April's Discussion: Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick

[littlemissattitude]

Yes, Zorka, I caught all that - the undercurrents of waking up, of wondering what reality really is (this is done very interestingly via the discussions of historicity), and also of realizing that evil is very real and existent in the world.

You say that:

For me this book is a struggle for what is real. Even some of the people are not who they say they are - Frink is Fink, Baynes is Wegener, Yatabe is Tedeki, Cinnadello may or may not be a war hero, the Colt .44's are not what they appear to be, etc.

I don't think that is necessarily contradictory to the theme that I saw and talked about in my other post. Perhaps it is only a specific way of asking the same questions you talk about in a more general, philosophical way. Do we really (here in the States, at least) really have the form of government that we assume we have: is our reputed democracy (or republic, depending on one's political point of view), with its guaranteed freedoms, really what it is held out to be? Or have we been duped into believing that we are free do and say and believe what we wish, and are only really free so long as we don't make a point of our beliefs? Did, maybe, the fascists win even though they lost? Those could be questions that Dick might reasonably be asking at the time when he wrote the book. Certainly, I was not implying that those were the only questions he was asking, or the only theme he was pursuing. I don't even necessarily hold that he was asking these specific questions in a conscious way. I do think that, because of the story he told and the way in which he told it (the choices he - or the I Ching - made), that this theme is one specific way of seeing the general themes he approached in the story. Different people, depending on their interests and outlooks, will see different specifics within the general ideas that Dick explores. I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm not one of those who believes that there is only one "correct" way of seeing or interpreting fiction.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Oh, when I said Dick could have been more focussed, I was speaking more from a perspective that, in a genre where plot is often more important than prose or even ideas, Dick may often have been overestimating what the generic audience was ready for.

I have to agree with Brian that Dick was an SFnal postmodernist, consciously or not. Zorka and littlemiss seem to have explored many of the themes I was thinking about, so I'll leave my remarks at this, until something else strikes me.

[dwndrgn]

I don't know if this is a result of being personally offended or just what I feel or whatever but I didn't like his portrayal of how Americans seemed to have accepted their lot in life. The worst example of this is Childan, the shop owner who tries so hard to be a part of the Japanese society that he has to remind himself that he really isn't.

I also didn't like the fact that Frink's life was run by everyone else, his job, his friend, random luck...he seems to be completely adrift and blowing in the wind.

His wife was just odd. I couldn't understand her at all. She couldn't decide if she hated society as it was or just didn't care enough to hate it.

Cinnadelo didn't fit either of his personas, whichever was real.

Baynes also was very conflicting - one minute he's hesitant, the next he's decisive.

It felt to me like the book was written over a long period of time and Dick lost the sense of the characters and instead of re-reading what he wrote, just continued on.

Overall it was disconnected, choppy, hard to follow and just plain odd. I don't think I could discuss layers and theories because I really had a hard time just getting through it and if I were to try and analize that it would come out all garbled. I leave all of that to you guys

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Originally Posted by dwndrgn

I don't know if this is a result of being personally offended or just what I feel or whatever but I didn't like his portrayal of how Americans seemed to have accepted their lot in life. The worst example of this is Childan, the shop owner who tries so hard to be a part of the Japanese society that he has to remind himself that he really isn't.

Nevertheless, that was a good representation of the colonial experience. I think the fact that Dick has showed us a reversal of the real-world Europeans-ruling-Asians scenarios is very interesting. I must confess I also enjoyed the notion in rather petty way.

You'd be surprised how much a subject people pick up on the ways of their masters. The British quit India a good half century back but their influence can still be seen in so many ways - in school uniforms, in our bureacracy, even in the fact that English is the only language I am really comfortable with. Or the fact that I use UK English spellings.

In some ways, I am like Childan, and so are many other Indians.

I realise that none of the characters fit into typical protagonist modes, but I don't think that makes them poorly depicted. I know people like Frink in real life, for instance. Life does work that way.

Still, I realise it's not a book to everyone's preference and I do respect that fact.

[dwndrgn]

Originally Posted by knivesout

Nevertheless, that was a good representation of the colonial experience. I think the fact that Dick has showed us a reversal of the real-world Europeans-ruling-Asians scenarios is very interesting. I must confess I also enjoyed the notion in rather petty way.

Completely understandable.

