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In Milton Lumky Territory
In The Novels of Philip K. Dick , Kim Stanley Robinson states that " In Milton Lumky Territory . . . is probably the best of Dick's realist novels aside from Confessions of a Crap Artist ," and calls it a "bitter indictment of the effects of capitalism." Dick, on the other hand, in his forward, says "This is actually a very funny book, and a good one, too." Milton Lumky territory is both an area of the western USA and a psychic the world and world-view of the traveling salesman. The story takes place in Boise, Idaho, with some extraordinary long-distance driving sequences in which our hero (young Bruce Stevens) drives from Boise to San Francisco, to Reno, to Pocatello, to Seattle, and back to Boise in search of a good deal on some wholesale typewriters. He falls under the spell of an attractive older woman (who used to be his school teacher) and Milton Lumky, a middle-aged paper salesman whose territory is the Northwest. And then Bruce and the others slowly sink into the whirlpool of his immature personal obsessions and misperceptions. A compassionate and ironic portrayal of three characters enmeshed in a sticky web of everyday events, in a tension between love and money, with a basic failure to communicate, In Milton Lumky Territory stands out among Dick's early works.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
222 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 1985
12 people are currently reading
740 people want to read
About the author
Philip K. Dick
1,991 books22.3k 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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August 5, 2013
So it might surprise folks that In Milton Lumky Territory, a very posthumously published piece of Philip K. Dick's literary fiction, is in many ways the strangest and most uncanny of his works I've ever read. Then again it might not; it's still Philip K. Dick, after all.
What makes it uncanny is the veneer of surreality -- if not unreality -- that the years have lain over its basic story of three characters whose neuroses get in the way of communicating, who are so worried about how they're coming across that they're not coming through. But it's not the characters or their strained, pained interactions (which are as beautifully and compellingly rendered as anything in highbrow White Male Narcissist literature) that make reading this novel so weird.
Its their world. Banal, ordinary, mundane, but also, through the action of time and economic upheaval, harder to believe could have ever been real than any Martian colony or post-apocalyptic California or urban techno-dystopia or tank full of humanoids engineered for another planet that Dick concocted.
In Milton Lumky Territory depicts an insignificant backwater in mid-century America, but its an America with a functioning manufacturing economy, in which it's quite possible for ordinary schmoes like PKD's typical barely competent boob-heroes to make a living, own a house, start or acquire a business, travel great distances by car just on the off-chance of maybe finding a warehouse full of newly-imported, as yet unknown and unmarketed Japanese typewriters* that can be bought cheap and sold in their downtown stores in places like Boise, Idaho not just for a profit but for enough to live on comfortably.
Fascinatingly and probably unintentionally also, In Milton Lumky Territory depicts the seeds of this economy's doom. One of the main characters, Bruce, starts off the novel working as a buyer for one of those newfangled discount houses, the ancestors to today's big box stores, before meeting Susan and letting himself be suckered into her dream of making something of her little two-bit typing and mimeographing business. There's also the aforementioned Japanese import typewriters Bruce is hankering to find and sell, the first wave of globalization and the downfall of an economy in which American businesses build durable and useful goods to be sold, used and repaired and used again in America.
It feels almost like PKD is taunting us, we who live in what can be argued is one version or another of his post-apocalyptic techno-dystopias he later created when he gave up on being a highbrow literary novelist and turned to science fiction and pulp to make his living. If only we'd been satisfied with what we had back then, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. We could have lived in this novel, but instead, we had to break things and ruin things, let in globalization and inflation and deregulation and union-busting and general plutocracy.
But all this is just rich modern subtext to the experience of reading In Milton Lumky Territory. There is also the actual story, a soap opera plot in which Bruce and Susan meet (again**) and sort of back into deciding they're in love and should marry their fortunes together and encounter the title character, Milton Lumky, who is a traveling typewriter and typing supplies salesman (that there could be such a profession!), only to alienate him and then belatedly find they need him, for he perhaps holds the secret to finding the golden opportunity of Bruce's theoretical warehouse full of languishing game-changing Japanese machines. The characters' interactions bristle with tension, with misunderstanding, with neuroses, with the drama of miscommunication and buried intentions and revelations that seem more than a little creepy.
Which is to say that so many of the things we read PKD for are here, one does not miss the spaceships or the aliens or the revelation that the president is a robot.
I know this world existed once. My parents have vivid memories of it and I trust their accounts. Its relics can still be found all around us (myself, I have three wonderful old manual typewriters, one from 1926, that all still work beautifully because they've been lovingly cared for and used well and kindly over the years by people who respected them and expected them to last). Those empty storefronts in your city's downtown used to be occupied by businesses like Susan's; those factory buildings weren't always chic yuppie loft condos.
It's a lost world, and it's our own decisions, not a comet from space or a machine uprising or a nuclear misunderstanding that lost it for us. And that makes this the most poignant PKD of all.
*Dude. Typewriter fetishists take note. This story is about people who buy and sell and repair typewriters and paper and ribbons and carbons, and they talk about them a lot. It's pretty much heaven.
**Their original meeting lends all this a soap opera sudsiness that is good for too many guffaws to spoil here.
What makes it uncanny is the veneer of surreality -- if not unreality -- that the years have lain over its basic story of three characters whose neuroses get in the way of communicating, who are so worried about how they're coming across that they're not coming through. But it's not the characters or their strained, pained interactions (which are as beautifully and compellingly rendered as anything in highbrow White Male Narcissist literature) that make reading this novel so weird.
Its their world. Banal, ordinary, mundane, but also, through the action of time and economic upheaval, harder to believe could have ever been real than any Martian colony or post-apocalyptic California or urban techno-dystopia or tank full of humanoids engineered for another planet that Dick concocted.
In Milton Lumky Territory depicts an insignificant backwater in mid-century America, but its an America with a functioning manufacturing economy, in which it's quite possible for ordinary schmoes like PKD's typical barely competent boob-heroes to make a living, own a house, start or acquire a business, travel great distances by car just on the off-chance of maybe finding a warehouse full of newly-imported, as yet unknown and unmarketed Japanese typewriters* that can be bought cheap and sold in their downtown stores in places like Boise, Idaho not just for a profit but for enough to live on comfortably.
Fascinatingly and probably unintentionally also, In Milton Lumky Territory depicts the seeds of this economy's doom. One of the main characters, Bruce, starts off the novel working as a buyer for one of those newfangled discount houses, the ancestors to today's big box stores, before meeting Susan and letting himself be suckered into her dream of making something of her little two-bit typing and mimeographing business. There's also the aforementioned Japanese import typewriters Bruce is hankering to find and sell, the first wave of globalization and the downfall of an economy in which American businesses build durable and useful goods to be sold, used and repaired and used again in America.
It feels almost like PKD is taunting us, we who live in what can be argued is one version or another of his post-apocalyptic techno-dystopias he later created when he gave up on being a highbrow literary novelist and turned to science fiction and pulp to make his living. If only we'd been satisfied with what we had back then, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. We could have lived in this novel, but instead, we had to break things and ruin things, let in globalization and inflation and deregulation and union-busting and general plutocracy.
But all this is just rich modern subtext to the experience of reading In Milton Lumky Territory. There is also the actual story, a soap opera plot in which Bruce and Susan meet (again**) and sort of back into deciding they're in love and should marry their fortunes together and encounter the title character, Milton Lumky, who is a traveling typewriter and typing supplies salesman (that there could be such a profession!), only to alienate him and then belatedly find they need him, for he perhaps holds the secret to finding the golden opportunity of Bruce's theoretical warehouse full of languishing game-changing Japanese machines. The characters' interactions bristle with tension, with misunderstanding, with neuroses, with the drama of miscommunication and buried intentions and revelations that seem more than a little creepy.
Which is to say that so many of the things we read PKD for are here, one does not miss the spaceships or the aliens or the revelation that the president is a robot.
I know this world existed once. My parents have vivid memories of it and I trust their accounts. Its relics can still be found all around us (myself, I have three wonderful old manual typewriters, one from 1926, that all still work beautifully because they've been lovingly cared for and used well and kindly over the years by people who respected them and expected them to last). Those empty storefronts in your city's downtown used to be occupied by businesses like Susan's; those factory buildings weren't always chic yuppie loft condos.
It's a lost world, and it's our own decisions, not a comet from space or a machine uprising or a nuclear misunderstanding that lost it for us. And that makes this the most poignant PKD of all.
*Dude. Typewriter fetishists take note. This story is about people who buy and sell and repair typewriters and paper and ribbons and carbons, and they talk about them a lot. It's pretty much heaven.
**Their original meeting lends all this a soap opera sudsiness that is good for too many guffaws to spoil here.
September 27, 2008
I read this entire book waiting for something to happen ... I had a hunch that PKD wouldn't let me down, and somewhere along the way, all the subtle nuances would make sense in comparison to a climactic finish to the novel ... well, no climax and no tying up loose ends ever culminated. Hmmmmmm, I guess that I should stick to Dick's sci-fi genre reads, because this book just ended up irritating me with how little really happened ... I hate committing to a book only to be let down in the end ... perhaps I'm just not PKD enlightened enough to enjoy this story, because Dick is unequivocally a talented and accomplished writer ... so I'm sure this won't be the last PKD I read.
March 1, 2010
I had held off on reading Dick's social realist novels for two reasons. The first was I wanted to have something to look forward to, having read 90% of his sci-fi, and the second was I was afraid they might not be good. Oh, me of little faith. I've now read two and both were excellent. Without all the mind-bending trappings of his sci-fi, Dick is left to expand the depth of his human characters (who were always the glue of his sci-fi), and he does to great effect. The characters in this book -- the callow, driven, somewhat formless young man lead; the neurotic (to put it mildly) older woman who snares him; the titular Milton Lumky -- all are brilliantly written. And who'd have thought a book centered around the acquisition of an affordable stock of portable typewriters could be so compelling? But it is. This is a fantastic book by a master of the fantastic in a case where he's left the fantastic by the door and spun the quotidian into gold.
