Read 4,500 Unpublished Pages of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

MadameBovary

Why study a lan­guage like French? For the unpar­al­leled plea­sure, of course, of read­ing a beloved, respect­ed, and endur­ing nov­el like Madame Bovary in the orig­i­nal — or so lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined Fran­cophiles might argue. After all, they’d rhetor­i­cal­ly ask, can you real­ly say you’ve read the book if you haven’t actu­al­ly read the very same words Gus­tave Flaubert wrote? But now, lit­er­ar­i­ly inclined Fran­cophiles who also have an enthu­si­asm for the web (not an over­whelm­ing­ly large group, wags may point out) can insist that you haven’t real­ly read Madame Bovary unless you’ve read it all in the orig­i­nal: all 4,500 pages of it. Yes, the French do tend to write longer sen­tences than most, but that impres­sive length has less to do with a nation­al lit­er­ary style than with thor­ough­go­ing com­pletism, an impulse that brings togeth­er all of the 1856 nov­el­’s orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished pages as well as all of those cut, cen­sored, or revised, free to read online at bovary.fr.

“After a marathon effort of tran­scrip­tion by 130 vol­un­teers from all over the world, includ­ing a clean­ing lady, an oil prospec­tor and sev­er­al teenagers,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s John Lich­field, “all the vari­ants of Gus­tave Flaubert’s mas­ter­piece can be con­sult­ed on a new web­site. This is believed to be the first time that the com­plete process of cre­ation, and pub­li­ca­tion, of a clas­sic nov­el has been made avail­able on the inter­net,” much less on a site that “con­tains not only the pub­lished text and images of the bare­ly leg­i­ble man­u­scripts but inter­ac­tive con­trols which allow the read­er to re-instate pas­sages cor­rect­ed or cut by Flaubert or his pub­lish­ers.” Despite this unprece­dent­ed­ly vast and acces­si­ble trove of Madame Bovary resources, strug­gles over the prop­er inter­pre­ta­tion of the once-scan­dalous nov­el will doubt­less only con­tin­ue, not only at the lev­el of just which word Flaubert intend­ed to write on the fourth draft of a par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial para­graph, but at the lev­el of whether to con­sid­er the whole book tragedy, com­e­dy, or some­thing in between. Enter the Madame Bovary Archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

See F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts for The Great Gats­byThis Side of Par­adise & More

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

James Joyce Man­u­scripts Online, Free Cour­tesy of The Nation­al Library of Ire­land

Mary Shelley’s Hand­writ­ten Man­u­scripts of Franken­stein Now Online for the First Time

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)

In 1920, Dadaist extra­or­di­naire Tris­t­ian Tzara described in his man­i­festo how to write a poem, Dada-style. It involved cut­ting up the words from a text, dump­ing them into a bag and then pulling out the words ran­dom­ly. “And there you are,” he wrote. “An infi­nite­ly orig­i­nal author of charm­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, even though unap­pre­ci­at­ed by the vul­gar herd.” Who would have thought that Tzara’s avant-garde meth­ods would be adapt­ed into a suc­cess­ful line of refrig­er­a­tor mag­nets?

In 1959, William S. Bur­roughs had just pub­lished his noto­ri­ous non-lin­ear mas­ter­piece Naked Lunch (heard him read it here) when he came across the “cut-up” meth­ods of British artist Brion Gysin, which were influ­enced by Tzara. Soon the author start­ed using cut-up tech­niques explic­it­ly in his own work, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his The Nova Tril­o­gy. Unlike Tzara, who believed that cut-ups would reveal the utter absur­di­ty of the world, Bur­roughs argued that lan­guage was a means of con­trol that locked us into tra­di­tion­al ways of think­ing. The cut-up was one way of blunt­ing that con­trol with new, unex­pect­ed jux­ta­po­si­tions. Excit­ed by the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the cut-up, he exper­i­ment­ed with it in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent media.

The 1966 short The Cut-Ups is prob­a­bly Burrough’s best-known for­ay into exper­i­men­tal film, which he made with film­mak­er and renowned smut/horror dis­trib­u­tor Antony Balch. The film fea­tures ran­dom, repet­i­tive shots of Bur­roughs in New York, Lon­don and Tang­iers spliced togeth­er in pre­cise lengths but with lit­tle regard for the con­tent of the image. The audio is a cut-up con­ver­sa­tion with the words “Yes” and “Hel­lo,” get­ting looped over and over and over again.