Originally Posted by knivesout

You'd be surprised how much a subject people pick up on the ways of their masters. The British quit India a good half century back but their influence can still be seen in so many ways - in school uniforms, in our bureacracy, even in the fact that English is the only language I am really comfortable with. Or the fact that I use UK English spellings.

That part I understand, I mean I can be speaking with someone who has a strong southern accent and I'll subconciously pick that up and speak that way as well. This can be very aggravating because often people feel that you are making fun of them when you don't even realize you are doing it. Perhaps that is some sort of vestigial survival thing. Who knows.

Maybe I just didn't like the way Childan worked so hard to think like the Japanese, not necessarily his picking up of their habits. Probably just me not liking being the loser, which is probably one of the ways Dick was trying to show us the other side. So basically he did what he wanted, and it ticked me off and then I just couldn't get into the thing. I suppose that just shows I'm one of those arrogant Americans .

Hopefully I'll like May's book better.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Originally Posted by dwndrgn

I suppose that just shows I'm one of those arrogant Americans .

There, there. I know you are made of sterner stuff.

Originally Posted by dwndrgn

Hopefully I'll like May's book better.

Yep. Although these discussions are actually more interesting when we all don't agree. Well, I don't have any fresh points right now - but perhaps the notion of historicity is something we could discuss further?

Does anyone one know if this is Dick's own concept or if it in fact an accepted notion?

I like the idea because I tie it in with value, as related to material objects. I think nothing of paying upto 3 times the cover price of an old comic that I want for my collection, but I crib at the prices of brand new comics,for instance. The difference of value is all in my perception. This makes me wonder how much else of our perception is governed by similarly abstract and subjective attitudes.

We don't just observe the world around us - we consciously participate in re-creating it every second by imposing our own prejudices and pre-occupations on it.

This suggests that we could alter our experience of reality by changing how we percive things. Before it sounds like I'm coming over all Aleister Crowley, let me point out that this works in perfectly everyday ways - for instance, when I'm stuck at a really boring movie, a conscious decision to just park my brain and take it on its own level can transform a dreary experience into an enjoyable way.

I really do believe this, and it's a topic that Dick often explores in his works.

[erickad71]

Just thought I'd put my two cents in . I found it very hard to connect with any of the characters. The way they spoke and thought to themselves didn't flow very easily through my head. I also found it hard to believe that America would surrender, I don't feel he explained that well enough for me. Or, like dwndrgn, that could be the Arrogant American in me .

[littlemissattitude]

The historicity things fascinates me. Has anyone here ever watched "Antiques Roadshow"? For those who haven't seen it in either its British or American versions, it offers people the opportunity to have their old possessions appraised by antiques experts. Often, if some object is associated with an historical event or person, it is appraised at a much higher value just because of that associaton. It's the same theory as in Dick's book, in the discussion about the two lighters - one of which was said to have belonged to Franklin Roosevelt and the other of which, the less valuable one, the one that did not have "historicity", was just any old lighter.

Because I am interested in history, it seems to me that there is some attraction to an object that can be authoritatively shown to have belonged to some historical personage or to have been present at some famous historical event. Even a person can have historicity, in some sense. As an example, I once had the opportunity to meet Edwin Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. He was the grand marshal in a parade I attended and was available afterwards to "meet and greet". Well, I waited my turn in the crowd around him and was one or two people away from meeting him when I just turned and walked away. I was too intimidated to shake his hand. He had been to the moon, for goodness sake, and that was just too overwhelming for me. I really wanted to meet him, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Stupid, huh? It was all a matter of the fact that he had been there, to the moon, another actual world.

In the same way, I can remember when I was three years old (I think I've told this story here before), in 1959 (yeah, I'm old), and my dad took me down to the railroad tracks to watch Nikita Khrushchev's train go by as he traveled from Los Angeles to San Francisco during his famous visit to the United States. Didn't matter that Khrushchev was inside the train and not visible to the gathered crowd. (Lots of people showed up to see the train go by.) It was an Historic Moment, and people wanted to be there to witness this small bit of it.

People can get caught up it this idea of things that have some connection to history have absorbed some sort of vibration of that history. It's almost a sort of animism, in a way, I think, as if spirit has entered the object in question. I think this must be especially true of items connected in some way to a war. To bring the discussion back to "Antiques Roadshow", it is amazing the number of objects related to the Civil War that people bring in for appraisal. For some reason, this is especially true of items connected to the losing side in a war. Confederate items seem to be much more common than items associated with the Union side of the American Civil War. The same with the market for Nazi relics from the Second World War, which I understand has been a huge market. I think this is what Dick was probably tapping into in his book.