August 29, 2015
One of PKD's early non-SF novels, this didn't get published until 1985. His introductory comment about it being "a very funny book" is misleading - I didn't find anything particularly amusing in it, though I suppose there is a wry satisfaction to be had in the story of a slick young salesman having to learn the limits of ambition, amongst other things.
The world is the mid 50s US, away from the big exciting cutting-edge places. The characters, as usual in PKD realist novels, are all chafing at the conventions of the 50s but don't (yet) have any countercultural outlet to go to, at least not one that an aspiring young novelist could mention and hope to get a mainstream publisher interested. We see a lot of provincial America slowly changing under the exciting post-War innovations of interstate highways, mass ownership of cars, and the rise of new chainstores offering every kind of home gadget to the masses. There is a background sense that old roles have become unsettled and that maybe anyone really could be anyone they want to be, and this could even break down and confuse old certainties (in another novel, "The Man Whose Teeth...", PKD explicitly has a character get ostracised for trying to socialise across the racial divide). Milton Lumky himself is a sick middle-aged man who gets a rant against Bruce Stevens for being "heartless", yet the latter is the most milquetoast nihilist imaginable: just a young chap desperate to get on in business, clearly eager-to-please and conform. He's gone and got married to his old schoolteacher, God help him. Not too much is made of there being anything really bad about that, or how it would play differently if it were an older *male* teacher with a former girl pupil. Altogether this is a pleasant read, and although the writing isn't quite so well-crafted, I think I prefer it to Saul Bellow's "Seize The Day", which has thematic similarities.
The world is the mid 50s US, away from the big exciting cutting-edge places. The characters, as usual in PKD realist novels, are all chafing at the conventions of the 50s but don't (yet) have any countercultural outlet to go to, at least not one that an aspiring young novelist could mention and hope to get a mainstream publisher interested. We see a lot of provincial America slowly changing under the exciting post-War innovations of interstate highways, mass ownership of cars, and the rise of new chainstores offering every kind of home gadget to the masses. There is a background sense that old roles have become unsettled and that maybe anyone really could be anyone they want to be, and this could even break down and confuse old certainties (in another novel, "The Man Whose Teeth...", PKD explicitly has a character get ostracised for trying to socialise across the racial divide). Milton Lumky himself is a sick middle-aged man who gets a rant against Bruce Stevens for being "heartless", yet the latter is the most milquetoast nihilist imaginable: just a young chap desperate to get on in business, clearly eager-to-please and conform. He's gone and got married to his old schoolteacher, God help him. Not too much is made of there being anything really bad about that, or how it would play differently if it were an older *male* teacher with a former girl pupil. Altogether this is a pleasant read, and although the writing isn't quite so well-crafted, I think I prefer it to Saul Bellow's "Seize The Day", which has thematic similarities.
June 17, 2023
Excellent take on the Thomas-Hardy-you-can't-escape-your-past trope. The twist is delightful. Pure genius, actually. Yeah, PKD was a genius, and his realist novels prove it beyond doubt. He left The KMart realists biting the dust. My favorite of the non sci-fi novels.
November 27, 2024
Recording the Dickheads podcast episode soon. I didn't like this as much as Puttering About in a Small Land, but another good slice of 50s life. Paints an interesting picture of life of a traveling salesman.
Audio of the Podcast on this novel:
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfmre...
Audio of the Podcast on this novel:
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfmre...
July 30, 2019
I read this with the idea that it was a late, late work, done after much of his famous science fiction writing, that it was somehow like Shakespeare's Tempest, the work of an author at the end of his life, a late meditation on all that had gone before. Ha! Only after did I learn that it belonged to his pre-SF work, done in the 50s.
As I read, I kept wondering, mistakenly why Dick would locate his novel in the 50s, unless it was to capture something of that time he'd felt he'd lost. This sort of intertextual conjecturing was silly, it turns out, but fascinating as a thought experiment. What aided my misapprehension about this book's date of composition was just how well it was written, certainly much better than his earliest SF, when the characters were paper thin, and it was only his clever conceits that lent stories and whole novels any merit. IMLT, on the other hand, was rife with all sorts of psychological edginess, some overt and some very subtle.
This novel's simple outline and dynamic reeks of an ordinary reality, of events that actually transpired, probably in much the way Dick describes them. Whether true or not, that's the effect his storytelling has in this novel, the tale of a young man who unwittingly falls in love with the woman who was his 5th grade teacher a decade before, in the process deciding to leave his job as a traveling whole goods buyer for a warehouse outlet in Colorado. Bruce settles down in his Idaho hometown with Susan, and he immediately works with her to make profitable her typewriter store. An older traveling salesman, Milton Lumky, a friend of Susan through her business, tells Bruce about a warehouse of typewriters, and the two end up doing a lot of driving to find and bring them back, Lumky in the meanwhile suffering a bout of some disabling disease. Bruce is compromised, but at Lumky's urging he continues on to retrieve the typewriters. Further, when he finds out after buying the typewriters that they have Spanish keyboards, he is ready to compromise himself with his former employer, and seeks to unload them. Susan intervenes and informs on him. Though the warehouse is willing to take them at cost, Bruce decides to refit each and every one of the 200 typewriters by hand, but Susan fires him. Bruce moves out. Lumky dies, and his widow claims Bruce owes him money. Bruce then has a daydream about his time as a 5th grader and how Susan had appeared as his teacher. The dream is poignant and frightening, and it begins to merge into the reality of Bruce and Susan happily married, relocated to Colorado, running a thriving business, living a happy domestic life. And it never comes clear where the dream ends and where the novel's events resume, if indeed they do. Is Bruce still still daydreaming at novel's end, or is he reconciled with Susan and his contented bourgeois life?
Rife in all of this is a deep-down concreteness. All the events and characters are just solid and plain enough to be real: the long trips to and from Boise to Denver, and the road trip out and back to the west coast; the conflicts of conscience and with each other; and the odd presence of Milton Lumky. Emotions and actions are abrupt and sometimes peculiar and unexpected, mercurial and unresolved. Lumky remains forever ambiguous: alternately a benign guiding spirit or a capricious agent of mayhem, but also just an older man whom Bruce and Susan came to know.
It's all a very strange brew, entertaining and puzzling.
As I read, I kept wondering, mistakenly why Dick would locate his novel in the 50s, unless it was to capture something of that time he'd felt he'd lost. This sort of intertextual conjecturing was silly, it turns out, but fascinating as a thought experiment. What aided my misapprehension about this book's date of composition was just how well it was written, certainly much better than his earliest SF, when the characters were paper thin, and it was only his clever conceits that lent stories and whole novels any merit. IMLT, on the other hand, was rife with all sorts of psychological edginess, some overt and some very subtle.
This novel's simple outline and dynamic reeks of an ordinary reality, of events that actually transpired, probably in much the way Dick describes them. Whether true or not, that's the effect his storytelling has in this novel, the tale of a young man who unwittingly falls in love with the woman who was his 5th grade teacher a decade before, in the process deciding to leave his job as a traveling whole goods buyer for a warehouse outlet in Colorado. Bruce settles down in his Idaho hometown with Susan, and he immediately works with her to make profitable her typewriter store. An older traveling salesman, Milton Lumky, a friend of Susan through her business, tells Bruce about a warehouse of typewriters, and the two end up doing a lot of driving to find and bring them back, Lumky in the meanwhile suffering a bout of some disabling disease. Bruce is compromised, but at Lumky's urging he continues on to retrieve the typewriters. Further, when he finds out after buying the typewriters that they have Spanish keyboards, he is ready to compromise himself with his former employer, and seeks to unload them. Susan intervenes and informs on him. Though the warehouse is willing to take them at cost, Bruce decides to refit each and every one of the 200 typewriters by hand, but Susan fires him. Bruce moves out. Lumky dies, and his widow claims Bruce owes him money. Bruce then has a daydream about his time as a 5th grader and how Susan had appeared as his teacher. The dream is poignant and frightening, and it begins to merge into the reality of Bruce and Susan happily married, relocated to Colorado, running a thriving business, living a happy domestic life. And it never comes clear where the dream ends and where the novel's events resume, if indeed they do. Is Bruce still still daydreaming at novel's end, or is he reconciled with Susan and his contented bourgeois life?
Rife in all of this is a deep-down concreteness. All the events and characters are just solid and plain enough to be real: the long trips to and from Boise to Denver, and the road trip out and back to the west coast; the conflicts of conscience and with each other; and the odd presence of Milton Lumky. Emotions and actions are abrupt and sometimes peculiar and unexpected, mercurial and unresolved. Lumky remains forever ambiguous: alternately a benign guiding spirit or a capricious agent of mayhem, but also just an older man whom Bruce and Susan came to know.
It's all a very strange brew, entertaining and puzzling.
July 18, 2016
In finishing this, I finally understand why I like the dialogue in a PKD non-sf novel--it's like listening to my parents argue when I was young. They would fight all the time, as all parents do. They tried not to do it in front of me, but they did, frequently. So why would I like books that remind me of that trauma? I have no idea. Like I have no idea why PKD is my favorite writer. They were my parents. They were my childhood. I could see both sides of the arguments, even if I usually would side with one over the other. They both were wrong and they both were right in virtually every argument. It's like life. I guess that is why I like PKD, even though the association is a negative one. It reminds me of real life, real memories, and my way of thinking of things and experiencing them.
