Average customer rating:
- Not Alone, But Lonely
- Risky lyrical prose yet lacking sufficient editing and substance
- Meanders like a river, rushes like a flood
- Knoxville's Faulkneresque underworld
- Not My Existence Here in the Fifties!
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Suttree
Cormac Mccarthy
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
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McCarthy, Cormac
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Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
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Child of God
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The Orchard Keeper
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No Country for Old Men
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Outer Dark
ASIN: 0679736328
Release Date: 1992-05-05 |
Book Description
By the author of
Blood Meridian and
All the Pretty Horses,
Suttree is the story of Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege with his prominent family to live in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River near Knoxville. Remaining on the margins of the outcast community there--a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals, and squatters--he rises above the physical and human squalor with detachment, humor, and dignity.
Customer Reviews:
Not Alone, But Lonely.......2007-05-18
Suttree is the story of an emotionally wounded loner who lives among a motley assortment of criminals, alcoholics, and other societal outcasts on the outskirts of Knoxville in the 1950s. Suttree is estranged from his family, but it's never made completely clear why he walked out his wife and child, his relatives, and the life of privilege he led. Surviving day-to-day on whatever money he earns from the spoils of his fishing, he never has more than a few dollars in his pocket, and those are inevitably spent by the day's end.
In this world of misfits and outcasts, happiness and companionship are fleeting. Hunger, cold, and drunkeness fill days. But there is more, the community that Suttree inhabits is filled with characters who befriend, support, and care for each other. Each character innately understanding the vulnerability they have in common. Each having experienced degrees of pain and hopelessness.
McCarthy's prose is complex and dense; more than average concentration is required of the reader. It's not uncommon to find yourself re-reading passages, each re-reading allowing the words and imagery to more fully unfold in your mind. The payoff are passages rich and full of feeling. The world McCarthy describes has layer upon layer of detail and through Suttree's gaze the elemental and temporal nature of life is revealed.
I'd recommend McCarthy to patient and focused readers. People who don't need an immediate payoff and who appreciate prose and language. An alternative to Suttree is Blood Meridian, a more intense, violent, and perhaps more accessible work. McCarthy is an author who will leave an impression.
Some quotes:
"The willows at the far shore cut from the night a prospect of distant mountains dark against a paler sky. Halfmoon incandescent in her black galatic keyway, the heavens locked and wheeling. A sole star to the north pale and constant, the old wanderer's beacon burning like a molten spike that tethered the Small Bear to the turning firmament. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked again. He was struck by the fidelity of this earth he inhabited and he bore it sudden love."
"You see a man, he scratchin' to make it. Think once he got it made everything be all right. But you don't never have it made. Don't care who you are. Look up one morning and you a old man. You got nothin to say to your brother. Don't know no more'n when you started."
"He looked at a world of incredible loveliness. Old distaff Celt's blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse with the birches, with the oaks. A cool green fire kept breaking in the woods and he could hear the footsteps of the dead. Everything had fallen from him. He scarce could tell where his being ended or the world began nor did he care. He lay on his back in the gravel, the earth's core sucking his bones, a moment's giddy vertigo with this illusion of falling outward through blue and windy space, over the offside of the planet, hurtling through the high thin cirrus."
"Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them."
Risky lyrical prose yet lacking sufficient editing and substance.......2007-05-14
Most reviewers, professional or not would commend Mccarthy for Suttree or the Border trilogy as his magnus opus, though I'd reckon not. Indeed the lyrical prose in Suttree elevates standards in English literature with neologisms and erudite syntax as should that of any literary master, yet sometimes, now I mean a few occasional chapters and segments in which intense human emotions are compounded, say the death of a loved one, or some inevitable parting by fate, Mccarthy resorts to mere description, often overtly hollywood and trite--lacking in compassion and humanity and courage, qualities by which Faulkner makes adept use of.
To speak Mccarthyesque means to speak of purgatorial violence and its philosophy and affect on our consciousness and religion. What he does not do well is his way with familial issues particularly with the psychology of father-son relationships. Mccarthy fails to delve into the substratum of character denoument and development by overtly focusing on novel language of simple emotions--He is not condonable nor credible as a father, loving or not, simply because some readers realize that Mccarthy simply is not a father and never will be a father at all (The Road exemplary). Aside from an attempt of achieving a negation of archetypal bildungsromain as seen in Blood Meridian, the emotional constellation of Suttree and his lover(s)/ sons was a huge disappointment for me. I would stick with Faulkner's collection "The Country" instead.
Mccarthy does well by completely forsaking character development (as with blood meridian) rather than explicating simple emotions propounded in a lyrical voice that compromises its very meaning, which is the daunting weakness (though understandable) of modern avant-garde poets and musicians alike.
