As far as I remember, Dick's writing was of mixed quality and it wasn't just linearly improving with experience. There were ups and downs. He wrote really a lot, often repeated concepts, and his weaker stuff was often a result of rushing and simply needing a quick buck.
He had a rough life, and it's not hard to see that impact in his work. I read many of his novels, back to back, in the Library of America collections, and by Ubik (my favorite of the bunch) I had the sense that he was barely holding together something moving downhill very quickly.
That energy suits his work in a lot of ways, though not universally, and can be monotonous sometimes.
I grew up in and around San Rafael where he did some of his most important writing and went through possibly the darkest chapters of his life. I always thought there should be a statue of him there...
Also I just felt I should weigh in because of my username.
Thats an excellent find, and an excellent idea! Id donate money to that gofundme. Also could have text from his scanner darkly afterword, gets me literally every time. Kindred...
I used to think this but having reread some of the novels recently I tend to disagree. The command of the material and plotting in the likes of ‘... electric sheep’ and ‘ubik’ is streets ahead of his early work and the coherence of the various ideas at play improves massively — the early novels feel like either distended short stories or fixups of multiple different plots. he’s not a fabulous prose stylists but neither is he as bad as his reputation suggests, he’s not a hack and there are some luminous passages in there if you’re looking out for them.
I think he also suffers from being a funny writer, funny writers from PG Wodhouse to Terry Pratchett are often underrated and for me that’s where Dick’s later work really falls down.
Post his breakdown his novels take a much darker edge (i found Valis in particular unbearably bleak), the humour is largely gone and more fundamentally the layered realities now have a single source of truth which in my opinion weakens them considerably compared to the open ended questioning of the mid period.
not a linear improvement perhaps but there’s growth and change in his output over time
Dick certainly refined his skill throughout his career. But at the same time, we can't deny that he wrote a lot of garbage in between his masterpieces.
For example, in the same 4-year time period as masterpieces like Martian Time-Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, we got forgettable (and in some cases quite terrible) books like The Ganymede Takeover, The Game-Players of Titan, The Penultimate Truth, The Simulacra, and of course the universally maligned The Crack in Space.
The sad truth is that Dick was fueling his writing habit with drugs (particularly amphetamines) during this time period. He wrote six novels in one 12-month period during 1963-1964. It's a marvel that even the clunkers are fairly readable things, though they're often throwbacks to his earlier pre-1960s work. Another sad truth is that Dick's output was also drive by the need for money (by 1964 he had three ex-wives).
The odd one out from this period is Galactic Pot-Healer, which Dick claimed to have no memory of having written (too many amphetamines), and which he practically disowned. But it's one of his best, a colourful Vonnegutian mix of tragedy and comedy.
yeah, he’s a product of a publishing system that at the time was voraciously hungry for content and the fact that he was good at churning it out. for what it’s worth i think that this kind of set up where quantity is prioritised over quality has lead to some of the most vital cultural flourishings of post ww2 years: electronic dance music in the late 80s early 90s, comic books in the 60 & 70s, video games in the 80s
While I partially agree, I'm not sure your assessment is helpful. There's a treasure trove hidden beyond the words, I'm not sure you're assessing the depth of his writings appropriately.