What made this non-sf novel unique is the main characters are ten years apart--the young male protag falls for the older female protag. Another feature of this book is the character of Lumky. He is hilarious. He is so funny. He says the things I imagine that PKD would say when he was high or tight. Lumky is a sort of parody of a PKD character, a PKD character unbound, with all the foibles and sensibilities, but with absolutely no filter. I laughed out loud at some of the things Lumky said, and I don't think I have ever laughed out loud at any PKD book I have read.
I love this novel for its details. All the fine details of the Japanese typewriter. My favorite part is when Bruce is taking it apart and analyzing how it works. He thinks like I think when I have a new tool or gadget or toy. I imagine it is scenes like that which put off the professional reviewer and most readers. It's scenes like that which made his non-sf stuff not able to be published while he was alive. It's scenes like that which make me love PKD.
So on to the last fiction book I have never read by PKD--HUMPTY DUMPTY IN OAKLAND.
What made this non-sf novel unique is the main characters are ten years apart--the young male protag falls for the older female protag. Another feature of this book is the character of Lumky. He is hilarious. He is so funny. He says the things I imagine that PKD would say when he was high or tight. Lumky is a sort of parody of a PKD character, a PKD character unbound, with all the foibles and sensibilities, but with absolutely no filter. I laughed out loud at some of the things Lumky said, and I don't think I have ever laughed out loud at any PKD book I have read.
I love this novel for its details. All the fine details of the Japanese typewriter. My favorite part is when Bruce is taking it apart and analyzing how it works. He thinks like I think when I have a new tool or gadget or toy. I imagine it is scenes like that which put off the professional reviewer and most readers. It's scenes like that which made his non-sf stuff not able to be published while he was alive. It's scenes like that which make me love PKD.
So on to the last fiction book I have never read by PKD--HUMPTY DUMPTY IN OAKLAND.
September 21, 2012
review of
Philip K. Dick's In Milton Lumky Territory
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 21, 2012
Philip K. Dick is a great writer. He's a writer that just about every aspiring fiction writer wd love to be. The prose is easy to understand, fluid, engaging, but not banal. The characters are idiosyncratic - they can be 'normal' w/o being stereotypical - they're the product of keen observation of humanity. Dick was married 5 times & one 'has to wonder' whether the marriage depicted here was similar to any of his.
I wasn't even that interested in reading this. I read almost everything by Dick in 1984 or thereabouts & was deeply impressed by him at the time.. but that was long ago & revisiting him is a bit too been-there-done-that. AND, since this is one of his realist novels, & not SF, I wasn't really that intrigued. It might be too much like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or John Updike's Couples or some such. In other words, I'm not generally that curious about reading 20th century realism. THEN, I read the 1st sentence, "At sunset, acrid-smelling air from the lake puffed along the empty streets of Montario, Idaho", & I was hooked. It's not THAT brilliant of a sentence but it still did it for me.
As it turned out, I became completely engrossed in the plot - even tho it was about a traveling businessman & his dysfunctional marriage. All the neuroses of the characters are played just right. They're grand, they're annoying, they're subtle. No one's completely a villain or a hero, they're all 'normal' people trying to get by & generally fucking it up a bit here, pulling it off a bit there. The thought that Dick cdn't get this published in his lifetime is sickening. If a novel THIS GREAT cdn't get published, what unappreciated gems are out there languishing?!
Philip K. Dick's In Milton Lumky Territory
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 21, 2012
Philip K. Dick is a great writer. He's a writer that just about every aspiring fiction writer wd love to be. The prose is easy to understand, fluid, engaging, but not banal. The characters are idiosyncratic - they can be 'normal' w/o being stereotypical - they're the product of keen observation of humanity. Dick was married 5 times & one 'has to wonder' whether the marriage depicted here was similar to any of his.
I wasn't even that interested in reading this. I read almost everything by Dick in 1984 or thereabouts & was deeply impressed by him at the time.. but that was long ago & revisiting him is a bit too been-there-done-that. AND, since this is one of his realist novels, & not SF, I wasn't really that intrigued. It might be too much like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or John Updike's Couples or some such. In other words, I'm not generally that curious about reading 20th century realism. THEN, I read the 1st sentence, "At sunset, acrid-smelling air from the lake puffed along the empty streets of Montario, Idaho", & I was hooked. It's not THAT brilliant of a sentence but it still did it for me.
As it turned out, I became completely engrossed in the plot - even tho it was about a traveling businessman & his dysfunctional marriage. All the neuroses of the characters are played just right. They're grand, they're annoying, they're subtle. No one's completely a villain or a hero, they're all 'normal' people trying to get by & generally fucking it up a bit here, pulling it off a bit there. The thought that Dick cdn't get this published in his lifetime is sickening. If a novel THIS GREAT cdn't get published, what unappreciated gems are out there languishing?!
July 23, 2013
Non succede niente…
Da tempo è in atto da parte di certa critica un tantino snob il tentativo di riabilitare la produzione “mainstream” (cioè non fantascientifica) di Philip Dick, che sarebbe stata ingiustamente oscurata a causa della fama dell’autore come maestro della narrativa di genere.
A mio parere invece noi posteri dovremmo fare un monumento alla memoria degli editori che negli anni 50 rifiutavano sistematicamente i lavori con cui PKD tentava di nobilitarsi nell’alveo della letteratura americana, inducendolo così a dedicarsi al genere che gli dava da vivere e che, fra parentesi, gli ha conferito fama mondiale e imperitura.
Questo “In terra ostile” ad esempio sembra quasi (non fosse per la dimensione…) un bozzetto incompiuto sul quale ci aspettiamo che Dick innesti una delle sue geniali allucinazioni o deviazioni dalla realtà di cui solo lui possiede la ricetta segreta per trasformarli in segnali sotterranei di disagio ed inquietudine destinati a sovvertire la realtà o quanto meno la sua percezione.
Un giovane mediocre protagonista che nell’arco del racconto, attraverso vicende e incontri che potrebbero fare lievitare la narrazione in un’altra dimensione, rimane giovane mediocre per tutte le quasi 300 pagine che si portano a termine con fatica, apprendendo le tecniche di marketing e di valutazione dell’articolo “macchina da scrivere elettrica”, sorretti solo dalla vana speranza che “succeda qualcosa”
… ma non succede niente
Da tempo è in atto da parte di certa critica un tantino snob il tentativo di riabilitare la produzione “mainstream” (cioè non fantascientifica) di Philip Dick, che sarebbe stata ingiustamente oscurata a causa della fama dell’autore come maestro della narrativa di genere.
A mio parere invece noi posteri dovremmo fare un monumento alla memoria degli editori che negli anni 50 rifiutavano sistematicamente i lavori con cui PKD tentava di nobilitarsi nell’alveo della letteratura americana, inducendolo così a dedicarsi al genere che gli dava da vivere e che, fra parentesi, gli ha conferito fama mondiale e imperitura.
Questo “In terra ostile” ad esempio sembra quasi (non fosse per la dimensione…) un bozzetto incompiuto sul quale ci aspettiamo che Dick innesti una delle sue geniali allucinazioni o deviazioni dalla realtà di cui solo lui possiede la ricetta segreta per trasformarli in segnali sotterranei di disagio ed inquietudine destinati a sovvertire la realtà o quanto meno la sua percezione.
Un giovane mediocre protagonista che nell’arco del racconto, attraverso vicende e incontri che potrebbero fare lievitare la narrazione in un’altra dimensione, rimane giovane mediocre per tutte le quasi 300 pagine che si portano a termine con fatica, apprendendo le tecniche di marketing e di valutazione dell’articolo “macchina da scrivere elettrica”, sorretti solo dalla vana speranza che “succeda qualcosa”
… ma non succede niente
November 14, 2011
Many readers think Phil Dick and it's - Minority Report, Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner - basically the films of his stories.Some go further to his great SF works - Ubik, Valis, The Man in the High Castle etc and few, very few go to his mainstream novels. And what a pity they don't, for these novels are possibly the best examples of genre writing of 50's Americana and "Milton Lumky" (all have strange titles by the way) is a great example, for Dick has managed to absorb the paranoia, the fear and the need to break out that seemed to be part of the America of the late 1950's. Here we have disarmingly honest people with modern needs and thoughts (not like in the Mad Men series, which is a mere parody of this honesty) and who struggle to escape suburban or rural America without too much success.these are the people of the 1960's, the dreams and aspirations of the young generation set in the 1950's drab and singularly sad times of the post Mcarthy era.Read these books and you will begin to understand.It is terribly sad that there are so few of them.
March 23, 2023
One of PKD's more acclaimed realist novels, and it is a good one! A quaint and critical glimpse into late 50s boomer Americana. Not as funny or sly as Confessions of a Crap Artist, nor as sociopolitically engaged as The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, but intriguing and endearing nonetheless.
Reading by Luke Daniels is excellent, as always- just the right amount of character enunciation, without coming off as caricature!
Reading by Luke Daniels is excellent, as always- just the right amount of character enunciation, without coming off as caricature!
January 10, 2015
One of PKD's realist novellas. It lacks the sci-fi or drug-induced weirdness of his more famous books, but is essentially asking the same probing, uncomfortable questions about identity and maturity.
January 2, 2025
Another of PKD's 'social realist' mainstream novels, written but not published in the 1950s, a strange and disjointed tale of odd loves, unlikely friendships, a marriage of what seems like convenience, and what must be a good quarter of the book following our hero as he drives around the US West Coast looking for Japanese typewriters.
When all this fails to work out, what else to hope for but a happy ending? PKD—bloody genius.
When all this fails to work out, what else to hope for but a happy ending? PKD—bloody genius.