Meanders like a river, rushes like a flood.......2007-04-19
I've read all McCarthy's books and this might be my favorite. Only a master could weave these murky memories into such a spell-binding story. The plot (what there is of it) meanders at the languid pace of the Tennessee River and -- though it contains no real conflict (save Suttree's shadowy fits) -- I could not stop turning the pages. I closed the book with more empathy for Suttree than any literary character I can remember. The book is sublime.
Knoxville's Faulkneresque underworld.......2007-03-13
Set outside of Knoxville over several cold winters and hot summers during the early 1950s, Cormac McCarthy's novel introduces us to the outcasts, bums, and criminals (both petty and felonious) who claim friendship with Cornelius Suttree, a college-educated, privileged man who has left his wife and son to live hand-to-mouth selling fish caught from his houseboat on the Tennessee River.
Suttree's is a life of excess and disappointments: his rare windfalls go to liquor, his two attempts at romance are doomed, he allows himself frequently to be taken advantage of by both strangers and friends, and many of his associates end up dead or in jail. His drunken sprees (and, especially, their aftermaths) provide much of the hilarity; many sections begin with sentences along the lines of "He woke in full daylight by the side of a road."
Most memorably, in one of the novel's many flashbacks to Suttree's time in a county workhouse, we meet "countrymouse" Gene Harrogate, a young, delinquent, wide-eyed idealist who is arrested for--well, I can't rightly tell you without spoiling one of the most hilarious scenes in the book. Gene eventually sets up quarters in a cave under the city bridge, which he exhibits to Suttree with as much fanfare as a New Yorker would show off a rent-stabilized loft in SoHo and where he develops outlandish schemes to become wealthy. Throughout, I kept imagining that Harrogate had wandered into Tennessee from a long-lost Flannery O'Connor story. At first the novel's perspective alternates between Suttree and Harrogate, but eventually this becomes Suttree's story.
Having read four Faulkner novels during the past year, I was a little disoriented reading "Suttree." While the characters and the episodic storyline certainly echo other writers (Twain, Steinbeck, Joyce, and obviously O'Connor), its style picks up where Faulkner's "Sanctuary" and "Pylon" left off. Most superficially, McCarthy adopts and adapts Faulkner's punctuation hiccups and his tendency to invent compound words (bibpocket, packingcrate, sootstreaked). He also exhibits what has become a trademark habit of using arcane and archaic words (mascled, warfarined, slaverous--four times!). But, ultimately, it was McCarthy's third-person omniscient descriptions of Suttree's drunken sprees that firmly planted me back in Faulkner's Old South. I've claimed that nobody does drunk like Faulkner--but McCarthy places second in a strong showing.
There is a strong streak of melancholy and despair running through the book, yet, like William Vollmann, McCarthy instills his characters with so much humanity, along with an unrealistically resilient optimism, that they are, more often than not, endearing even when their hopes are predictably dashed. For all of the book's surface resemblances to so many other literary antecedents, the degenerates and scalawags who populate "Suttree" still manage to be unique and memorable.
Not My Existence Here in the Fifties!.......2007-01-21
The bridge on the cover of this book is just one of three we had to cross Fort Loudon (part of the Tennessee River) in downtown Knoxville when I was growing up. He wrote about the pigeons which abounded here, particulary in the underbelly of the Greyhound Bus Station situated on Gay Street at that time. Now, today, the town wants rid of them and has brought in predators to kill them out in the open for all to see. Our beloved main street in town has been taken over by yuppies from who knows where and they don't like or want to see birds, trees or city buses on their turf. They did entice the young mayor to let them have their own liquor store on our sacred street so they would not have to stoop to riding one of the disgusting buses. They have blasphemed this sacred (to us native Knoxvillians) street of my childhood. I came home to the downtown area, but now I hate it and what it stands for.
Evidence of the fallen ladies in the upper stories of the retail store was noticeable, as now. We have that kind who were relocated here from New Orleans and prey on the bus drivers. Back then, the madams and houses were profiting from police protection and some rotten cops who brought girls there as laundresses?
Did they call tennis shoes "sneakers" back then? I must have been so innocent to have missed that, but I detested that kind of footwear anyway. It was not dignified. The large carp were still in evidence at the 1982 World's Fair (huge fish) and are at Volunteer Landing to this day.
This fictitious story is about Cornelius Suttree as a wandering (you might say "homeless" even) fisherman with a vivid imagination, especially at night where he spent his time fishing on the Tennessee River under the bridges and along the slopes down Sequoyah way as it meanders through the town from one end to the other. He is young and rebelling against his privileged life as a member of a prominent family. Sounds like someone I know who told me that life here in the Fifties was not good! He got that wrong idea from reading this long book. Suttree was a pre-hippie (a dropout from society) and he sees what he wants to see only it's the under belly of the old town, which he thinks is unique. Actually, a small town Pulaski had the same shacks, poverty, and human squalor in my life time about as bad as this big town.