The film is a trip­py, mes­mer­iz­ing expe­ri­ence. The mind strug­gles to make sense of the chaos. It feels like you’re watch­ing a dream that has some­how short-cir­cuit­ed. When the film first pre­miered, film audi­ences were report­ed­ly freaked out. Some declared that the movie made them feel ill while oth­ers demand­ed their mon­ey back. You can watch it for free above. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

And if you’re in the mood for some more avant-garde cin­e­mat­ic good­ness then you can check out Bur­roughs and Balch’s first col­lab­o­ra­tion Tow­ers Open Fire below. It’s NSFW. More avant-garde films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Con­tro­ver­sial 1959 Nov­el Naked Lunch

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison & Steven Pinker Cultivate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags

If you walk into Chipo­tle, order a drink, and look at the cup, you might see the fol­low­ing lit­er­ary text:

TWO-MINUTE SEDUCTION
by TONI MORRISON

I took my heart out and gave it to a writer made heart­less by fame, some­one who need­ed it to pump blood into veins des­ic­cat­ed by the suck and roar of crowds slob­ber­ing or poi­son­ing or lick­ing up the red froth they mis­take for hap­pi­ness because hap­pi­ness looks just like a heart paint­ed on a valen­tine cup or tat­tooed on an arm that has nev­er held a vic­tim or com­fort­ed a hurt friend. I took it out and the space it left in my chest was sutured tight like the skin of a drum.

As my own pulse failed, I fell along with a soft show­er of rain typ­i­cal in this place.

Lying there, col­lapsed under trees bor­der­ing the man­sion of the famous one I saw a but­ter­fly bro­ken by the slam of a sin­gle rain­drop on its wings fold and flut­ter as it hit a pool of water still fight­ing for the lift that is its nature. I closed my eyes expect­ing to dis­solve into stars or lava or a bru­tal sequoia when the famous writer appeared and leaned down over me. Lift­ing my head he put his lips on mine and breathed into my mouth one word and then anoth­er, and anoth­er words upon words then num­bers, then notes. I swal­lowed it all while my mind filled with lan­guage, mea­sure, music, knowl­edge.

These gifts from the famous writer were so seduc­tive, so all encom­pass­ing they seemed to make a heart irrel­e­vant.

Oth­er cups and brown paper bags fea­ture short thoughts by Mal­colm Glad­well, George Saun­ders, Steven Pinker, Michael Lewis, and Sheri Fink, among oth­ers. The ini­tia­tive, dubbed Cul­ti­vat­ing Thought, was actu­al­ly the brain­child of nov­el­ist Jonathan Safran Foer (Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed and Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close). Years ago, he met with Chipotle’s CEO and posed the ques­tion: why not give peo­ple a lit­tle food for thought on your cups and brown paper bags? Just last week, the Cul­ti­vat­ing Thought Author series was launched, with Safran Foer serv­ing as its “cura­tor.”

Jack Kerouac’s Poems Read by Patti Smith, John Cale & Other Icons (with Music by Joe Strummer)

Jack Ker­ouac was cool before it was cool.

Kerouac’s break­out nov­el, On the Road, influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of artists, writ­ers and musi­cians. His prose was vital and messy and new. He wrote frankly about sex, drugs and spir­i­tu­al yearn­ing. He was young and movie star good look­ing. And he was a friend with just about every oth­er lit­er­ary rock star of the era – William S. Bur­roughs, Allen Gins­berg, Gary Sny­der and Neal Cas­sady — many of whom end­ed up char­ac­ters in his books.

Though Ker­ouac was best known for his nov­els — Dhar­ma Bums hap­pens to be my per­son­al fave — he also wrote poet­ry. His poems read like dis­tilled ver­sions of his prose – freeform, flow­ing and musi­cal, laced with themes of death, drink­ing and Bud­dhism. He once wrote that he want­ed his poet­ry “to be con­sid­ered as a jazz poet blow­ing a long blues in an after­noon jazz ses­sion on Sun­day.”

So it isn’t sur­pris­ing per­haps that back in 1997 some very cool peo­ple like Hunter S. Thomp­son, John Cale, Joe Strum­mer and Michael Stipe got togeth­er to record the spo­ken word trib­ute album Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness (down­load on Ama­zon or iTunes), which sets his poems to music. Or hear it below on Spo­ti­fy.

Pat­ti Smith, the god­moth­er of punk, reads his poem “The Last Hotel” accom­pa­nied by music from Thurston Moore and Lenny Kaye. You can lis­ten in the video above and read along below.

