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Speculation on Dick’s Exegesis
I’ve been inspired once again to follow the arcane trails left by Philip K. Dick’s 8,000 page largely unpublished Exegesis. All the pieces of it that I’ve ever seen tend to be magnificently mind-blowing. And furthermore, there seems to be a constantly growing number of people on and offline who are interested in it. Which leads me to wonder why it’s never been published. The closest we’ve come so far to getting our hands on the whole thing is the book In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis, published in 1991, but no longer in print. It seems that you can’t get a copy for less than fifty bucks nowadays used. Even that though is just selections. And then there’s the measly five page trickle published by the Philip K. Dick Trust online. I know that putting out an 8,000 page book of mystical ramblings is probably not financially viable in the marketplace, but shit I sure would like to read that whole thing. Also, thinking about all this weird stuff on the return of Jesus and all the other religious overtones of that book, there’s some small part of me that wonders if maybe, just maybe, there’s a totally different reason that book hasn’t been released in full. Maybe there’s like some secret cabal that doesn’t want the information contained in it to be unleashed into the world. Who knows. Fun to speculate on though.
October 21st, 2005 at 8:58 pm
I feel like I’m about to keel over from lack of sleep, but I had to mention that I’m really digging the PKD theme today. Most of my free time the past week’s gone into working on a site along these lines, so it’s been rather odd to see so many of those themes popping up here.
October 21st, 2005 at 8:59 pm
I imagine that 8,000 pages of typescript probably boils down to about 4,000 pages of book (depending on format), or 3 healthy volumes - absolutely given on-demand models it’s financially viable. Pretty easy to find 1,000 Dick scholars and nuts that would pay $100 for the set, which gives you a hundred grand to play with. Hell you could probably pick up half of that in pre-orders.
So my guess is the family doesn’t want it all out there, for whatever reason.
J+
October 21st, 2005 at 9:36 pm
I found this quote from Pursuit of Valis in wikiquotes, and rather liked it.
”
I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an investigation & presentation, analysis & response & personal history. My audience will always be limited to those people.”
October 21st, 2005 at 11:38 pm
Yeah, I thought of that whole Print-on-demand angle as well. And that’s a great summation of the possibilities, financially I think. I think more than likely it would be easy to find 2,000 who would pay $200 - and those figures could potentially be pushed as well. Maybe they have something in the works, who knows. Maybe they don’t recognize the value. Or, (C) somebody doesn’t want it out there.
I mean, shit, over the years, I’m guessing I’ve read maybe the total of approximately 10 pages of it, 15 max. And those dozen or so pages have been some of the most mind-blowing profound things I’ve ever read. I just imagine the kind of nuetron bomb like quality reading through 4,000 (or 8,000) pages would have on me and others. Makes a convincing argument that its being intentionally withheld. Sort of like the Vatican holding things in its secret archives or not allowing out translations of certain secret texts… maybe they fear the power of such a document upon some power structure.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:51 pm
Oh I thought of another plausible reason to withhold the full texts…. maybe it names names. Certain characters, especially in his later books after the 74 experience are based allegedly off of real people, real performers and whatnot - other VALIS contactees… maybe they dont want their names released because they can have greater impact in the culture without the scrutiny that might bring? Just a thought…
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:44 am
maybe this seems too obvious, or too non-PKD, but maybe those 10-15 pages you’ve read, Tim, are the best out of the 4-8k. I know that may not seem likely, but its always a possibility. Still, the conspiracy-like idea is the most interesting.
October 22nd, 2005 at 1:28 am
No, I don’t buy it. He’s too consistently brilliant of a writer to waste half of his life on an 8,000 page manuscript that isn’t worth reading.
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:48 am
I suspect that sheer logistics is at least part of the problem in putting the Exegesis out complete. For a start, has it actually been assembled into some order? I’m not familiar with the Exegesis really, so I don’t know what the current state of it is. If not, trying to establish an order to the material would have to be the first priority in preparing it for publication. Either that or you publish it as 8,000 loose leaves in a box a la that B.S. Johnson novel and let the reader decide…
Then there’s the production of the book itself, which I presume would involve the following steps.
Firstly, you’ve got to transcribe those 8,000 pages of typescript into a format that can be used to actually make the book. Either that or you do a photographic facsimile of the original pages, and drive the cost of the book into the prohibitive stratosphere.