It seems that young Mr. Suttree has had some kind of mental breakdown and has become the same as a bum seeing what he choose and not factually, but through a glass darkly. In fact, he appears to be one of the mental patients which this town spawns every generation. Written as fiction, but used as the basis of past history by some, McCarthy would be proud that his sordid book is used as reference material. Sure, some of the sites are locateable still but what took place there is a "figment of his imagination."
His thesis was so good that he received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (those who formed the University of Chicago) and the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to complete 471 (in the paperback) pages of nonsense. The town is real and still backward for the times; it has never been a progressive town unless you talk about bars, stills, breweries on Gay Street such, but one of hard drinkers, fighters, family fueders and so on. It could as easily been Pittsburg, PA, Cincinnati, Ohio, or any place in between with a river running through or around the downtown area.
It's pure drivel, not fact in any way, not history; for entertainment value only. It's too bad that some newcomers have been influenced by the poor conditions of this town's past and came here to change things. Even I was foolish enough to believe I was reading history before I came to know the local history writer. This is an old book -- and none of it is factual, none.
Product Description
three Books in one by Cormac McCarthy, including The Orchard Keeper, Suttree, and Blood Meridian
Average customer rating:
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Suttree
Cormac McCarthy
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NOYQ3A |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2004. The length of the article is 6302 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: McCarthy, Mac Airt and mythology: Suttree and the Irish high king.(Cormac McCarthy, Cormac Mac Airt, Buddy Suttree)(Critical essay)
Author: James Potts
Publication:
The Mississippi Quarterly (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 58
Page: 25(15)
Article Type: Critical essay
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
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Redemption as language in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree.: An article from: Christianity and Literature
John Rothfork
Manufacturer: Conference on Christianity and Literature
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ASIN: B000841B5G
Release Date: 2005-08-01 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Christianity and Literature, published by Conference on Christianity and Literature on March 22, 2004. The length of the article is 6247 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Redemption as language in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree.
Author: John Rothfork
Publication:
Christianity and Literature (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2004
Publisher: Conference on Christianity and Literature
Volume: 53
Issue: 3
Page: 385(13)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Product Description
A Reader's Guide to Blood Meridian is a page by page companion to the novel. The book provides definitions for difficult terms, translations for all foreign languages, references to the Bible and Literature, as well as short essays on the historical figures and places found throughout the novel. In addition to these materials, the book includes a subject index and an essay that interprets the novel in Nietzschean terms thereby unifying many of the related but disparate elements that dominate the text.
Customer Reviews:
A valuable source.......2006-11-21
A READER'S GUIDE TO BLOOD MERIDIAN is just what the title proclaims, providing a comprehensive glossary for all of the difficult terms, translations of the novel's many foreign words and phrases, and much of the lore behind the novel's historical characters and places.
Shane Schimpf provides an overview first, which includes a Nietzsche-derived interpretation of the novel. While this interpretation is as valid as any, and might seem handy for college students, readers should be aware that it is not the only interpretation. Just one of many. I wish that Mr. Schimpf had provided notations of the alternative published arguments or else had toned down or omitted this part of it and let readers choose their own interpretations. A guide should simply be a guide.
There follows the heart of the book, in an easy-to-read font. An examination of the epigraphs is followed by a page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter annotation of the novel. Many of the entries are brief, but often he pauses to give short biographies or extended explanations. There is a handy subject index followed by a bibliography of sources. New readers and college students will find this an immensely valuable and enlightening work.
The author acknowledges his debt to John Sepich's NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN, the standard authority on McCarthy's masterpiece since 1993, and this more accessible volume will likely reach a much wider audience.
No work such as this is definitive, as the author freely admits, and a second and revised edition of this work is almost inevitable somewhere down the line.
An essential buy for the McCarthy Fan.......2006-11-03
While not for everyone, if you are really curious as to what you missed the first time through Blood Meridian, this book will really help. It borrows from John Sepich's Notes on Blood Meridian, but it has a lot more information like definitions of vocabulary, translations of all the foreign languages, short sketches on the historical characters and incidents in the novel. It is also organized in a reader friendly way. It is set up to reference the pages in Blood Meridian, so it is very easy to read side-by-side with the novel. All in all, I really found it useful.
Customer Reviews:
Loved it !!!!!!!!!!!.......2005-09-19
A lovely story of a ghost who was hanged for something he didn't do, given a second chance to change history. One of the best stories I have read. I shall be looking for more of Madeline's books in future.
Great read!!.......2005-08-29
Loved this dook. I thought it was wonderful that Dalton was a ghost and fell in love with Kathy Before traveling back in time. I found their romance exciting and fun. I simply couldn't put down this book. I own many Madeline Baker books and love them all(except one), this one is no exception.
