The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. First Edition, First Printing. Thick octavo, xxi, 944 pages, publisher's original color pictorial dust jacket with the original price unclipped. Publisher's original blind-stamped gold boards. Published posthumously and edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick gathers a substantial selection from the thousands of pages of journals, letters, notes, diagrams, and philosophical speculations that Philip K. Dick produced after the extraordinary visionary experiences he underwent in February and March 1974, an episode he later referred to as “2-3-74.” In these intensely personal and wide-ranging writings, Dick attempts to explain the nature of reality, consciousness, time, memory, identity, divine revelation, and human perception through an extraordinary mixture of Gnosticism, Christian theology, comparative religion, metaphysics, psychology, neuroscience, information theory, science fiction, and speculative philosophy. The volume also provides essential background to Dick’s later novels, particularly VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth, and The Divine Invasion, revealing how his spiritual experiences and evolving cosmology shaped his fiction. Fragmentary, repetitive, brilliant, and often deeply unsettling, The Exegesis offers an unparalleled look into the private intellectual world of one of the most influential American science-fiction writers of the twentieth century and remains an important work for readers interested in Philip K. Dick, visionary literature, religious experience, Gnosticism, consciousness studies, metaphysics, speculative fiction, and the philosophy of reality. Minor rubbing and wear, else in very good + condition. Item #475
Price: $100.00