November 27, 2017
Il romanzo minore di un autore minore
Philip K. Dick non ebbe una vita facile, né dal punto di vista personale né da quello letterario. I suoi romanzi di fantascienza furono pubblicati, lui vivente, su riviste e collane di genere, non permettendogli mai di raggiungere una accettabile sicurezza economica. Tra dipendenza dall’anfetamina, visioni mistiche, cinque matrimoni e periodi di assoluta povertà morì d’infarto nel 1982, mentre si stava girando il primo film tratto da uno dei suoi romanzi, il celeberrimo Blade runner di Ridley Scott.
Come spesso accade, fu solo dopo la sua morte, e in gran parte proprio grazie al successo di Blade runner, che la sua opera venne rivalutata, ed oggi Dick è considerato uno dei padri nobili della letteratura postmoderna nordamericana, un autore che – attraverso un personalissimo uso di distopie e ucronie – ha saputo raccontarci le angosce e le contraddizioni della società statunitense del dopoguerra, dagli anni ‘50 intrisi di ottimismo da un lato e di anticomunismo maccartista associato all’incubo nucleare dall’altro, alle utopie della grande rivolta giovanile degli anni ‘60 e 70, sino a giungere ai prodromi della controrivoluzione reaganiana i cui dogmi neoliberisti ci affliggono ancora oggi.
Personalmente, per quel poco che ho letto sinora della ponderosa produzione letteraria di Dick, dubito non poco di questa sua asserita grandezza assoluta. Certo, i suoi mondi sono in genere angoscianti e riflettono le logiche di una società disumanizzante ed alienante come quella del tardo capitalismo statunitense che si prepara ai fasti della globalizzazione, nelle sue distopie non è difficile ritrovare l’eco delle sue vicissitudini esistenziali, della sua vita di vittima costretta ai margini di quella società, ma ciò a mio avviso non basta per farne un autore di prima grandezza. I limiti della scrittura di Dick, la sua incapacità strutturale di utilizzare la parola scritta secondo modalità coerenti con gli oggetti delle sue narrazioni emergono ad ogni pagina, costringendolo spesso a tecnicismi che finiscono per far prevalere la cornice descrittiva rispetto all’essenza – che pure c’è – delle sue storie. Che differenza, in questo senso, rispetto ad un altro scrittore postmoderno al quale viene spesso associato: Thomas Pynchon. Se in qualche modo possiamo definire entrambi come scrittori del caos, non può sfuggire che il caos di Pynchon, a differenza di quello di Dick, è supportato da un coerente caos narrativo del tutto assente in Dick, il quale si trova costretto - sicuramente anche perché scriveva per vendere, per sopravvivere (lui stesso si definì sempre uno scrittore commerciale) - entro un orizzonte formale piuttosto ristretto.
Non intendo con queste mie affermazioni stroncare l’opera di Dick, che rimane in alcuni casi importante nel panorama della letteratura nordamericana del secondo dopoguerra, ma cercare di ristabilire alcune distanze secondo me evidenti, che possono essere state annullate sono nell’ambito di una critica letteraria che ha perso ogni capacità di osservazione oggettiva, mossa spesso com’è soltanto dall’ansia di una originalità a tutti i costi e dalla necessità di creare nuovi miti letterari in un panorama oggettivamente piuttosto deprimente, il che ha l’indubbio duplice vantaggio di soddisfare il suo bisogno di autoreferenzialità e di essere utile sponda alle necessità di mercato dell’industria culturale.
Che Dick sia un autore in qualche modo sopravvalutato lo dimostra a mio avviso inequivocabilmente la pubblicazione da parte di una casa editrice come Einaudi, verso la fine del secolo scorso e quindi in pieno clima di rivalutazione dell’opera dello scrittore, di questo In terra ostile.
Come detto, Dick in vita pubblicò quasi solo romanzi di fantascienza che però non gli assicuravano sicurezza economica. Così, tra la fine degli anni ‘50 e la metà dei ‘60 tentò anche la via del romanzo realistico, scrivendo alcuni romanzi ambientati nella provincia statunitense e con personaggi appartenenti alla middle class. Praticamente tutti questi romanzi vennero però rifiutati dagli editori, e finirono per essere pubblicati attorno alla metà degli anni ‘80, dopo la morte dell’autore e quando era iniziata la sua postuma scoperta. In terra ostile appartiene a questa tipologia di romanzi: scritto attorno al 1957 fu pubblicato solo nel 1985 e nel 1999 arrivò in Italia, edito come detto da Einaudi che due anni prima aveva definitivamente sdoganato Dick pubblicando una delle sue opere più importanti, Cronache del dopobomba. Che si tratti di una operazione essenzialmente commerciale a mio avviso si intuisce già dalla traduzione italiana del titolo: nel linguaggio originale questo è infatti In Milton Lumky Territory, con riferimento ad uno dei personaggi chiave del romanzo, il rappresentante di commercio Milton Lumky. Forse una traduzione letterale è apparsa agli editor italiani troppo criptica (ma una certa cripticità nei titoli è caratteristica comune a molti dei romanzi di Dick): sta di fatto che la scelta di un titolo vagamente inquietante e che potesse in qualche modo rimandare ad un contenuto fantascientifico o distopico risponde smaccatamente all’esigenza di spacciare questo romanzo come tipicamente Dickiano, in modo da attrarre compratori.
Di ostile infatti la terra in cui vive e che attraversa nei suoi viaggi il protagonista, Bruce Stevens, da adolescente chiamato Skip, non ha proprio nulla, se non la congenita desolazione della provincia statunitense tra Idaho, Nevada e Oregon, che peraltro emerge dalla narrazione in forme del tutto convenzionali.
Il romanzo infatti è ambientato in quel lembo dell’Ovest statunitense, verso la fine degli anni ‘50. Bruce è un giovane di belle speranze: ha 24 anni, una Mercury del ‘55, e da pochi mesi si è trasferito dalla cittadina dell’Idaho in cui è nato a Reno, Nevada, dove lavora per un discount, con il compito di acquistare all’ingrosso le merci che poi saranno vendute a prezzi stracciati. Passando per lavoro dalla sua città natale, pensa di fermarsi da una vecchia fiamma, con l’intento di riallacciare la relazione. La cosa non gli riesce, ma nella casa della ex conosce Susan Faine, una affascinante donna di una decina d’anni più anziana di lui che – come ricorda dopo il loro primo incontro – è stata sua insegnante una dozzina d’anni prima. Lei ha appena divorziato ed a Boise, una cittadina vicina, è proprietaria di una copisteria che però sta andando economicamente male. I due si rivedono il giorno dopo: scocca la scintilla e Susan propone a Bruce di divenire suo socio per rilanciare gli affari grazie alla sua esperienza nel commercio. Bruce accetta, si licenzia e i due in breve si sposano. Bruce pensa di trasformare la copisteria in un negozio di macchine per scrivere, e viene a sapere da un rappresentante, Milton Lumky, che sta per giungere sul mercato una nuova portatile giapponese elettrica, e che rivenderla in esclusiva potrebbe essere un ottimo affare. Con l’aiuto dello stesso Milton e dopo avere costituito un piccolo capitale, Bruce si mette a cercare il grossista delle macchine per scrivere, trovandolo infine a Seattle. Considerandole di ottima qualità ne compra sessanta, impegnando praticamente tutti i soldi che ha a disposizione. Non voglio narrare come prosegue la vicenda, per non diminuire il gusto della lettura, ma riporto l’avvertenza dell’autore che Dick antepone al primo capitolo: “Questo è un libro curioso davvero, e tra l'altro è anche un buon libro, dal momento che gli strani eventi che accadono sono quelli che accadono alle persone in carne ed ossa. C'è anche un lieto fine. Cos'altro può aggiungere un autore? Cosa può dire di più?" Credo che questa breve riflessione di Dick ci dica molto sulle sue intenzioni rispetto al romanzo: scrivere un buon libro, che narrasse la vita reale delle persone, con un lieto fine per i lettori che egli si augurava ovviamente numerosi.
In effetti In terra ostile potrebbe essere un buon libro, perché avrebbe tutti gli ingredienti per esserlo. L’ambientazione è intrigante, soprattutto per il lettore contemporaneo: la provincia statunitense negli anni di Eisenhower, del maccartismo formalmente concluso ma ancora culturalmente imperante, del Rock and Roll e degli altri fermenti culturali alternativi che annunciano gli anni ‘60, del consumismo incipiente. I personaggi principali sono tipici rappresentanti della middle class dell’epoca: Bruce con il suo spirito di iniziativa e la certezza che ce la può fare (peraltro alla prova dei fatti incrinata seriamente dalla sua inadeguatezza ed inesperienza), Susan più tormentata dai dubbi ma anch’essa dotata di un’anima imprenditoriale, Milton più oscuro ed ambiguo, sorta di deus ex machina minore in grado di condizionare il destino dei due. Anche le trasformazioni etiche che accompagnano quelle sociali giocano una parte importante nel romanzo: Susan è già stata sposata due volte ed ha una figlia, Bruce all’inizio del romanzo compra una scatola di preservativi, i due vanno a letto insieme praticamente subito, quindi si sposano con estrema leggerezza. Vi è poi il fatto che Susan ha conosciuto Bruce come sua insegnante, e che tra i due già all’epoca si era sviluppato un rapporto di odio-amore venato di una repressa attrazione sessuale. Purtroppo questi ingredienti rimangono tali, e Dick non è in grado di amalgamarli in modo tale da trarne una composizione riuscita. Tutto rimane in superficie, appena accennato, senza che questi ingredienti riescano davvero a innervare la vicenda, che si traduce in una banale storia d’amore e di affari di piccolo cabotaggio per assicurarsi un avvenire che perpetui l’orizzonte piccolo-borghese nel quale i due sono immersi. Tutto è pallido nella prosa di questo romanzo di Dick, compresi i suoi evidenti limiti espressivi: ma non si tratta del pallore dato dall’angoscia esistenziale e sociale che pure l’autore pare porre alle basi del suo racconto, ma dello scialbo pallore di chi non sembra in grado di colorare la sua storia e vuole solo rassicurare il lettore che nonostante tutto, nonostante lo squallore delle cittadine di provincia, nonostante le ferree leggi del mercato, nonostante gli errori di chi (come Bruce) si lancia in avventure commerciali senza averne le competenze, tutto può finire bene, e un lieto fine lo si può sempre fabbricare, almeno nei romanzi. L’happy end del romanzo è infatti senza dubbio il suo punto più debole, estraneo come è all’andamento della storia nel suo complesso, la quale solo con un finale diverso avrebbe potuto in parte riscattare le altre sue insufficienze.
