Time Out of Joint
- Philip K. Dick's novel about what happens when the world fails to
adhere to a fixed, predictable set of natural laws, when how you
perceive profoundly influences and changes what you perceive. For, as
philosopher George Berkeley stated in 1710, “to be is to be perceived”.
So,
what am I to make of this PKD novel I listened to on audible, the book I
see reviewed many times over? I ask since, when I
picked up the actual book, the entire story was different beginning in
Chapter Three. Instead of Ragle Gumm shaving himself in the bathroom
mirror, Ragle must deal with six Little Green Men who take him to Mars
where he meets Bishop Berkeley himself. When Ragle asks Berkeley if he's
dreaming or if this is true reality, George answers, “The only things
we perceive are our perceptions.” And when Ragle presses him for
clarification, the good Bishop replies, “A ray of imagination or of
wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.”
The book gets weirder and weirder, with references to House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace. I'd be happy to include more detail but I
strongly suspect the book you yourself will read with not be the book I
see in front of me, the one I read, a book entitled Time Out of Joint
by Philip K. Dick. However, I must admit I was given a warning right on
the front cover, a warning telling me this Dick is “A Novel of Menace”. Whoever
wrote that wasn't joking.
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