Madeline Baker at her BEST!!!.......2004-02-05
This, like "First Love, Wild Love" is one of Madeline's books that will stay with me for a life time! Dalton Crowkiller is a man that will live in my memory forever. Like one of the other reviews said, "Eddie Little Sky" must have really made a lasting impression on Madeline when she modeled these characters after him. All I can say is that I am sorry that I never met him, but felt like I have after reading this book! Thank you Madeline for such a romantic, on the edge of your seat best book I have ever read. I will read it again and again
Love and Passion as pure as gold!.......2003-12-01
The first third of the story is about Kathy meeting the ghost of Latoka half- breed, Dalton Crowkiller. This is easily one of the most heart- churning and innocent stories of building romance I've ever read. They can see one another, they can talk to one another, he can even hold her and kiss her for a moment. But his spiritual energy becomes weak, causing him to fade away if he spends the energy expressing his feelings. They are becoming so close in heart, but are so far from the ability to show it. Here is the story:
Kathy has inherited a ranch from her late husband's family. No one has lived on the ranch for decades, because the place has a reputation for being haunted. Kathy moves in and begins rebuilding the more- than- century- year- old ranch house. She has a feeling that she is not alone. She thinks she has even seen a man outside her window. Who is he and why is he watching her?
Dalton was the "fastest gun in the west", back in the 1870's. He worked as a hired gun. When a white woman seeks to seduce him, he turns her down because she is married. Angry, the woman accuses him of rape. Being a half- breed, he is not given a trial. He is whipped and hanged. With the rope placed around his neck, he vows to haunt the home and never give his killers peace.
For 125 years, Dalton's spirit has hovered over the ranch where he was hanged. Bored and lonely, he finds fun in scaring the people who occasionally rent the house for vacations. He does so by taking people's keys, and by moving things around in the home. He does all he can to make his presence known, because no one can see him or hear him. This all changes when a woman moves into the home. He is amazed to learn that she can see him. She can even hear him and talk to him. Even more amazing: they can actually touch one another.
Once her fear of this ghost fades, Kathy quickly becomes grateful for his presence. She has been lonely and grieving for her husband for over a year. This Lakota ghost quickly becomes her closest friend. He helps her rebuild her home and teaches her to ride a horse. Before long, their relationship builds just like the home they are restoring together. They are falling in love, but can not express it completely. Dalton pleads with God to give him another chance at life with Kathy. Kathy makes the same plea, realizing that Dalton has given her back what she has been missing for the past year: Hope.
While out riding, the couple stops at "the hanging tree." This time, they make their heartfelt pleas together. As an answer to their pleas, they are sent back in time to a few weeks before Dalton's death. He is now whole and human again. They are given a chance to change the past together.
Again, this is only the first third of the story! There is so much more ahead:
They live in the town where Dalton was killed, travel together to Dalton's Lakota village, then travel to Boston to seek out his mother and get married. They both have a horrible feeling that their time together is limited. Feeling that everyday might be their last together, they spend what time they have showing their love for one another. When time runs out, will they be separated? Will he be allowed to return with her? He would even willingly become a ghost again if it meant being with Kathy. What will fate hand them?
This couple is so beautiful together, I found myself nearly holding my breath while waiting to see if they would win their quest for a lifetime together. I felt every one of their highs and lows throughout the book. This is some excellent writting.
Nearly 400 pages long, I read this book in one day. There was no point where I could put it down.
Not a page turner for me..........2003-08-13
I can usually devour a good book in a day or two(if there is enough time in my schedule). It took over two weeks for me to read, and it felt like a chore. I found myself skimming pages, simply to get through the book. I read the reviews and was excited to read my first Madeline Baker. The book felt preachy toward the end, and I could see almost every plot twist coming. Neither of the characters were intriguing to me.
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Under a Prairie moon
Madeline Baker
Manufacturer: Leisure Historical Romance fine PB-21 1998
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LEPKU0 |
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- A mighty fine novel, makes the miraculous believable
- My First Phillip K. Dick Novel
- The long search
- Dick's Final Book
- Dick's last novel, a vision of redemption
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The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Philip K. Dick
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
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The Divine Invasion
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ASIN: 0679734449
Release Date: 1991-07-02 |
Book Description
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the final novel in the trilogy that also includes Valis and The Divine Invasion, is an anguished, learned, and very moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief. It is the story of Timothy Archer, an urbane Episcopal bishop haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress--and driven by them into a bizarre quest for the identity of Christ.
Download Description
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the final novel in the trilogy that also includes Valis and The Divine Invasion, is an anguished, learned, and very moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief. It is the story of Timothy Archer, an urbane Episcopal bishop haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress—and driven by them into a bizarre quest for the identity of Christ.
Customer Reviews:
A mighty fine novel, makes the miraculous believable.......2007-09-26
--So 'believably written'--outlandish/stimulating ideas anchored in literate articulate but fallible-foibled characters who jump off the page with roman-a-clef warmbloodedness, this was PKD's 1st book to not bother me: the 'Sci-fi' angle and cutely-named characters in previous attempted reads proved 'soft-off'ers, but this! -One of the best novels I've ever read...prescient, compassionate, unpredictable, rich! --The poor genius! who like Kerouac must be guffawing major-league en el otro lado...