Queste insufficienze strutturali sono in qualche modo esaltate dal dimesso modo di narrare di Dick, che trabocca dei luoghi comuni della narrativa statunitense dell’epoca, tra motel, Chevy e Mercury del ‘55, strade interstatali percorse in lunghi viaggi senza soste, paesaggi desertici e desolati. Non mancano in verità piccoli colpi di genio, come gli sciami di mosche gialle dalle ali appuntite che aprono il romanzo spiaccicandosi sul parabrezza delle auto, ma tutto rimane in superficie, non riesce a farsi sostanza del romanzo, finendo per essere una sorta di patina opaca che tenta di coprire il vuoto.
Come detto, il titolo originale del romanzo è In Milton Lumky Territory, ed in effetti la figura del rappresentante della ditta di articoli di carta è sicuramente quella più interessante del romanzo, per il ruolo ambiguo che vi gioca ed anche per una caratterizzazione più originale, che fa di lui l’elemento eccentrico rispetto alla eccessiva linearità della storia di Bruce e Susan. Milton è una sorta di elemento di disturbo, rispetto al cui ruolo nello sviluppo della vicenda molti interrogativi rimangono insoluti, e che – a mio avviso significativamente – si deve fare definitivamente da parte per permettere alla storia di finire bene. Anche un personaggio come Milton però non riesce veramente a ravvivare la vicenda, e si può dire che il suo territorio non si distingue granché dagli altri territori del romanzo.
Invano, a mio modo di vedere, il traduttore Davide Brolli si affanna, nella breve postfazione, ad accostare i romanzi realistici di Dick a quelli di scrittori come Sherwood Anderson o Faulkner e più avanti, ad una minore (sic!) come Flannery O’Connor. La verità è che mentre questi ultimi autori sono stati in grado di farci sentire drammaticamente la crudeltà e la desolazione di quella parte del mondo, Dick ce la fa solo annusare, deodorando peraltro alla fine l’ambiente, almeno in questo romanzo, con uno spray consolatorio.
Insomma, se Dick è, come credo, un ottimo autore minore, capace di vestire la letteratura di genere di tematiche che lo oltrepassano, quando si confronta con la letteratura che narra delle persone in carne ed ossa scopre tutti i suoi limiti: In terra ostile in questo senso è l’opera minore di un minore.
Philip K. Dick non ebbe una vita facile, né dal punto di vista personale né da quello letterario. I suoi romanzi di fantascienza furono pubblicati, lui vivente, su riviste e collane di genere, non permettendogli mai di raggiungere una accettabile sicurezza economica. Tra dipendenza dall’anfetamina, visioni mistiche, cinque matrimoni e periodi di assoluta povertà morì d’infarto nel 1982, mentre si stava girando il primo film tratto da uno dei suoi romanzi, il celeberrimo Blade runner di Ridley Scott.
Come spesso accade, fu solo dopo la sua morte, e in gran parte proprio grazie al successo di Blade runner, che la sua opera venne rivalutata, ed oggi Dick è considerato uno dei padri nobili della letteratura postmoderna nordamericana, un autore che – attraverso un personalissimo uso di distopie e ucronie – ha saputo raccontarci le angosce e le contraddizioni della società statunitense del dopoguerra, dagli anni ‘50 intrisi di ottimismo da un lato e di anticomunismo maccartista associato all’incubo nucleare dall’altro, alle utopie della grande rivolta giovanile degli anni ‘60 e 70, sino a giungere ai prodromi della controrivoluzione reaganiana i cui dogmi neoliberisti ci affliggono ancora oggi.
Personalmente, per quel poco che ho letto sinora della ponderosa produzione letteraria di Dick, dubito non poco di questa sua asserita grandezza assoluta. Certo, i suoi mondi sono in genere angoscianti e riflettono le logiche di una società disumanizzante ed alienante come quella del tardo capitalismo statunitense che si prepara ai fasti della globalizzazione, nelle sue distopie non è difficile ritrovare l’eco delle sue vicissitudini esistenziali, della sua vita di vittima costretta ai margini di quella società, ma ciò a mio avviso non basta per farne un autore di prima grandezza. I limiti della scrittura di Dick, la sua incapacità strutturale di utilizzare la parola scritta secondo modalità coerenti con gli oggetti delle sue narrazioni emergono ad ogni pagina, costringendolo spesso a tecnicismi che finiscono per far prevalere la cornice descrittiva rispetto all’essenza – che pure c’è – delle sue storie. Che differenza, in questo senso, rispetto ad un altro scrittore postmoderno al quale viene spesso associato: Thomas Pynchon. Se in qualche modo possiamo definire entrambi come scrittori del caos, non può sfuggire che il caos di Pynchon, a differenza di quello di Dick, è supportato da un coerente caos narrativo del tutto assente in Dick, il quale si trova costretto - sicuramente anche perché scriveva per vendere, per sopravvivere (lui stesso si definì sempre uno scrittore commerciale) - entro un orizzonte formale piuttosto ristretto.
Non intendo con queste mie affermazioni stroncare l’opera di Dick, che rimane in alcuni casi importante nel panorama della letteratura nordamericana del secondo dopoguerra, ma cercare di ristabilire alcune distanze secondo me evidenti, che possono essere state annullate sono nell’ambito di una critica letteraria che ha perso ogni capacità di osservazione oggettiva, mossa spesso com’è soltanto dall’ansia di una originalità a tutti i costi e dalla necessità di creare nuovi miti letterari in un panorama oggettivamente piuttosto deprimente, il che ha l’indubbio duplice vantaggio di soddisfare il suo bisogno di autoreferenzialità e di essere utile sponda alle necessità di mercato dell’industria culturale.
Che Dick sia un autore in qualche modo sopravvalutato lo dimostra a mio avviso inequivocabilmente la pubblicazione da parte di una casa editrice come Einaudi, verso la fine del secolo scorso e quindi in pieno clima di rivalutazione dell’opera dello scrittore, di questo In terra ostile.
Come detto, Dick in vita pubblicò quasi solo romanzi di fantascienza che però non gli assicuravano sicurezza economica. Così, tra la fine degli anni ‘50 e la metà dei ‘60 tentò anche la via del romanzo realistico, scrivendo alcuni romanzi ambientati nella provincia statunitense e con personaggi appartenenti alla middle class. Praticamente tutti questi romanzi vennero però rifiutati dagli editori, e finirono per essere pubblicati attorno alla metà degli anni ‘80, dopo la morte dell’autore e quando era iniziata la sua postuma scoperta. In terra ostile appartiene a questa tipologia di romanzi: scritto attorno al 1957 fu pubblicato solo nel 1985 e nel 1999 arrivò in Italia, edito come detto da Einaudi che due anni prima aveva definitivamente sdoganato Dick pubblicando una delle sue opere più importanti, Cronache del dopobomba. Che si tratti di una operazione essenzialmente commerciale a mio avviso si intuisce già dalla traduzione italiana del titolo: nel linguaggio originale questo è infatti In Milton Lumky Territory, con riferimento ad uno dei personaggi chiave del romanzo, il rappresentante di commercio Milton Lumky. Forse una traduzione letterale è apparsa agli editor italiani troppo criptica (ma una certa cripticità nei titoli è caratteristica comune a molti dei romanzi di Dick): sta di fatto che la scelta di un titolo vagamente inquietante e che potesse in qualche modo rimandare ad un contenuto fantascientifico o distopico risponde smaccatamente all’esigenza di spacciare questo romanzo come tipicamente Dickiano, in modo da attrarre compratori.
Di ostile infatti la terra in cui vive e che attraversa nei suoi viaggi il protagonista, Bruce Stevens, da adolescente chiamato Skip, non ha proprio nulla, se non la congenita desolazione della provincia statunitense tra Idaho, Nevada e Oregon, che peraltro emerge dalla narrazione in forme del tutto convenzionali.
Il romanzo infatti è ambientato in quel lembo dell’Ovest statunitense, verso la fine degli anni ‘50. Bruce è un giovane di belle speranze: ha 24 anni, una Mercury del ‘55, e da pochi mesi si è trasferito dalla cittadina dell’Idaho in cui è nato a Reno, Nevada, dove lavora per un discount, con il compito di acquistare all’ingrosso le merci che poi saranno vendute a prezzi stracciati. Passando per lavoro dalla sua città natale, pensa di fermarsi da una vecchia fiamma, con l’intento di riallacciare la relazione. La cosa non gli riesce, ma nella casa della ex conosce Susan Faine, una affascinante donna di una decina d’anni più anziana di lui che – come ricorda dopo il loro primo incontro – è stata sua insegnante una dozzina d’anni prima. Lei ha appena divorziato ed a Boise, una cittadina vicina, è proprietaria di una copisteria che però sta andando economicamente male. I due si rivedono il giorno dopo: scocca la scintilla e Susan propone a Bruce di divenire suo socio per rilanciare gli affari grazie alla sua esperienza nel commercio. Bruce accetta, si licenzia e i due in breve si sposano. Bruce pensa di trasformare la copisteria in un negozio di macchine per scrivere, e viene a sapere da un rappresentante, Milton Lumky, che sta per giungere sul mercato una nuova portatile giapponese elettrica, e che rivenderla in esclusiva potrebbe essere un ottimo affare. Con l’aiuto dello stesso Milton e dopo avere costituito un piccolo capitale, Bruce si mette a cercare il grossista delle macchine per scrivere, trovandolo infine a Seattle. Considerandole di ottima qualità ne compra sessanta, impegnando praticamente tutti i soldi che ha a disposizione. Non voglio narrare come prosegue la vicenda, per non diminuire il gusto della lettura, ma riporto l’avvertenza dell’autore che Dick antepone al primo capitolo: “Questo è un libro curioso davvero, e tra l'altro è anche un buon libro, dal momento che gli strani eventi che accadono sono quelli che accadono alle persone in carne ed ossa. C'è anche un lieto fine. Cos'altro può aggiungere un autore? Cosa può dire di più?" Credo che questa breve riflessione di Dick ci dica molto sulle sue intenzioni rispetto al romanzo: scrivere un buon libro, che narrasse la vita reale delle persone, con un lieto fine per i lettori che egli si augurava ovviamente numerosi.