The last hotel
I can see the black wall
I can see the sil­hou­ette on the win­dow
He’s talk­ing, at a rhythm
He’s talk­ing, at a rhythm
But, I don’t care
I’m not inter­est­ed in what he’s say­ing
I’m only inter­est­ed in the last hotel
I’m only inter­est­ed in the fact that it’s the last hotel
Deep, dis­cor­dant, dark, sweet
The last hotel
The last hotel
Ghosts in my bed
The goats I bled
The last hotel

Per­haps Kerouac’s best-known poem is “Bow­ery Blues,” which com­bines Bud­dhist notions of “sans­gara” (aka sam­sara), the karmic cycles of birth and death, with a very Beat-like dis­gust of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. You can imag­ine this being absolute­ly spell­bind­ing when read out loud in a smoky cof­fee shop. Lydia Lunch’s read­ing is above. The text below.

The sto­ry of man
Makes me sick
Inside, out­side,
I do not know why
Some­thing so con­di­tion­al
And all talk
Should hurt me so.

I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I do not know
Where to turn
In the Void
And When
To cut
Out

For no Church Told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the Cafe­te­ria
We hear
The Sax­o­phone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thir­ty Two,
Sound­ing like old times
And de bombed
Emp­ty decap­i­tat­ed
Mur­der by the clock.

And I see Shad­ows
Danc­ing into Doom
In love, hold­ing
TIght the love­ly ass­es
Of the lit­tle girls
In love with sex
Show­ing Them­selves
In white under­gar­ments
At ele­vat­ed win­dows
Hop­ing for the Worst.

I can not take it
Any­more
If I can not hold
My lit­tle behind
To me in my room

Then it’s good­bye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren’t as good
As They look
And Samad­hi
Is bet­ter
Than you think
When it starts in
Hit­ting your head
In with Buzz
Of Glit­ter­gold
Heav­en’s Angels
Wail­ing

Say­ing

We’ve been wait­ing for you
Since Morn­ing, Jack
Why were you so long
Dal­ly­ing in the sooty room?
This tran­scen­den­tal Bril­liance
Is the bet­ter part
(of Noth­ing­ness
I sing)

Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop

And final­ly, you can lis­ten to Ker­ouac read his own poem “Mac­Dou­gal Street Blues” set to some beats laid down by the late, great Joe Strum­mer.

Writ­ten in Jim Hud­son’s win­dow lookin’ out on Mac­Dou­gal Street
Sum­mer of 1954, when he left me his whole apart­ment
He went away with his girl some­place:

Parade among Images
Images Images Look­ing
Look­ing -
And every­body’s turn­ing around
& point­ing -
Nobody looks up
and In
Nor lis­tens to Samantab­hadra’s
Unceas­ing Com­pas­sion

No Sound Still
S s s s t t
Seethe
Of Sea Blue Moon
Holy X‑Jack

Mir­a­cle
Night -
Instead yank & yuck­er
For pits & pops

Look for crash­es
Pic­tures
Squares
Explo­sions
Birth
Death
Legs
I know, sweet hero,
Enlight­en­ment has Come
Rest in Still

In the Sun Think
Think Not
Think no more Lines -
Straw hat, hands a back
Classed
He exam in atein dis­tinct
Rome prints -
Trees prurp
and saw

The Chess­play­ers Wont End
Still they sit
Mil­lions of hats
In under­wa­ter foliage
Over mar­ble games
The Greeks of Chess

Plot the Pop
of Mate
King Queen

- I know their game,
their ele­phant with the pil­lar
With the pearl in it,
Their gory bish­ops
And Vital Pawns -
Their devout front­line
Sac­ri­fi­cial pawn shops
Their state­ly king
Who is so tall
Their Vir­gin Queens
Pree ing to Knave
The Night Knot
— Their Bha­gavad Gitas
of Igno­rance,
Krish­na’s advice,

Com­ma,
The game begins -

Jean-Louis
Go home, Man

- So tho I am wise
I have to wait like
Anyother­fool

Lets for­get the strollers
For­get the scene
Lets close our eyes
Let me instruct Thee
Here is dark Milk
Here is Sweet Mahameru
Who will Coo
To you Too

As he did to me
One night at three
When I w k e i t
P l e e
Knelt to See
Realit ee
And I said
‘Wilt thou pro­tect me
for ‘ver?’

And he in his throat­less
deep moth­er hole
Replied ’ H o m ’

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Classical Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

Image by Pete Welsch

What did Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? and A Scan­ner Dark­ly author Philip K. Dick, that vision­ary of our not-too-dis­tant dystopi­an future, lis­ten to while he craft­ed his descrip­tions of grim, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly (and some­times psy­che­del­i­cal­ly) har­row­ing times ahead? Mozart. Beethoven. Mahler. Wag­n­er.