My First Phillip K. Dick Novel.......2007-06-04
I got interested in this Author after seeing the film Through A Scanner Darkly. This isn't so much science fiction as it is a feast of ideas. I like that it's in first person and that the main character is a woman. I found the writing very masterful. Also, being a sort of biblical history buff, found the subject matter very intriguing. I'm definitely going to check out his other titles.
The long search.......2006-01-05
Angel Archer is in distress. The three people she has loved the most in the world are all dead: her husband Jeff, her father-in-law Timothy, her best friend Kirsten. At a lecture given by Edgar Barefoot (a character based on that of Alan Watts) she reflects:"It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn't hungry that day. John Lennon had just been killed and I think I know why we are on this earth; it's to find out that what you love the most will be taken away from you.." Barefoot later tells her that the point is to eat the sandwich, the rest doesn't really matter. Philip K Dick's book is the story of how Angel comes to the point where she can eat that sandwich.
Angel is disillusioned by many things. By her education ("I graduated from Cal. I lived in Berkeley. I read The Remembrance of Things Past and I remember nothing.") By concepts ("Like the medieval realists, Tim believed that words were actual things. If you could put it into words, it was de facto true. This is what cost him his life.")
Timothy is the opposite. He knows things. He knows the Holy Ghost is the Hebrew ruah, the female spirit or breath of Yahweh. He knows 'If I have all the eloquence of men or angels but speak without love I am just a gong sounding or a cymbal clashing'. He knows he can hold heretical beliefs and take a mistress and get away with both. The charismatic bishop gives life to all the people around him. But as the newly discovered Zadokite documents are published and translated, the cornerstone to his assurance, his faith, is lost. He believes that if the sayings of Jesus are merely quotations from the sayings of another teacher who lived 200 years earlier, then Jesus cannot be the son of god, the gospels cannot be inspired literature and the Christan church cannot be the one true faith. His faith is built on concepts: once one falls, the rest fall too, like a house of cards. Desperately, Timothy seeks another faith to fill the gap. For a while he becomes a spiritualist, believing he has been contacted by his dead son Jeff. Then he believes that if he can find the anokhi, the process whereby the early Christians partook of the Eucharist and became one with Christ, he will find answers which will resolve his doubts. The Zadokite Documents imply that anokhi was a real substance, which believers consumed, a kind of magic mushroom. If Timothy can find and take that mushroom he will be saved. He flies to Israel, drives ill-equipped into the desert, and dies.
Angel has always taken drugs. Now, in her grief, she has come to earth. To help her she has Bill, who can't follow concepts but who can give her affection. And Barefoot, who knows that death and life are two parts of one whole, and that focusing on being in each moment granted us is the closest we can reach to purity in this life. Pondering on the life and death of Timothy, Angel begins to find meaning in each, comes to understand that it was necessary for him to die and her to suffer so she can find some form of resolution, and with it, some form of wisdom.
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (published 1982) was Philip K Dick's last work, and one of his best written and well-organised (Dick's 12 'mainstream' novels are much more carefully written than his SF stories). Dick's book comes with a bibliography and references to Aeschylus, Plato, Dante, Donne and Yeats among others.
Philip K Dick is best known for his novels The Man in the High Castle (published in 1962, awarded the SF Hugo award 1963) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (published 1968, the basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner). It is generally accepted that Dick is a great science fiction writer. Stanislaw Lem says in his essays Microworlds (1984) that there are only three science fiction writers: H G Wells, Dick and the Strugatsky brothers. The rest are adventure story writers. It is possible to turn this assertion on its head and say that these three writers are not science fiction writers at all. This fussing about labels is not as trivialising as it sounds. How we classify a writer, for instance, controls what preconceptions we bring to their work, and whom we compare them to, what context we see them in. Dick's work does not fit easily into the science fiction mould, nor into that of the 'novel': romantic, experimental or post-structuralist. He belongs to a tradition that includes Aristophanes, Lucian of Samosata, Grimmelshausen, Swift, Gogol, Kafka, Orwell, Hasek, Samuel Becket, Nabokov, Simenon, Borges. These are all 'respectable' authors, but are they novelists? Or science fiction writers? Dick will be appreciated best, and given his true stature, if seen as part of this stream of fiction.
All these writers, including Dick, express unease, self-doubt, even paranoia as a response to the society in which they live. They satirise, express cynicism, look for some more 'eternal' structure where ideals and values are more stable.
