; is that it? If you can be beaten you deserve to be beaten.
* Maybe the reason our ancestors had time to paint those superb bulls on their cave walls... maybe they had slaves. This." He tapped the skull. "An inferior race to do the menial work for them, to free them.
* "The crimes we've committed," Freitas said. "The crime of life, I suppose. Supplant the weak. Kill and enslave the inferior. The crime is to be weak; is that it? If you can be beaten you deserve to be beaten. Christ was a sinner par excellence, then." He glanced at Runcible with a wry grimace.
* Excuse me. You already have your attitude on that dictated for you.
* The banality of his thoughts horrified him, the dreadful emptiness.
* That graveyard, he thought, belongs to us all; it's part of the historical background of this area, and no one was using it.
* The poorest graves. They probably figured those were fair game. No one would care.
* There are some things for the good of the area that aren't worth making public.
You have to hush it up. We live in this area. We have our homes here. Our kids go to school here, Am I right? Says one of the characters on the news that everyone was drinking contaminated water for years and years. Let us hush now.
October 20, 2023
I gave this a 3 but I actually was impressed by it— dark and twisted and sexist characters, ugly and unsettling and strange.
If you want to take a look into a depressed frustrated suburban masculine mind, this is a good choice, better than the many many many others on the same subject. If you don’t want to take that look, good for you.
If you want to take a look into a depressed frustrated suburban masculine mind, this is a good choice, better than the many many many others on the same subject. If you don’t want to take that look, good for you.
October 5, 2014
A slice of American, small town life. quite amusing and the story trucks along quite nicely.
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