I don't know if I'm even trying to make a point here, but more just exploring some of the things I thought about as I was reading "Man in the High Castle" and came upon the passages that revolved around historicity.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I'm a little surprised at how people believe Americans wouldn't eventually surrender if faced with a strong enough foe, or if internally weakened sufficiently. Of course they would. That's how conquest works. Who knew Rome would fall to the barbarians! And they were a proud and free people as any.

Having said that, I really do not believe that either Germany or Japan had the resources to invade USA in the 40s. A far more plausible scenario would have seen the axis forces consolidating their new dominions in Europe and Asia for another 5 years, perhaps keeping up some sort of border warfare in the meantime and building up for the big push into the USA by say, the mid-50s.

Dick obviously did not write this book as a point-for-point counterfactual history.

[erickad71]

I'm not saying that saying that America wouldn't "eventually" surrender. It just seems to me that it would take quite a bit for that to happen. I felt like that needed a bit more of an explanation. I thought the American characters were a bit too placid, to accepting of their fate. But maybe that was just how those characters were. I don't know, like I said I had a lot of trouble connecting with any of them. It wasn't a very satisfying book in my opinion.

[I, Brian]

The Nazis would have been unable to conquer the USA in the WWII time frame - they couldn't even pull together against all the diffiiculties of successfully invading across the English Channel, let alone the vast Atlantic Ocean.

However, if Hitler had consolidated power in Europe instead of turning east against Stalin, you might have found the USA having to ally to either the ideology of the Nazis or Communists.

And remember, the events of the holocaust was only revealed after the allies swept into Poland and Germany. Before then, it was merely periodic journalist reports that could easily have been seen as propagandist, rather than a real reflection of events, IMO.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

The Nazis would have been unable to conquer the USA in the WWII time frame - they couldn't even pull together against all the diffiiculties of successfully invading across the English Channel, let alone the vast Atlantic Ocean.

However, if Hitler had consolidated power in Europe instead of turning east against Stalin, you might have found the USA having to ally to either the ideology of the Nazis or Communists.

That was pretty much how I figured it would happen, if at all. That would be a far more plausible scenario than the one in this novel, which seems to posit a US defeat within the WW2 time-frame.

Are there any other good alt-histories about an axis victory? The only one I've read is Harris' Fatherland. Might be something worth looking into.

[littlemissattitude]

However, if Hitler had consolidated power in Europe instead of turning east against Stalin, you might have found the USA having to ally to either the ideology of the Nazis or Communists.

That is an interesting observation, and would make an interesting situation in an alternate history story. Because it could have gone either way - although I imagine that considering the power of big business in the U.S., alignment would have probably ultimately been with the Nazis simply because the powers that be in the business world would have gotten to keep more of their wealth and power under Nazism than they would have been able to under Communism. And the truth is that there were some big-time sympathizers with Hitler in the States as it was. Henry Ford, for example, was extremely anti-Semitic and quite the Hitler admirer. So was Charles Lindbergh. There were a number of large corporations that kept ties with Nazi Germany, even after the United States entered the war.

And, as far as surrender...probably there would have been parts of the country that would have fallen more easily than others. I think the East Coast would have gone down more quickly than the western third of the country. One reason for this is the more highly concentrated population in the East. They would have been easier to corral and control than the more scattered population out west. I do agree, however, with the assessment that neither Germany nor Japan could have pulled off a conquest of the U.S. at the time the war was fought. I think this is due to the sheer size of the United States. It would have taken a lot of troops to establish and keep control, a lot more than both countries combined had.

[zorka]

Couple of comments (Playing catch up here):
On the colonial experience, Knivesout speaks of the experience of India and the British. And dwndrgn's comment about the wimpish aspect of the Americans. I guess what bothered me was how benevolent and polite the Japanese conquerors seemed. The Japan I read about in the history of WWII was that of a harsh cruel group - at least the military who would essentially be controlling this country if they had won the war. What is Dick saying by creating such differences?

The other aspect of the Japanese depictions by some of Dick's characters is almost hateful: Childan (who also seems to me an anomaly) talks about the Kasouras eating from Bone China using U.S. Silver while listening to American Jazz. Even the I Ching, he says, is Chinese and the Japanese seem very interested in a sort of cheap American goods. All very denigrating. Is this perhaps Childan's opinion or is Dick saying something else.