In effetti In terra ostile potrebbe essere un buon libro, perché avrebbe tutti gli ingredienti per esserlo. L’ambientazione è intrigante, soprattutto per il lettore contemporaneo: la provincia statunitense negli anni di Eisenhower, del maccartismo formalmente concluso ma ancora culturalmente imperante, del Rock and Roll e degli altri fermenti culturali alternativi che annunciano gli anni ‘60, del consumismo incipiente. I personaggi principali sono tipici rappresentanti della middle class dell’epoca: Bruce con il suo spirito di iniziativa e la certezza che ce la può fare (peraltro alla prova dei fatti incrinata seriamente dalla sua inadeguatezza ed inesperienza), Susan più tormentata dai dubbi ma anch’essa dotata di un’anima imprenditoriale, Milton più oscuro ed ambiguo, sorta di deus ex machina minore in grado di condizionare il destino dei due. Anche le trasformazioni etiche che accompagnano quelle sociali giocano una parte importante nel romanzo: Susan è già stata sposata due volte ed ha una figlia, Bruce all’inizio del romanzo compra una scatola di preservativi, i due vanno a letto insieme praticamente subito, quindi si sposano con estrema leggerezza. Vi è poi il fatto che Susan ha conosciuto Bruce come sua insegnante, e che tra i due già all’epoca si era sviluppato un rapporto di odio-amore venato di una repressa attrazione sessuale. Purtroppo questi ingredienti rimangono tali, e Dick non è in grado di amalgamarli in modo tale da trarne una composizione riuscita. Tutto rimane in superficie, appena accennato, senza che questi ingredienti riescano davvero a innervare la vicenda, che si traduce in una banale storia d’amore e di affari di piccolo cabotaggio per assicurarsi un avvenire che perpetui l’orizzonte piccolo-borghese nel quale i due sono immersi. Tutto è pallido nella prosa di questo romanzo di Dick, compresi i suoi evidenti limiti espressivi: ma non si tratta del pallore dato dall’angoscia esistenziale e sociale che pure l’autore pare porre alle basi del suo racconto, ma dello scialbo pallore di chi non sembra in grado di colorare la sua storia e vuole solo rassicurare il lettore che nonostante tutto, nonostante lo squallore delle cittadine di provincia, nonostante le ferree leggi del mercato, nonostante gli errori di chi (come Bruce) si lancia in avventure commerciali senza averne le competenze, tutto può finire bene, e un lieto fine lo si può sempre fabbricare, almeno nei romanzi. L’happy end del romanzo è infatti senza dubbio il suo punto più debole, estraneo come è all’andamento della storia nel suo complesso, la quale solo con un finale diverso avrebbe potuto in parte riscattare le altre sue insufficienze.
Queste insufficienze strutturali sono in qualche modo esaltate dal dimesso modo di narrare di Dick, che trabocca dei luoghi comuni della narrativa statunitense dell’epoca, tra motel, Chevy e Mercury del ‘55, strade interstatali percorse in lunghi viaggi senza soste, paesaggi desertici e desolati. Non mancano in verità piccoli colpi di genio, come gli sciami di mosche gialle dalle ali appuntite che aprono il romanzo spiaccicandosi sul parabrezza delle auto, ma tutto rimane in superficie, non riesce a farsi sostanza del romanzo, finendo per essere una sorta di patina opaca che tenta di coprire il vuoto.
Come detto, il titolo originale del romanzo è In Milton Lumky Territory, ed in effetti la figura del rappresentante della ditta di articoli di carta è sicuramente quella più interessante del romanzo, per il ruolo ambiguo che vi gioca ed anche per una caratterizzazione più originale, che fa di lui l’elemento eccentrico rispetto alla eccessiva linearità della storia di Bruce e Susan. Milton è una sorta di elemento di disturbo, rispetto al cui ruolo nello sviluppo della vicenda molti interrogativi rimangono insoluti, e che – a mio avviso significativamente – si deve fare definitivamente da parte per permettere alla storia di finire bene. Anche un personaggio come Milton però non riesce veramente a ravvivare la vicenda, e si può dire che il suo territorio non si distingue granché dagli altri territori del romanzo.
Invano, a mio modo di vedere, il traduttore Davide Brolli si affanna, nella breve postfazione, ad accostare i romanzi realistici di Dick a quelli di scrittori come Sherwood Anderson o Faulkner e più avanti, ad una minore (sic!) come Flannery O’Connor. La verità è che mentre questi ultimi autori sono stati in grado di farci sentire drammaticamente la crudeltà e la desolazione di quella parte del mondo, Dick ce la fa solo annusare, deodorando peraltro alla fine l’ambiente, almeno in questo romanzo, con uno spray consolatorio.
Insomma, se Dick è, come credo, un ottimo autore minore, capace di vestire la letteratura di genere di tematiche che lo oltrepassano, quando si confronta con la letteratura che narra delle persone in carne ed ossa scopre tutti i suoi limiti: In terra ostile in questo senso è l’opera minore di un minore.
June 17, 2023
It’s been so many years since I’ve read Puttering About in a Small Land that I probably should avoid a direct comparison. That novel, I thought at the time of reading it, was as fine a novel as I’d read by Dick, if lacking the frisson of big science fictional ideas.
This, I hazard, is better. But it’s been decades.
This, I hazard, is better. But it’s been decades.
November 15, 2012
that Philip K. Dick was an odd one, wasn't he?
Dick wrote this book in 1958, before he went off on a sci-fi binge for the rest of his life. his sheer skill at characterization, even while it must be admitted that all of his characters are at least a little skewed, is a thing of beauty.
so what is it with these bent characters? no one i've met in his non-sf-fiction is quite normal. Dick tours the reader (or sometimes drags the reader) through each facet of his characters' at-least-slightly grotesque psyches. it's not always a pretty ride--characters say shocking things to one another, display a cruelty or perversity not found in the common run of humans, do thoughtless things i cannot imagine any adult doing. but these characters are not mere monsters--one can easily discern the human behind the funhouse mirror's distortion. and that's what makes them so scary.
don't go looking for a lot of plot in Dick's non-sf-fiction; a whole lot of not very much actually happens. you won't care about that, though, 'cause you'll be too busy watching these people with a kind of horrified fascination.
i can't think of many authors who were so detailed and perfect in their observations of the zeitgeist of their times. i still fail to understand why Dick was not lauded as a fiction writer before he became famous as an sf-fiction-author. perhaps because he gives us the world without blunting any of the sharp corners, without toadying to our sensibilities. his work is not for the faint of heart, but the depth of Dick's own feeling for his poor, warped, stunted, and twisted fellow-travelers shines all the more brightly for it.
Dick wrote this book in 1958, before he went off on a sci-fi binge for the rest of his life. his sheer skill at characterization, even while it must be admitted that all of his characters are at least a little skewed, is a thing of beauty.
so what is it with these bent characters? no one i've met in his non-sf-fiction is quite normal. Dick tours the reader (or sometimes drags the reader) through each facet of his characters' at-least-slightly grotesque psyches. it's not always a pretty ride--characters say shocking things to one another, display a cruelty or perversity not found in the common run of humans, do thoughtless things i cannot imagine any adult doing. but these characters are not mere monsters--one can easily discern the human behind the funhouse mirror's distortion. and that's what makes them so scary.
don't go looking for a lot of plot in Dick's non-sf-fiction; a whole lot of not very much actually happens. you won't care about that, though, 'cause you'll be too busy watching these people with a kind of horrified fascination.
i can't think of many authors who were so detailed and perfect in their observations of the zeitgeist of their times. i still fail to understand why Dick was not lauded as a fiction writer before he became famous as an sf-fiction-author. perhaps because he gives us the world without blunting any of the sharp corners, without toadying to our sensibilities. his work is not for the faint of heart, but the depth of Dick's own feeling for his poor, warped, stunted, and twisted fellow-travelers shines all the more brightly for it.
September 3, 2017
I picked this up from a remaindered book table because of the magical name "PKD." And as I am having a big clearout of my books, I decided to "read and release" when I realized that it was one of Dick's lesser known output -- a mainstream novel, and one that was unpublished during his lifetime. Knowing something of Dick's life and career, I know that he yearned, all of this life, to be taken seriously as a writer, and not-so-secretly considered his SF work to be an obstacle to that serious recognition. So I started this novel fearing the worst (just think of Sir Arthur Sullivan, who was ashamed of the wonderful comic operas he wrote with Gilbert, and placed all of his hopes for eternal fame on the tedious, justly forgotten serious operas he wrote ...) --
But I was pleasantly surprised. This might not appeal to anyone who isn't a fan of PKD's SF work (Unless you are fascinated by late 1950s Idaho, and the plight of commercial reps, your reaction might be "huh"?) but "Milton Lumky" had enough of the offbeat Dick style, characterization and attitude that I know and love. As a period piece (again, 1950s Idaho) it's interesting and well done, and the plight of the three main characters, who yearn to find their American Dream, but just keep undermining themselves, is actually quite touching.