Yes, while look­ing tex­tu­al­ly for­ward, he lis­tened back­ward, sound­track­ing the con­stant work­ings of his imag­i­na­tion with clas­si­cal music, as he had done since his teenage years. As Lejla Kucukalic writes in Philip K. Dick: Canon­i­cal Writer of the Dig­i­tal Age:

After grad­u­at­ing from high school in 1947, Dick moved out of his moth­er’s house and con­tin­ued work­ing as a clerk at a Berke­ley music store, Art Music. “Now,” wrote Dick, “my long­time love of music rose to the sur­face, and I began to study and grasp huge areas of the map of music; by four­teen I could rec­og­nize vir­tu­al­ly any sym­pho­ny or opera” (“Self-Por­trait” 13). Clas­si­cal music, from Beethoven to Wag­n­er, not only stayed Dick­’s life­long pas­sion, but also found its way into many of his works: Wag­n­er’s Goter­dammerung in A Maze of Death, Par­si­fal in Valis, and Mozart’s Mag­ic Flute in Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?

At his Forteana Blog, author Andrew May cred­its Dick with, giv­en his pop-cul­tur­al sta­tus, “a decid­ed­ly uncool knowl­edge of clas­si­cal music.” He cites not just Wag­n­er’s Der Ring des Nibelun­gen in the intro­duc­tion to A Maze of Death, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis in Ubik, or the part of The Game-Play­ers of Titan where “a teenaged kid forks out 125 dol­lars for a vin­tage record­ing of a Puc­ci­ni aria,” but an entire ear­ly sto­ry which func­tions as “(in my opin­ion) a pure exer­cise in clas­si­cal music crit­i­cism.” In 1953’s “The Pre­serv­ing Machine,” as May retells it, an eccen­tric sci­en­tist, “wor­ried that West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is on the point of col­lapse, invents a machine to pre­serve musi­cal works for future gen­er­a­tions” by encod­ing it “in the form of liv­ing crea­tures. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as soon as the crea­tures are released into the envi­ron­ment, they start to adapt to it by evolv­ing into dif­fer­ent forms, and the music becomes dis­tort­ed beyond recog­ni­tion.”

Though no doubt an astute spec­u­la­tor, Dick seems not to have fore­seen the fact that our era suf­fers not from too few means of music stor­age but, per­haps, too many. None of his visions pre­sent­ed him with, for exam­ple, the tech­nol­o­gy of the Spo­ti­fy playlist, an exam­ple of which you’ll find at the bot­tom of this post. In it, we’ve assem­bled for your enjoy­ment some of Dick­’s favorite pieces of clas­si­cal music. The songs come scout­ed out by Gal­l­ey­cat’s Jason Boog, who links to them indi­vid­u­al­ly in his own post on Dick, clas­si­cal music, and May’s writ­ing on the inter­sec­tion of those two cul­tur­al forces. Lis­ten through it while read­ing some of Dick­’s own work — don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free PKD — and you’ll under­stand that he cared about not just the anx­i­eties of human­i­ty’s future or the great works of its past, but what remains essen­tial through­out the entire human expe­ri­ence. These com­posers will still appear on our playlists (or what­ev­er tech­nol­o­gy we’ll use) a hun­dred years from now, and if we still read any sci-fi author a hun­dred years from now, we’ll sure­ly read this one.

The 11 hour playlist (stream below or on the web here) includes Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis and Fide­lio, Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute, Wag­n­er’s Par­si­fal, and Mahler’s Sym­pho­ny No. 2 (Res­ur­rec­tion). If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, grab the soft­ware here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

Philip K. Dick The­o­rizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Com­put­er-Pro­grammed Real­i­ty”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Literary Treasures From Great Romantic & Victorian Writers

Earliest known writings of Charlotte Brontë

We’ve long known the inter­net’s pow­er to facil­i­tate access to the great books (see, for instance, our col­lec­tion of 600 eBooks free online), but recent projects like the British Library’s Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture have shown us that it can also help us engage with those great books. The site, says a MetaFil­ter user who goes under Horace Rumpole, offers “a por­tal to dig­i­tized col­lec­tions and sup­port­ing mate­r­i­al. The first install­ment, Roman­tics and Vic­to­ri­ans, includes work from Austen, the Bron­tësDick­ens, and Blake, and forth­com­ing mod­ules will expand cov­er­age of the site to encom­pass every­thing from Beowulf to the present day.” For now, if you enjoy clas­sic Eng­lish Roman­tic and Vic­to­ri­an nov­els, pre­pare to take that enjoy­ment to a high­er lev­el by immers­ing your­self in all man­ner of ear­ly man­u­scripts, authors’ papers and per­son­al effects, and relat­ed pieces of con­tem­po­rary media.