It is these concerns that unify Dick's work. "Second Variety" (1953) shows automated mechanisms taking over the conduct of a war for their own, non-human, purposes; in Mary and the Giant (1955, 1987) the titular character enters the alien world of adulthood and becomes an alien herself in order to survive; in Eye in the Sky (1957) a number of characters impose their own radically different 'reality' on others (what is real?); in Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959, 1975) characters' fantasies become realities to others; in The Man in the High Castle (1962) an alternative reality in which the Axis powers won WWII gives birth to a banned work of fiction in which the Allies were victorious - which is real?: more germane, conquest and control are shown as unreal and destructive values; in The Simulacra (1964) the President of the United States is one: is this fantasy or reality?; in The Penultimate Truth (1964) peace is declared, but not for the majority of the world's population, who are spurred on to greater efforts by a televised simulation of war; in "We can remember it for you wholesale" (1966) memories are implanted, we cease to be what we remember; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) machines become more human than humans, and have the same existential problems (what is human?); in A Scanner Darkly (1977) reality is distorted by a drug, and the drug is called death, which we all have to take; in Valis (1981) god searches for man just as man searches for god and one of these is a science fiction writer called Philip K Dick: the question asked is, is this real or is it science fiction?; in The Divine Invasion (1981) god forgets who he is and is healed by his feminine part so he can heal the world.
The progression from distrust of political manipulation, fear of alienation caused by mechanical and electronic substitutes for the senses, paranoia and 'reality fluctuations' caused by drugs taken to deal with these fears, doubts caused by unrestrained metaphysical speculation ending in a powerful need for a healing resolution fuel the works Dick wrote between 1956 and 1982.
More important than what form of fiction Dick wrote is the realisation that he was a gnostic, one who sought for (and found) hidden knowledge. But he was a very strange kind of gnostic, one who expressed his wisdom in pulp fiction.
Dick's Final Book.......2005-01-04
I can understand why some readers haven't warmed to this book. It is certainly atypical of Dick's usual style and packed with Berkeley intellectual theories. I anknowledge that certain sections of the book feel a little tedious, yet they are utterly justified. This becomes apparent when Barefoot tells Angel Archer (the narrator) she has the same affliction that the Bishop unknowingly endured during his lifetime ('Flatus vocis' - or 'empty noise'). Apparently, Dick himself felt the need to justify the events in his life (such as the early death of his twin sister Jane) in much broader temporal/religious/cosmological terms. The same is true of 2 of central characters in this book. Very often it appears that their quotations and theories amount to little more than empty words.
At the heart of this book is a strong story and superbly drawn characters, slightly similiar to some of those explored in CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST. Once you strip away the majority of the Bishop's tedious rants and quotations, you a left with a masterpiece about the impact of death on those left behind.
Sadly, when writing this, the author was on the brink of death himself.
Dick's last novel, a vision of redemption.......2004-06-05
Dick's last novel was completed in 1981 and published posthumously the following year. It is one of his finest achievements, and a triumphant return to realistic, mainstream writing, albeit with fantastic elements. Many fascinating conversations on philosophy, theology, and literature become the central focus of the book, as opposed to diversions from the plot. The play of ideas is compelling because it emanates from the life-and-death concerns of the characters, whose believability and humanity are perhaps greater than anywhere in Dick's writing. The book is loosely based on the life of Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, whom Dick knew. Like Pike, Bishop Timothy Archer is a seeker for truth who questions the Church's doctrine, favoring instead a direct revelation. Archer becomes embroiled in the occult when all manner of table-tappings and stopped clocks are taken as signals from his son Jeff, who committed suicide (like Pike's son in real life). The real redeeming center of the novel is its narrator, the bishop's daughter-in-law Angel Archer. Hers is a story of spiritual transformation and freedom from bitterness and self-absorption. The resolution is not one of certainty about the mysteries of the afterlife or of the higher realities around us, but of hope and trust in the possibilities of redemption no matter where we find ourselves in the lower realms of experience.
Average customer rating:
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Transmigration of Timothy Archer, The
Philip K. Dick
Manufacturer: Timescape Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Science Fiction & Fantasy
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| Authors, A-Z
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| Large Print
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| Science Fiction
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ASIN: 0575032200 |
Product Description
1. Valis
2. The Divine Invasion
3. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson
Customer Reviews:
The Microcosm and the Macrocosm reunited- the sundered realms rejoined........2006-06-20
_The basic premise of this series is that a transcendent God (or Vast Active Living Intelligence System) not only exists, but also periodically "breaks through" into our own material world, "the Black Iron Prison." If we are receptive, or desperate enough, it makes itself known (i.e. grants "gnosis"- the knowledge of the true state of things.) I consider PKD to be an expert on Gnosis, after all, it actually happened to him. You see this story is semi-autobiographical. Considering the hell that the protagonist, Horselover Fat, goes through in his interactions with a totally incompetent mental health bureaucracy, and a completely dysfunctional social and family life, you hope that it isn't too close to his actual life. Still, it was no doubt this living hell (coupled with his drug abuse) that led to his epiphany. This is somewhat like true shamanic initiation- the ordeal either kills you, or you break through the veil of this prison world into the "real" world beyond.
