A pop from the past

The Broken Bubble, by Philip K. Dick, 1956.

This realist novel is one both in and out of its time, the 1950s. Philip K. Dick wrote it in 1956 and it is both a mirror to the contemporary world and to PKD's mind. That in itself recommends it to the discerning philophile (or Dickhead).

The main characters are Jim Briskin, a disk jockey, and his ex-wife Patricia, with whom he is still in love. Then there is a young couple, Art and Rachael, with whom Jim and Pat become enamored. Shortly we have a marital mess, with all the characters continually changing their minds about which partner they want to sleep with or marry or remarry or unmarry. On top of that, throw in some juvenile delinquents who are sort of neither here nor there but provide a certain greasy comic relief. One is actually a would-be science fiction writer, which is about all the science fiction one gets in this book.

Close to the end a grotesque creature called Thisbe Holt, an exotic dancer, makes a brief appearance, nude and rolling around inside a plastic bubble, at a convention of equally grotesque optometrists. Dick seemed to give especial emphasis to this image, as his title for the book was "The Broken Bubble of Thisbe Holt" (it was not published until 1988, with the shortened title). The original title would have been peculiar in that Thisbe scarcely appears, and her sudden spherical entry is jarring. It is intrusive and seems to have no place in this narrative of two troubled marriages. She's like La Saraghina meets Dr. T. J. Eckleberg. What a strange and unexplained departure from ordinary 50s reality, and what a weird stew this book suddenly becomes!

So whose bubble really breaks in this novel? Thisbe's? Pat and Jim's? Pat has an amazing scene where she almost kills herself--"In the darkness of the apartment, she painted; she put more darkness around her. She lifted darkness and carried it about the living room and the bedroom and into the bathroom and the kitchen. She took it everywhere. She brought it to each thing in the apartment, and after that she turned it to herself." Jim returns to find her covered with blood.

So this is not just a book of its time. It exists just around the corner from the incomprehensible, trembling on the edge of just a little bit of insanity. If we remember the 50s, these scenes could be part of the fabric. They certainly were part of Philip K. Dick's.

The girl who could not make up her mind

Mary and the Giant, by Philip K. Dick, 1988.

Mary and the Giant is one of Philip K. Dick's nine surviving mainstream or realist novels. These were written in the 1950s but for the most part not published until after his death in 1982, Dick's other 36 novels were science fiction. The mainstream novels are underrated and underread, in my opinion. But usually only those who have exhausted the SF novels will venture on the path less traveled by into obscurer PKD.

Mary and the Giant, like the other mainstream novels, is a realistic evocation of the 1950's, a time as strange, in retrospect, as any we might find in an SF novel--which is sort of the point, really, about why we should read these books. They evoke a sense of mystery and otherness--only here, instead of making the otherness explicit by using SF memes--androids, time travel, dystopias, and the like -- here the otherness stays largely hidden and only hinted at.

The characters here are connected in terms of being in the music scene of a small northern California town. No heroes and heroines here: this is about their relationships, and their errant and fugitive attempts of awkward groping for love with each other in various combinations. The racial and sexual frankness of the book is extraordinary for the time period in which it was written, which may partially account for why it was not published at the time.

The giant of the title, Joseph Schilling, arrives in town to open a classical record shop. His origins are mysterious: "Perhaps he had come all across the world; perhaps he had always been coming, moving along, from place to place....He was so immense that he towered over everything." This mythic description introduces a note of fantasy into the drab small town setting.

Mary Anne Reynolds (of the title) is a very confused young woman who bats around ceaselessly from lover to lover, apartment to apartment, job to job. Joseph briefly becomes her employer and would-be sugar daddy. Although he appreciates her as a free spirit, the match is hopeless because of her headstrong and dilatory nature. Also, because she was sexually abused by her father, an older man like Joseph cannot be other than toxic to her.

Joseph is mysteriously drawn to her,like to a femme fatale, despite his better judgment. She eventually finds happiness with a younger musician, but in the ironic ending, Joseph does not.

How do you solve a problem like Mary if you are Joseph? You don't; the answers stay hidden. He understands that she is trying to fit into a world that has not come into being yet; that may not exist for a hundred years. Her indecisiveness can thus be explained by the fact that she is trying to inhabit a different reality, as was Dick himself.

Music was an article of faith for Dick. His inclusion of it here as a constant background gives us the author's witnessing presence, presiding over the eternal accompaniment to the dance of the wandering humans.