wilde-oscar-acting-B20129-68

If you count your­self a Jane Austen fan, for instance, you can now scroll down her Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture author page and find “a host of texts” to do with her life, her work, and the inter­sec­tion between them, “includ­ing the opin­ions — most­ly pos­i­tive — her friends and fam­i­ly had of her nov­els, copied out by the author (though ‘her imme­di­ate fam­i­ly is shown to have dis­agreed over which of her books was bet­ter’).” That comes from The Guardian’s Ali­son Flood, writ­ing up the site’s col­lec­tion of not just Austen accou­trements but items from writ­ers like William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, and Mary Shel­ley, “as well as diaries, let­ters, news­pa­per clip­pings from the time and pho­tographs, in an attempt to bring the peri­od to life.”

dl-portriat-npg-jane-austen

Flood cites “a sur­vey of more than 500 Eng­lish teach­ers, which found that 82% believe sec­ondary school stu­dents ‘find it hard to iden­ti­fy’ with clas­sic authors” on their class­es’ syl­labi. In response, Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture appears to have giv­en spe­cial atten­tion to oft-assigned writ­ers like Charles Dick­ens, whose col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als on the site includes a lit­er­ary sketch pub­lished at age 23, col­or illus­tra­tions for both an 1885 and 1911 edi­tion of Oliv­er Twist (as well as the 1848 review that destroyed his rela­tion­ship with the book’s pre­vi­ous illus­tra­tor), and “The Ital­ian Boy,” an ear­ly work of jour­nal­ism on “a bru­tal crime that occurred in Lon­don in 1831, a ‘copy-cat’ mur­der fol­low­ing upon those of the infa­mous Burke and Hare in Edin­burgh.” The site’s archives also con­tain ana­lyt­i­cal essays on each writer’s body of work, like “Oliv­er Twist and the Work­house” and “Sta­tus, Rank, and Class in Jane Austen’s Nov­els” — ide­al for when these re-enthused stu­dents, pre­vi­ous­ly unable to con­nect to the Roman­tic and Vic­to­ri­an eras’ most respect­ed authors, reach grad school.

The image at the very top shows the ear­li­est known writ­ings of Char­lotte Bron­të.

dickens-charles-italian-K90108-51

Relat­ed Con­tent:

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Includ­ing Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books And Mozart’s Diary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Changing Mystical Experience

Image by Pete Welsch, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Philip K. Dick’s mind was invad­ed in 1974.

It hap­pened fol­low­ing surgery for an impact­ed wis­dom tooth. While recov­er­ing, the author of Ubik and The Man in the High Cas­tle, received a deliv­ery of pain med­ica­tion. The deliv­ery girl wore a Jesus fish around her neck, which in Dick’s per­cep­tion was emit­ting a pink beam. Soon after, Dick­’s brain was invad­ed by… some­thing. Dick nev­er quite fig­ured out what.

He lat­er described the expe­ri­ence to inter­view­er Charles Platt as “an inva­sion of my mind by a tran­scen­den­tal­ly ratio­nal mind. It was almost as if I had been insane all of my life and sud­den­ly I had become sane.”

The expe­ri­ence pro­found­ly affect­ed him and it made up the core of his book VALIS. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Liv­ing Intel­li­gence Sys­tem, which pret­ty much describes how Dick thought of this mind.

In 1979, Platt inter­viewed Dick in depth for his book Dream Mak­ers. You can lis­ten to an extend­ed clip of Dick recount­ing his tran­scen­den­tal expe­ri­ence below:

“On Thurs­days and Sat­ur­days I’d think it was God,” he told Platt. “On Tues­days and Wednes­days, I’d think it was extrater­res­tri­als. Some times I’d think it was the Sovi­et Union Acad­e­my of Sci­ences try­ing out their psy­chotron­ic microwave tele­path­ic trans­mis­sions.”

What­ev­er it was, this mind took con­trol of Dick when he was at a low ebb and, like a lov­ing par­ent or an excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed per­son­al assis­tant, cleaned up his life. “I was a spec­ta­tor,” said Dick. This mind, which Dick char­ac­ter­ized as female, fired his agent, tracked down edi­tors who were late send­ing checks and mod­i­fied his diet.

She also revealed that his young son had an undi­ag­nosed birth defect that was poten­tial­ly fatal. And the rev­e­la­tion proved to be true. The child’s life was saved.

That said, he did have a cou­ple minor com­plaints about the enti­ty: she kept call­ing his baf­fled wife “Ma’am” and she had a ten­den­cy to lapse into Koine Greek. Nobody, even a God-like vision, is per­fect. Above, we have a draw­ing by R. Crumb.

You can lis­ten to Platt’s full inter­view with Dick below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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