_Actually, it is the ideas imbedded in this novel that are its true worth. These are best expressed in _The Shifting Realities of Philip K. D*ck: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings_ by the same publisher.
_The Divine Invasion_ is the only other _Valis_ novel. There was supposed to have been a third, but D*ck died before it was finished. _The Transmigration of Timothy Archer_, while good, is not properly part of the _Valis_ trilogy.
_The Divine Invasion, while set in the far future, does continue the specific themes introduced in _Valis_, and reference is made back to some of the specific characters. You see, this is the time when VALIS, the Logos, the greater face of God, or whatever name you choose to limit it by, breaks through into our "black iron prison" to reclaim it and banish the Empire and the Adversary behind it.
_I admit that the story takes 50 or 60 pages to get up to speed, but by that time the IDEAS that are the real value of P.K.D's writing begin to surface. For instance, the idea of the "Hermetic Transform" and how the microcosm and macrocosm can interpenetrate and become One- and how to God time can run backwards. Pretty deep stuff compared to most of the semi-literate pap that is published nowadays.
_What really leaped out at me though was the fact that D*ck wrote of the Torah as an interactive, holographic, computer code. It predicts the future because it is the blueprint for creation that even God refers back to. He wrote this in 1981- _The Bible Code_ wasn't published until 1997. Talk about being "ahead of the curve."
Product Description
3 Book Set By Philip K. Dick; Valis; the Divine Invasion; the Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
Book Description
In this beautifully illustrated offering of ancient wisdom, Deng Ming-Dao shares the secrets of the spiritual path handed down to him by Kwan Saihung, his Taoist master, as well as by herbalists, martial artists, and other practitioners of the ancient arts. Deng shows how Taoist philosophy and practice may be integrated into contemporary Western lifestyles for complete physical, mental, and spiritual health. He provides an abundance of philosophical and practical information about hygiene, diet, sexuality, physical exercise, meditation, medicine, finding one's purpose in life, finding the right teacher, death, and transcendence.
Customer Reviews:
Gets Close.......2007-09-07
I am a Westerner of very small understanding regarding this ancient tradition and my lifetime of spiritual quest brought me into a few dead end or dangerous paths; So my understanding is Western and limited.
In my intellectual wanderings I understand that the Taoist tradition is something akin to shamanism in that there is an exceedingly long apprenticeship regarding ceremonial care in a community sense. Births, deaths, seasonal crop changes, weather, bad luck, possessions, illness etc., were all attended to by Taoist priests who acted within the context of the culture of China (I-Ching, Prayers, Chinese medicine, Kung-fu). Think of it as a spiritual /physical /medicinal /feng-shui apprenticeship lasting 20 years.
There are some of these masters practicing today in China and perhaps even in the USA. They won't advertise it. You have to find them. And there are many people who have studied or mastered ASPECTS of the Taoist tradition (Feng-shui, Kung-Fu, Chi-Kung,).
There are very, very few Westerners who can become true Taoist priests or who deeply understand the dangers and pitfalls of a power path. It takes a master teacher to guide one in daily contact over a period of decades. Most of us are dabblers who pick and choose the things which we can squeeze into our busy, materialistic lives, which is OK as long as we don't try to deceive ourselves into thinking we are Taoist priests! A Taoist priest is a highly focussed, physically super-human person of towering mental, physical, and spiritual accomplishments who also can be martially fearsome.
Having had my say, I will recommend this book as a guide to some of the self-culture practices from the Chinese esoteric tradition.
It really should be called Taoism for dummies.......2007-04-14
No, this is not the Tao Te Ching, or Chuang Tzu. The beauty of this book is that it gives practical advice at how to live life in the healhiest fashion, spirituall, mentally and physically. However, this is not a "Taoist" book per se. It simply gives a look on ways to make life easier in some way or another. Even in modern China where this philosophy is not practiced by the population as a whole, they still use the same health practices that you can read from in this book. Example: drink black tea in the winter, and green tea in the summer.
Another aspect about the book is that it's not "pure Taoism". Deng Ming-dao may not be Chinese (i've yet to meet him) but he shows one important aspect of Chinese culture and that is of tolerance and flexibility. If you read essays from both the Song and Ming dynasties, you will see how many philosophers of old uses many methods and practices in their daily lives; i.e. filial piety of Confucius, qigong from Taoism, meditation from Buddhism. This book has a good understanding of the flexibile and practical nature of Chinese philosophy and spirituality.
He is also very practical in his prose. He doesn't massage egos or promises magic powers from fairy tales or make you go out in the street chanting and dancing the whole day. My favorite quote from him about qigong, "If qingong cured everything, there would be no cancer in China (41)."
Superb primer on Taoist PRACTICE.......2006-10-14
This is the best book I have seen yet (in English) about Taoist PRACTICE.
And, yes, Tao IS a practice---and is above all PRACTICAL.