Secondly, you’ve then got to proofread those 8,000 pages. If you’re going to do it at all, you don’t want mistakes in there.
Thirdly, if you’re going to do it as a scholarly critical edition (and let’s face it, this is not going to be a mass-market text; this is going to be a work for scholars), you’ve then got to produce some sort of scholarly apparatus to go with it. References, footnotes, all of that stuff. This would be a gigantic job in and of itself.
In short, you’re looking at a massive fuckload of work just to get the book ready. And then you’ve got to actually sell the thing. Jordan’s figure of a hundred thousand dollars, or 1000 sets of the book at $100 a pop, is fine and well, but you’ve got to actually get those 1000 Dick scholars and nuts to buy it. And you’ve got to subtract the number of man hours involved in preparing the book from that $100,000 to work out what the actual profit would be.
I would say, in short, that the Dick estate aren’t keeping the Exegesis under wraps for conspiratorial reasons; I reckon it’s more likely that they considered the figures and decided that, given the amount of work that would be involved, the returns just wouldn’t be worth the effort.
October 22nd, 2005 at 11:01 am
Yeah, but they’ve had more than twenty years to work with it, and have already published one edition with selections from it. I agree its a lot of work, but so is ANY book that you publish… (also, it should be noted that Jordan’s figures come from experience - he is a publisher). I’m not saying there *definitely is* a conspiracy behind it - but I’m saying its fun to consider.
October 22nd, 2005 at 11:26 am
transcription and proofreading: 22 people each doing a page a day would finish it in a year. think you couldn’t find 22 people who’d do that for free? hell, i’d pay to be a part of it just to have access to 1/22 of the material (even if i was only given, and had to hand back, one page each day).
where there’s a will…
i reckon you’d sell more than 1000, a scanner darkly tie-ins could be huge. or you spread a rumour that it has something to do with the da vinci code.
and it doesn’t have to be a book either. a cdrom would suffice. for a cheap and nasty version (if they really don’t think it’ll sell very well), how long would it take to put 8000 pages in .pdf?
of course, the exegesis may itself contain the reason why it is not yet released. considering the subject matter and the whole synchronity thing, those who have read it may know that it must be released when the timing is right. maybe something has to happen before they’ll release it, and it’s already sitting there ready to go for when the “signal” arrives.
or it could be as mundane as the trust trying to optimise their return from movie rights, which seems to be a prominent feature of the official website.
come to think of it, has anyone actually asked the trust, or lawrence sutin (editor of in pursuit of valis) what the deal is?
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Wouldn’t that ruin the mystery?
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:37 pm
There is some of the Exegesis excerpts published in “The Shifting Realities of PKD”, which is a compilation of PKD speech texts, papers, additional chapters to Man in the High Castle and TV/Movie script outlines. (And there are lots of good mind-blowing ones) - BUT, the explanation I remember reading is that most of the total Exegesis is so rambling and stream of consciousness note-like format that it is not too readable. I for one would pay the 100$ or whatever to read it all though no matter what format.
BTW - has anyone read the interview book “The Owl in Daylight” which is an interview with PKD done by a friend of the person Dick based the Valis Horselover Fat’s girlfriend character who has cancer, I forget the name in the book but the real persons’ name is Doris something. The interview is a really great look at PKD’s personal style, and is the last before he died in early 80′’s. Towards the end he outlines the plot to a work in progress, which is another PKD amazing concept as it is told in the interview format.
I like (in a certain way) the idea that PKD himself is not a real author but a conspiracy a la “Shakespeare didn’t write Skakespeare”. Anyone onto that “possibility”?
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:40 pm
ha thats cool. i love that shakespeare thing, along with the one where they say he wrote some of the KJV of the bible.
October 22nd, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Ya wouldn’t it be the ultimate twist to have people that gravitated toward the PKD writing as a way of bringing fears concerning conspiracy theories and questioning of received knowledge and the like out into the open, only to whack them with the idea it’s all a conspiracy too…
I don’t consider it too likely as a reality, but it’s a fun idea.
Back on the Exegesis topic, I especially liked the one about “light desending into darkness to keep the darkness from falling” I forget the whole exact wording and don’t feel like searching for it right now, but at the time I initially read it, it was a totally new way of looking at things. I think that’s what PKD’s writing did best.