LittleMiss, I too am fascinated by the historicity. The whole Zippo scene about which is the one used by FDR was a bit of an eye opener for me. What really makes an object valuable. If you are a collector and you have an item that no one else has is one thing. But if there are others which are similar but only one has a sense of history about it that we find important it seems to make it more valuable, yet it really might not be any different than a similar object in its actual sense. It kind of makes you wonder if these objects we sometimes honor are really all that important?

[littlemissattitude]

On the colonial experience, Knivesout speaks of the experience of India and the British. And dwndrgn's comment about the wimpish aspect of the Americans. I guess what bothered me was how benevolent and polite the Japanese conquerors seemed. The Japan I read about in the history of WWII was that of a harsh cruel group - at least the military who would essentially be controlling this country if they had won the war. What is Dick saying by creating such differences?

I too, found it interesting that the Japanese were portrayed as being sort of very benign conquerors. I can see how Dick might have arrived at that portrayal despite the known history of the behavior of the Japanese army in the places where they were occupiers. From my understanding of the Japanese (garnered mostly from a class I took on the social history of Japan), they are a very polite people, won't say no even when they are saying no. So I can see how the surface perception of such an occupation after the war was over might be that they were benevolent rulers. That might not have necessarily been the reality of the case, but Dick doesn't show us that. Why doesn't he? I have no idea.

The other aspect of the Japanese depictions by some of Dick's characters is almost hateful: Childan (who also seems to me an anomaly) talks about the Kasouras eating from Bone China using U.S. Silver while listening to American Jazz. Even the I Ching, he says, is Chinese and the Japanese seem very interested in a sort of cheap American goods. All very denigrating. Is this perhaps Childan's opinion or is Dick saying something else.

Something else I picked up from my class on Japan, which was taught by an American who has lived in Japan off and on for years, is that - as it was explained to us in class - the Japanese are very much known, socially, technologically, even in matters of religion, for taking things from cultures foreign to them and making them uniquely their own - taking what suits them, or what suits them once they have remade it, and rejecting what does not suit them. This has happened in very interesting ways, by the way, in relation to Christianity. A number of New Religions in Japan have taken very much from Christianity, but looking at the result, it is hard to believe that Christianity was a major influence in their development in a lot of cases. Anyway, Japanese culture is very syncretistic in a lot of ways, and always has been. This may explain some of this aspect of Dick's portrayal of the Japanese.

Now, my understanding of the Japanese people and their culture may be flawed, and I am open to correction of my perceptions. I'm just going by what I have read and on the information that was presented to me in class by someone I assume was a reliable source.

LittleMiss, I too am fascinated by the historicity. The whole Zippo scene about which is the one used by FDR was a bit of an eye opener for me. What really makes an object valuable. If you are a collector and you have an item that no one else has is one thing. But if there are others which are similar but only one has a sense of history about it that we find important it seems to make it more valuable, yet it really might not be any different than a similar object in its actual sense. It kind of makes you wonder if these objects we sometimes honor are really all that important?

You're right. It is interesting. The stereotypical American manifestation of this is the "George Washington slept here" syndrome. You know, the first reaction of many people is, "Well, who the heck cares?" But I have to say that I fall victim to this mindset to a certain extent, both in an historical sense as well as in other ways. A couple of examples not from history, but from music. First: I was once at an Elton John concert back in the mid-1970s. I found out later that John Lennon was at the same concert. I didn't see him, didn't know he was there at the time, but I have always been a huge John Lennon fan and I treasure the idea that we were once at the same concert. Silly, but there it is. Another example: I occasionally do props for a ballet company, and the theatre we usually perform in is sometimes used for concerts. Every time I work in that theatre, at some point during rehearsals I find the time to go and sit down on the stage and commune with the fact that one of my favorite singers, Gordon Lightfoot, has performed on that very stage twice. I wasn't there for either performance, but it means something to me that I am working on the same stage he did. Again, pretty silly, but still an influence on me.

Maybe it is that, whether we are willing to admit it or not, humans have a tendency to feel that events leave some kind of residual vibration in the objects that were present and in the places where they occurred, and that is what we are responding to when we assign historicity to an object or a place. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it is the simplest explanation I can find.