Most of the "Taoism" we have been fed in the West are translations of Taoist texts, usually written by people who have never engaged in any type of Taoist practice. And most Chinese commentaries on Taoist works were written by Confucian scholars, who adopted a scholarly, not a real-life approach to the texts.
It is certainly inspiring to read Lao Tze, Chuang Tze, and the other Taoist classics, but in reality these books served as a philosophical basis for actual TRAINING within a native (Chinese) Taoist context.
And training is a huge part of Tao.
Although many western readers of Taoist texts see Taoism as a kind of "mellow," laissez-faire approach to life, based on their interpretation of wu wei, a little research into Chinese history will reveal that Taoists were scholars, alchemists, physicians, and warriors. Many of their discoveries in medicine and healing (herbal formulas, forms of qigong, etc) are actively used even today.
Deng's book is very well organized, starting with the basic theme of wen wu he yi---or "equal cultivation of cultural and martial [aspects of life.] Thus the title "Scholar Warrior." The fully rounded person was expected to be an artist, healer, painter, calligrapher, or even a master chef, as well as having martial skills.
Deng discusses the basic energetic levels of the human body ("Three Treasures") and how to cultivate each with nutrition, herbal usage, and physical disciplines including qigong and martial arts.
There is some excellent basic information about herbal formulas, elementary qigong sets, etc., as well as a real treasure--the "Golden Light Meditation."
Beyond all that the book describes a path through a long, healthy, and wise life, wherein youthful prowess and energy is eventually transmuted into ultimate knowing, returning to Tao, or "the Source."
It is important to remember that to the Chinese of old, traditions were not so compartmentalized as in the West today. That is, a Taoist would be fully versed in "Confucian" codes of respect and etiquette in daily life. And Taoists frequently shared information about martial arts and meditation wth Buddhist practitioners. So, notwithstanding the critique of Confucians in some Taoist classics such as Chuang Tze and Lieh Tze, in actual fact Taoists of old functioned IN SOCIETY using Confucian principles.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a very well researched and rounded introduction to Taoist training, as contrasted with abstract Taoist philosophy.
It also provides some excellent guidance on how to find a genuine teacher of Taoist practices.
Great Chi Kung Pictures!.......2005-06-30
Although the immortal Taoist studies may be a little beyond what most readers are looking for, this book has a wonderful collection of Qigong exercises with very effective action-comic style pictures. Those plus the fascinating food section (with very nice b&w photos) together assure that it is a beautiful book.
As a student of Taijiquan and internal martial arts, I find this book a great resource.
A nice package, but definitely not without flaws.......2004-03-15
When it comes to this book, I am a bit conflicted. On the one hand, /Scholar Warrior/ is a very well-constructed, illustrated guide to various aspects of Taoist life and philosophy. On the other hand, some of the guidelines Deng Ming-Dao presents as "essential" to this way of life not only run contradictory to the Taoist ideal of wu-wei (non-action), but also contrary to a number of ideas the author himself states are important.
In /Scholar Warrior/, the reader is told both that the Taoist does not strive forcefully and instead flows naturally with life (wu-wei). Yet, there is much detail on how to meticulously plan the stages of your life from the present until the day you die. There's also a great deal of advice on striving to eliminate your "fatal flaw" - yet, if such a "flaw" exists, is it not a natural part of yourself and thus, a manifestation of the perfect Tao? I suppose the idea here is that all this advice is presented as a guide to the "natural" way that others have discovered - but isn't one of the core ideas behind Taoism that each must find their own unique way on the Way? This book seems too heavily centered on goals, which strikes me as very un-Taoist.
There's a lot of good information in this book, but there is also a lot that is simply not very usable. The sections on herbology, meditation, and the philosophies of Taoism seem very well done. However, a tremendous amount of space in the book is spent on Qigong, for example. The illustrations and descriptions are quite good, but this ignores a fundamental problem: you can't learn Qigong by gawking at illustrations in a book, and there's far too many steps involved to remember them with any effectiveness. So despite the quality of these parts of the book, they are ultimately not very useful.
I don't really mean to bash this book so much - there is a lot of good information in it, and it can inspire you to explore different branches of the Taoist path in more detail. The breadth and depth of this work is admirable, it's just a shame that a lot of it is very contradictory or not all that useful in the end. I'm glad I bought /Schollar Warrior/ though, and for one simple reason: it has inspired me to think more carefully about what my own path means for me. In that regard, it was a worthwhile purchase. Just be sure to approach this book with an eye out for contradictions, so you can figure out what the right direction is for *you*
Books:
- Taft: A Novel
- Tapestry of Spies
- The 25th Hour
- The Antelope Wife: A Novel
- The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 1
- The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War
- The Conjurer's Bird: A Novel
- The Dangerous Hour (Sharon McCone Mysteries)
- The Day of the Triffids (20th Century Rediscoveries)
- The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
Books Index
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