I’m always seeing reviews of Philip K. Dick books where they talk about how his ideas are so cool, but that his writing blows. I just don’t agree with this. I’ve read a bunch of his books, and I think he’s a really good writer. I’m re-reading VALIS at the moment, and came across a passage I love, which I think highlights the kind of great writer that he can be. It’s from page 14, and this occurs as a friend of his has shown up at his house to try to get pills from him to help her commit suicide. He’s trying to help her and prevent her from doing it, but he totally fucks it up. (”Fat”, in this excerpt is a name he’s using for himself.)

Pausing to rub a small stone loose from her foot, Gloria said, “I’d like to stay overnight at your place tonight.”

Hearing this, Fat experienced involuntary visions of sex.

“Far out,” he said, which was the way he talked in those days. The counterculture posessed a whole book of phrases which bordered on meaning nothing. Fat used to string a bunch of them together. He did so now, deluded by his own carnality into imagining that he had saved his friend’s life. His judgement, which wasn’t worth much anyhow, dropped to a new nadir of acuity. The existence of a good person hung in the balance, hung in a balance which Fat held, and all he could think of now was the prospect of scoring. “I can dig it,” he prattled away as they walked. “Out of sight.”

Admittedly, VALIS is probably not the place to start if you’re just getting into PKD. For that, I’d recommend probably A Scanner Darkly or maybe Ubik.