And in the end, I was delighted to note -- you just can't keep a good SF writer down! If you read this novel, and find the ending baffling, (trying to avoid spoilers, here) just remember Dick's wonderful alternative history "The Man in the High Castle." Mainstream and "realistic" it might be, but it's still all very Dickian ....
But I was pleasantly surprised. This might not appeal to anyone who isn't a fan of PKD's SF work (Unless you are fascinated by late 1950s Idaho, and the plight of commercial reps, your reaction might be "huh"?) but "Milton Lumky" had enough of the offbeat Dick style, characterization and attitude that I know and love. As a period piece (again, 1950s Idaho) it's interesting and well done, and the plight of the three main characters, who yearn to find their American Dream, but just keep undermining themselves, is actually quite touching.
And in the end, I was delighted to note -- you just can't keep a good SF writer down! If you read this novel, and find the ending baffling, (trying to avoid spoilers, here) just remember Dick's wonderful alternative history "The Man in the High Castle." Mainstream and "realistic" it might be, but it's still all very Dickian ....
January 28, 2017
Wow. This was good.
My first impression of Philip K. Dick's non-sci-fi work was that he was much more readable with big sci-fi concepts to wrap your head around. His characters are often moody, selfish, cynical, and/or downright malicious. Without the robots and aliens and alternate realities, I found these characters tough to endure. That was how I felt about Confessions of a Crap Artist in particular.
But this one was really amazing. The two main characters were full of the same sort of flaws I mentioned, but not in a cartoonishly overdone way (as they are in some of his other works, sci-fi or not). I really liked how these characters (all three of them if you include Milt Lumky) were very different from each other, flawed in different ways and likable in other ways. In short, they were rounded and believable.
But my favorite part of the novel came at the end. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that PKD's lifelong fixation with alternate realities has a chance to come into play. And it's beautiful.
My first impression of Philip K. Dick's non-sci-fi work was that he was much more readable with big sci-fi concepts to wrap your head around. His characters are often moody, selfish, cynical, and/or downright malicious. Without the robots and aliens and alternate realities, I found these characters tough to endure. That was how I felt about Confessions of a Crap Artist in particular.
But this one was really amazing. The two main characters were full of the same sort of flaws I mentioned, but not in a cartoonishly overdone way (as they are in some of his other works, sci-fi or not). I really liked how these characters (all three of them if you include Milt Lumky) were very different from each other, flawed in different ways and likable in other ways. In short, they were rounded and believable.
But my favorite part of the novel came at the end. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that PKD's lifelong fixation with alternate realities has a chance to come into play. And it's beautiful.
December 10, 2013
Philip K Dick is one of my favourite authors but I find his non-science fiction work really hit or miss. I think my biggest complaint with it is that it is so middle class, middle America. In his science fiction, there is so much more social commentary about issues such as race, gender, drugs, government. It's all very anti-establishment and critical. So I'm not sure why the non-science fiction books are so normal.
I did really like the broken bubble, but this one wasn't nearly as good. It was about a young man of 24 who was one of the most middle aged and dull characters. He got married on a whim, tried to make a business, failed dramatically but still somehow managed to succeed. Young businessmen who have or have not got what it takes was really not what I wanted to be reading about. Definitely one I'm glad I borrowed from the library.
I did really like the broken bubble, but this one wasn't nearly as good. It was about a young man of 24 who was one of the most middle aged and dull characters. He got married on a whim, tried to make a business, failed dramatically but still somehow managed to succeed. Young businessmen who have or have not got what it takes was really not what I wanted to be reading about. Definitely one I'm glad I borrowed from the library.
January 18, 2009
I'm kind of a sucker for the early proletarian salesmen non-sci-fi novels of Dick. I still love the masterpieces most, but these make for kind of soothing late night reads when your brain isn't up to full engagement. Plus it's really intriguing after reading his wild works of loose genius to read these very controlled books about practical everyday guys just trying to get by. I think my favorite of the batch, though, is Voices From the Street. It goes deeper into what kind of emotional sacrifices and destruction it takes for someone with any kind of passion or imagination to survive in the workaday world. Plus it's an incredible book of regional writing, really painting a clear picture of small town California.
February 6, 2014
I think I need to read some more PKD. I very much liked his tone/writing style, but the plot of this book was just a bit, er, dull. It's about the business successes and failures of a typewriter store. Some it was interesting to read, but it definitely dragged at times. PKD is very good at characterization with this. None of these characters are particularly likable, but they make sense and they have real tangible issues; I don't know, I just really liked the way he portrayed them. Not my favorite book, but that's a matter of opinon.
June 6, 2019
Amazingly, I haven't read many of Dick's Sci-Fi works. I read "Voices from the street" last year and enjoyed it so picked up this one in my Library the other day and found myself entranced.
There is something about Dick's realist work which draws you in. Despite some quirks of behaviour and detachment from the society he wrote about (reading it many decades after and not being American) ultimately people are strange creatures and his exploration of human life experiences is to me very interesting.
There is something about Dick's realist work which draws you in. Despite some quirks of behaviour and detachment from the society he wrote about (reading it many decades after and not being American) ultimately people are strange creatures and his exploration of human life experiences is to me very interesting.
January 30, 2013
Une histoire d'amour banale dans l'Amérique profonde d'après-guerre, qui ne devait pas présenter un grand intérêt pour les lecteurs de l'époque.
Il en va autrement pour les lecteurs d'aujourd'hui, car 1- cette plongée spatio-temporelle dans le réel est devenue dépaysante 2- d'autant plus que l'auteur est devenu par la suite un maître de la littérature de l'irréel. On retourve d'ailleurs un soupçon de ses fameux "univers parallèles" dans les toutes dernières pages.
Il en va autrement pour les lecteurs d'aujourd'hui, car 1- cette plongée spatio-temporelle dans le réel est devenue dépaysante 2- d'autant plus que l'auteur est devenu par la suite un maître de la littérature de l'irréel. On retourve d'ailleurs un soupçon de ses fameux "univers parallèles" dans les toutes dernières pages.
March 8, 2012
I liked Milton Lumky Territory. This is like when a friend tells you he or she likes a movie that the buzz says is awful. It is the kind of "I like it" where you say "go into the movie with low expectations and then maybe that will free you to like what you see."
The characters are well drawn. The hero is likable. It is a lot like a John Updike novel.
The characters are well drawn. The hero is likable. It is a lot like a John Updike novel.
May 17, 2013
PKD litfic
No aliens or mindfucks
ZEE OH EM GEE, RIGHT?
Review Haiku for Those with Short Attention Spans
No aliens or mindfucks
ZEE OH EM GEE, RIGHT?
Review Haiku for Those with Short Attention Spans
December 9, 2024
"You know, I have the feeling I know you. But I can't place you."My 35th PKD novel. I'll notch it to a 4.5, for being a nice surprise.
Since I'd already made my way through all of the PKD non-collaboration SF books (but will return to some of those and already have), I've been left now with his non-SF titles.
Until now, I'd only read one - while I was midway through the SF-binge. That was 'Confessions of a Crap Artist', which, surprisingly, I found to be rather entertaining:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
'Confessions...' (the only non-SF book published in PKD's lifetime) was one of 6 'straight' novels (a few others are lost) that Phil hoped (I guess) would legitimize him as a writer and, what?, save him from the fate (or 'stigma') of writing SF throughout his career... ?
Fortunately fate had other ideas. It was right after this 5-year, non-SF period that Phil broke through with the novel that would completely alter his destiny: 'The Man in the High Castle'.
It may be widely believed now that his non-SF books are best left ignored. I intend to find out to what extent that is or isn't true.
Mainly because I enjoyed 'In Milton Lumky Territory' even more than 'Confessions...' - so I'm genuinely curious as to what else was there in Phil's 'realistic' brain.
Whereas 'Confessions...' leans much more toward the eccentric, 'IMLT' is almost startling in its ordinariness. It's some of Phil's leanest, simplest yet still effective prose.
Overall, it's a relationship story... with a difference; somewhat about a difference in age. A salesman makes a return to his hometown in Idaho and falls back into the life of a woman he first knew as his 5th grade teacher when he was 11. He's now 24 and she's 10 years older. The story doesn't involve itself much in how the age difference impacts their relationship. Nevertheless, the first 'chapter' of their life together manages to color their eventual married life - as we see more clearly in the novel's conclusion.
Along the way, PKD makes some interesting observations about the pitfalls of teaching in the provinces (some which still resonate today):
"... what about the parents? They terrorize teachers. They get them fired every day--one angry parent in the principal's office throws around more weight than all the teachers' unions in the world. ... They destroyed the school system with their witch hunts... they made teachers so timid it's no wonder nothing gets taught. A teacher who opened her mouth about sex education or birth control or atomic war got fired."The bulk of the story is wrapped up in the couple's attempt to go into business together; a venture that Phil delineates with impressive precision.
As a sidebar, the author stirs up a spiritual sub-theme with the titular Milton Lumky (a character central to the protagonist's sales life). I'd've preferred if that avenue had been a bit more specific / more purposeful but I can understand how and why PKD steered as he did.
The story's capsized final chapter is rather ingenious, as it puts into sharper focus the ways in which the main characters were understood (or not).
July 15, 2018
Questo è il secondo libro di Dick che leggo e non posso che confermare il fatto che apprezzo molto il suo stile. È scorrevole, si lascia leggere, scivola sotto le dita come sabbia asciutta o, meglio ancora, acqua fresca e non lo dico in senso negativo.
