Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin

Author:Lawrence Sutin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2009-02-24T05:16:00+00:00

Phil was aware of the side effects of speed. In notepad journals of the time, Phil speculated now and then as to whether a fear of the moment was the product of the pills. Once, late at night, he documented the struggle: "12:30. 1 am going to bed. I hate the bedroom-an empty bed-but I hate even worse sitting out here in the cold living room at night with the music muted [... J The happiness pills are turning out to be nightmare pills." A few paragraphs later, a fortunate upturn: "The happiness pills have been helping me-putting a warm glow of possession in my stomach."

Speed gives for a time-a good, glorious, roaring time-and it can take away forever. Phil understood the dialectic and didn't give a damn. He was playing, the grasshopper mocking the ants of the "real" world, and imagining a masterwork-A Scanner Darkly-without knowing it. In a November 1970 letter he gave a portrait of life in what had come to be nicknamed "Hermit House":

We all take speed and we are all going to die, but we will have a few more years and we will be happy. We don't want to live more than a few more years, and while we live we will live it as we are: stupid, blind, loving, talking, being together, kidding, propping one another up and ratifying the good things in one another. [... ]

[... J No group of people can be this happy. We knew we were ignoring some fundamental aspect of reality, such for example as money, or in my case sleep. Soon it will catch up with us. [... J That's all one can really hope for, I think, to be happy awhile and then remember it.

Phil's detachment from economic pressures was no mean feat. Since May he had been having trouble with house payments. The credit company was on his ass, and he borrowed often from the Hudners. But the emptiness left by Nancy's departure made holing up alone to produce a novel unthinkable. And so he turned his intense range of feeling on his housemates. Tom Schmidt recalls that moving in with Phil was like changing worlds:

There was something about him that made you feel involved. Phil had this softness. But depth. He was like a director. Almost like he'd bring certain people in to see how they'd react. And sit back and watch and create science fiction.

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