Book Review: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Overall: 4/4 Stars

The life of Philip K. Dick originally fascinated me much more than his novels. I always thought that it would be interesting to experience paranoid delusions, just so long as I would be able to wake up from them in the end. Seeing as how I couldn't do so, I have been forced to merely read about and study those who have experienced such things, and PKD is one of the most fascinating due to his creativity and contribution to American literature as well as the field of science fiction. My first experience with PKD came after viewing the special features for The Matrix and Minority Report. Minority Report is based on one of his truly phenomenal short stories and The Matrix was heavily influenced by his work. My interest in these two films drove me to reading about him online, and that led me to reading about his novels. My local library had The Man in the High Castle, and since it was considered to be one of his more famous novels, I decided to read it.

Reading it for the first time was extremely tough. This truly brilliant novel was very well written, but it was also extremely dense and philosophically and intellectually challenging, and very hard for a thirteen-year-old to read. Eventually I got into it and completed it, but I was still left wondering as to the true meaning of the work. Surely it was beautiful and brilliant, but I just didn't understand it.

Fast forward two years to my second reading of this amazing work, which was just completed less than ten minutes ago.

This time the book was much easier to get into and I must say that I have a newfound appreciation for the style of this book. Having now read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Clans of the Alphane Moon, and Radio Free Albemuth, three other of PKD's books, I must say that The Man in the High Castle's style is very different from his other books. His other books feature a much more dialog and character-oriented voice and style, and this book in particular has a very philosophical and formal style. The characters address each other in a very formal and almost non-human way, and their thoughts are very philosophical and rather unnatural. It all seems very Asiatic, which makes sense for the setting and premise of the novel. It's sentences are very short and to the point, rather like a noir-tinged detective novel, though very different in content and therefore in tone. Before I don't think I was able to appreciate the style and composition or content of this novel, and now I think that I finally have a firm grasp on it.

The plot, I, of course, must mention, is another thing that I now appreciate in a much fuller sense. It follows a Japanese diplomat, a 'Swedish' businessman, a German diplomat, a Jewish jewelry maker, his wife that he is separated from, and an American businessman as they all interact with one another in a sort of tangled web. Unlike other PKD novels, however, this book really doesn't have much of a plot, and what plot there is, none of it jumps out at you initially. Basically the main focus of the novel is nothing but their tangled and interesting lives, and we as readers simply watch the characters as they go about them and interact with different people around them. All of them also interact somewhat with a novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which is a fictional novel within the novel, with its name taken from Ecclesiastes 12:5 (Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: - KJV). In this novel there is told an alternate present (for the time period), in which Germany and Japan lost World War II (In The Man in the High Castle, they won it). Eventually we find some things out about The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, but I won't ruin the surprise and I won't really analyze it because, well, I'm not really too sure if I completely got that point. Anyways, the plot and the pacing is excellent, and it is really a tribute to how well PKD writes.

As far as the philosophy of this book goes, this novel differs from PKD's other books in that I really can't pick out a 'main' philosophical idea that carries the whole book and is only really resolved and revealed at the end. Instead I just have a few inklings of different philosophical ideas or statements that add up to create a book that doesn't seem philosophical but definitely is, if you know what I mean. It doesn't seem to be very intellectual or deep at one level, but the more you look into it the more you grasp different ideas and concepts that were in the novel, they just weren't expounded upon. That being said, there are still certain things that I understand in terms of them actually happening, but I still have trouble wrapping my head around, particularly the final piece of information revealed about The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Maybe I'm just stupid, or maybe I'm not the only one who doesn't get it all. I don't know.

Overall I can't recommend this book enough, and anyone who has any interest whatsoever in PKD owes it to themselves to pick up this book if they haven't already. Two warnings, however:

1. Aside from a few side references to space travel to Mars and cross-country rocket ships, this is really barely a science fiction novel for all you PKD/sci-fi fans. I would group it more in the alternate history bracket, though it still has enough sci-fi elements to be considered such a thing. Still, don't be looking for laser guns or aliens or anything like that in this book.

2. If you have a problem with endings that aren't really endings or endings that aren't completely satisfying, then read this book (even though it doesn't have a really satisfying ending) and be prepared to deal with it. The book is brilliant and amazing and absolutely needs to be read, but PKD has a habit of (at least in the few novels of his that I've read) not giving a satisfying ending for the characters, just a good ending for the plot as he sees it.

One final note, I was also very interested to find within this novel a discreet reference (if you could call it that) to a novel that PKD eventually wrote at least ten years after writing this book. I can't exactly remember where it occurred, but at one point Juliana Frink recalls 1 Corinthians 13:12 (For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.) which was later used as inspiration for the novel A Scanner Darkly, also written by PKD. I guess it's not really a reference, probably more of a coincidence, but it's still interesting.