“In terra ostile” non è un capolavoro, è un romanzo piuttosto solipsistico, tutto incentrato sui tentativi di crescita, se vogliamo, del suo protagonista, Bruce Stevens. Pochissimi i comprimari: Susan Reuben e il Milton Lumky a cui il romanzo deve il suo titolo, nella versione originale (“In Milton Lumky Territory”). La piccola Taffy è più uno spettro, un’idea, che un personaggio a sé stante.
Ma non importa. Quello che importa è che, a sessant’anni di distanza dalla sua realizzazione, “In terra ostile” si rivela quello che definisco un ottimo documento storico, che intrappola per sempre un determinato momento nella storia di un determinato Paese. Gli USA della fine degli anni Cinquanta - per essere più precisi, un pezzo del Midwest fra Idaho e Nevada - con l’avvicendarsi delle grandi catene di magazzini, che stavano uccidendo il commercio al dettaglio, con quell’esplodere dell’affarismo americano, tutto basato sull’imbroglio e lo smercio di pezzi difettosi da un affarista all’altro, in un sistema di scarico degli accolli che ci ha portato poi alle crisi che tutti ben conosciamo.
Quello che più sorprende e fa sorridere amaramente è la possibilità che Bruce e Susan hanno di reinventarsi, spendendo soldi e assorbendo il colpo con tanta velocità, da permettersi persino di avere una casa propria, venderla e trovarne un’altra in una città più grande. Vanno a tentoni, mentre cercano di stabilire un loro equilibrio, e possono permettersi errori finanziari non da poco, mentre in un contesto contemporaneo sarebbero sommersi dai debiti prima ancora di poter cominciare a lavorare.
Ma non è di questo che volevo parlare. Piuttosto del fatto che forse questo non è il romanzo più compiuto di Dick. Avrei voluto sapere di più di Milton Lumky, un personaggio che a modo suo rompe la monotonia e soprattutto i costumi di quei panorami desolati e immobili della country americana. Un personaggio che in qualche maniera cerca di appellarsi alla spinta al cambiamento nascosta dentro Bruce, al prezzo, però, di rischiare forse troppo grosso.
È un ambiente soffocante, quello che si snoda fra Reno e Boise, una caverna dalle cui ombre non è possibile riemergere, si può solo soccombere o adattarsi, non c’è via di mezzo. È una riflessione interessante e avvilente quella che si ricava dal finale di questa storia ma non starò a dilungarmi o ricado negli spoiler. Insomma, Dick continua, a mio dire, ad avere un sacco di problemi con le donne ma, diamine, che efficace e deprimente ritratto del cuore degli Stati Uniti degli anni Cinquanta che è questo libro.
“In terra ostile” non è un capolavoro, è un romanzo piuttosto solipsistico, tutto incentrato sui tentativi di crescita, se vogliamo, del suo protagonista, Bruce Stevens. Pochissimi i comprimari: Susan Reuben e il Milton Lumky a cui il romanzo deve il suo titolo, nella versione originale (“In Milton Lumky Territory”). La piccola Taffy è più uno spettro, un’idea, che un personaggio a sé stante.
Ma non importa. Quello che importa è che, a sessant’anni di distanza dalla sua realizzazione, “In terra ostile” si rivela quello che definisco un ottimo documento storico, che intrappola per sempre un determinato momento nella storia di un determinato Paese. Gli USA della fine degli anni Cinquanta - per essere più precisi, un pezzo del Midwest fra Idaho e Nevada - con l’avvicendarsi delle grandi catene di magazzini, che stavano uccidendo il commercio al dettaglio, con quell’esplodere dell’affarismo americano, tutto basato sull’imbroglio e lo smercio di pezzi difettosi da un affarista all’altro, in un sistema di scarico degli accolli che ci ha portato poi alle crisi che tutti ben conosciamo.
Quello che più sorprende e fa sorridere amaramente è la possibilità che Bruce e Susan hanno di reinventarsi, spendendo soldi e assorbendo il colpo con tanta velocità, da permettersi persino di avere una casa propria, venderla e trovarne un’altra in una città più grande. Vanno a tentoni, mentre cercano di stabilire un loro equilibrio, e possono permettersi errori finanziari non da poco, mentre in un contesto contemporaneo sarebbero sommersi dai debiti prima ancora di poter cominciare a lavorare.
Ma non è di questo che volevo parlare. Piuttosto del fatto che forse questo non è il romanzo più compiuto di Dick. Avrei voluto sapere di più di Milton Lumky, un personaggio che a modo suo rompe la monotonia e soprattutto i costumi di quei panorami desolati e immobili della country americana. Un personaggio che in qualche maniera cerca di appellarsi alla spinta al cambiamento nascosta dentro Bruce, al prezzo, però, di rischiare forse troppo grosso.
È un ambiente soffocante, quello che si snoda fra Reno e Boise, una caverna dalle cui ombre non è possibile riemergere, si può solo soccombere o adattarsi, non c’è via di mezzo. È una riflessione interessante e avvilente quella che si ricava dal finale di questa storia ma non starò a dilungarmi o ricado negli spoiler. Insomma, Dick continua, a mio dire, ad avere un sacco di problemi con le donne ma, diamine, che efficace e deprimente ritratto del cuore degli Stati Uniti degli anni Cinquanta che è questo libro.
May 8, 2023
Previously I asserted that Puttering Around in a Small Place was the best of PKD's early "serious" novels, but I retract that statement and now say that it's this one, In Milton Lumky Territory. I think I'm about at the end of them, so the statement should be safe.
IMLT has a sort of otherworldly feel that separates from the other similar PKD entries. Nothing too out of the ordinary occurs; there's no mind-bending break with reality, but the novel feels like it exists on the edge of a dream state. Again, similarly to his other non-genre work, the book deals extensively with the minutia of running a small business, in this case typewriter sales and repair shop. Most of the plot centers on our protagonist's quest purchase a wished-for stash of new typewriters from some warehouse to stock the small store of which he becomes a manager.
The other major section of the plot is concerned with his relationship with a woman who was at one time his fourth grade teacher. The characters are well-rendered, and as you might guess, the relationship is fraught with issues of control and rebellion.
This book feels complete in a way that many of his other "literary" efforts do not. Pretty much all of them were posthumously published in the 1980s, despite having been written in the 1950s, and only saw the light of day due to interest in PKD because of his sci-fi stories, which really gained in popular acclaim only after PKD was gone. Most of the early work feels only half finished or not properly edited; this one's the exception.
IMLT has a sort of otherworldly feel that separates from the other similar PKD entries. Nothing too out of the ordinary occurs; there's no mind-bending break with reality, but the novel feels like it exists on the edge of a dream state. Again, similarly to his other non-genre work, the book deals extensively with the minutia of running a small business, in this case typewriter sales and repair shop. Most of the plot centers on our protagonist's quest purchase a wished-for stash of new typewriters from some warehouse to stock the small store of which he becomes a manager.
The other major section of the plot is concerned with his relationship with a woman who was at one time his fourth grade teacher. The characters are well-rendered, and as you might guess, the relationship is fraught with issues of control and rebellion.
This book feels complete in a way that many of his other "literary" efforts do not. Pretty much all of them were posthumously published in the 1980s, despite having been written in the 1950s, and only saw the light of day due to interest in PKD because of his sci-fi stories, which really gained in popular acclaim only after PKD was gone. Most of the early work feels only half finished or not properly edited; this one's the exception.
January 13, 2019
Phillip K. Dick starts off this book with the line, “This is actually a very funny book, and a good one too, in that funny things happen to real people who come alive. The ending is a happy one. What more can an author say? What more can he give?”
I wouldn't call this a funny book by any means. Interesting, sure, but not funny. I’m not entirely sure why he described it as funny, but the question of “What more can [an author] give?” is beautifully raw and intimate.
It’s wildly dated to read a story where the protagonist is on a quest across the country to find a warehouse of typewriters, hoping to turn a profit on buying them in bulk and selling them quickly. Perhaps by starting his own typewriter shop.
This novel comes at the start of Dick’s career. Before he turned to Sci Fi and before the years of meth usage turned his writing deeply paranoid. It has some of his typical qualities; dreamy landscapes; flawed but believable characters; the desperate yearning to achieve the American dream, but it also has a lot of his flaws; no real meat to the plot; a lackluster, anemic ending.
It’s one of Dick’s better early works as it feels like a complete book (Unlike, say, Voices from the Street). It comes from one of the periods in his life when he was optimistic, and not in the downward spiral of a failing marriage. I don’t know that I’d flat out recommend it to anyone, unless they really like PKD’s books or they have a yearning for travel novels written in the 50s.
I wouldn't call this a funny book by any means. Interesting, sure, but not funny. I’m not entirely sure why he described it as funny, but the question of “What more can [an author] give?” is beautifully raw and intimate.
It’s wildly dated to read a story where the protagonist is on a quest across the country to find a warehouse of typewriters, hoping to turn a profit on buying them in bulk and selling them quickly. Perhaps by starting his own typewriter shop.
This novel comes at the start of Dick’s career. Before he turned to Sci Fi and before the years of meth usage turned his writing deeply paranoid. It has some of his typical qualities; dreamy landscapes; flawed but believable characters; the desperate yearning to achieve the American dream, but it also has a lot of his flaws; no real meat to the plot; a lackluster, anemic ending.
It’s one of Dick’s better early works as it feels like a complete book (Unlike, say, Voices from the Street). It comes from one of the periods in his life when he was optimistic, and not in the downward spiral of a failing marriage. I don’t know that I’d flat out recommend it to anyone, unless they really like PKD’s books or they have a yearning for travel novels written in the 50s.
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