As always,
there are spoilers ahead, so read on at your own risk. For some books, knowing the plot takes away
very little from the reading because the power of the novel is derived more
from its prose and characterization. In
others, the voyage of discovery is the greatest part of the reading experience,
so the plot and content should be guarded more jealously. Philip K. Dick’s Ubik is one of these
latter kinds of novels. It is a science fiction adventure story and an
exploration of the boundaries of reality in which the reader’s uncertainty and
constant attempt to make a determination about what is “really” happening is
crucial his or her experience.
And Ubik’s
plot is indeed first rate. I had a
wonderful time trying to piece together the clues handed to me, postulating my
own theories, and adjusting them as new “facts” came to light. And as things came together at the
conclusion, I was left tremendously satisfied with the journey I had been on
and the open ending that left the difference between reality and the dreamworld muddled
and unsure. I especially love how
everything that seems on the surface to hold itself together comes apart like
Wendy Wright’s tattered clothes down the hallway of the story. Whether or not Runciter is in half-life is
obviously up for debate, but it seems to me like he has to be since it is his
mind that is familiar with Des Moines in 1939; it must be from his mind that
Jory is drawing the details for the world he builds. So if Runciter and the entire group of 11
were nearly killed in the explosion, then who put them all in half-life? In fact, as we go back through the story, it
is hard to pinpoint how much of the tale is already in the half-life dream
world, since Tippy Jackson and Francy have their dream about Bill and Matt, whom
we know are part of Jory’s fractured mind, before
they are even contracted for the Luna mission.
So is there ever any mission to the Luna settlement at all? I love that Hollis is always discussed but
never seen—is he real? Is he some fictitious
character created in the dreamworld to explain why these people are all yoked
together in the half-life? Because when
you think about it, the powers of pre-cogs, telepaths, reanimators, and all the
inertials are never anything more than flavoring. Runciter talks to a telepath about Miss Wirt’s
motives, but that is the only time we see the power in use, and even then it’s just
a voice in Runciter’s mind. None of the
eleven “talents” use their ability, and none of their powers are relevant to
the story that’s actually told except as a means to get them all together in
one place for an explosion that may or may not have happened. The official story of the explosion, we are
told, is that “the bunch of us took off for Luna and got blown up in an
accidental explosion; we were put into cold-pac by solicitous Stanton Mick, but
no contact could be established—they didn’t get to us soon enough.” This story makes more sense than a team full
of “talents” who don’t use their talents.
When I first finished the novel and was thinking about it, I thought it
was a flaw in Dick’s design that the world of psychic abilities was actually
just a big red herring, that none of their powers were at all critical to the
plot, that even Pat Conley’s time travel had nothing to do with events in the
dreamworld. But now I see that as part
of his point, part of what we are meant to call into question. So now we must wonder if the entire novel is
a story constructed by the united half-life psyches of Jory, Joe, Glen, Ella,
and the other people stuck in cold-pac.
Are they just regular people creating this idea of psychic powers to explain the misshaped world that they have found themselves in? And in the end, there is nothing
that we can point to as “real” with any kind of certainty. That’s pretty cool.
The novel
that this seems most closely related to is Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, which
was published in 1966, the same year Dick began working on Ubik. Just like in Ubik, there is no clear
understanding of what is real and what is paranoid delusion in The Crying of
Lot 49. Pynchon’s novel is a
meditation on paranoia and the modern condition while Dick’s is a meditation on
reality and the human mind’s relationship with it. And as Pynchon delights in the absurd, so
does Dick. The greatest examples of the
absurd in Ubik are the ludicrous clothing that people wear (Herbert Schoenheit von
Vogelsang meets the returning shuttle in “a Continental outfit: tweed toga,
loafers, crimson sash and a purple airplane-propeller beanie”); the crazy
coin-operated world that demands you travel with your pockets laden with
change; and the headnotes before each chapter in which Ubik is marketed as a
machine, a breakfast cereal, a deodorant, a bank, and anything that can be used
to make your life better, in a Life-Magazine-Ad kind of way. I feel like Dick is saying something larger
about consumer culture and capitalism in these moments, but I can’t tease out
the exact nature of the criticism or his position.
The kibbutz that Pat comes from in Topeka seems to be a communist
contrast to the capitalistic coin-operated, debt-laden world of Joe Chip, and
since Pat the commie is an undercover spy, there are overtones of the cold war
in Ubik. Hollis and Runciter
are like the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. competing with each other and dependent on
each other to define their power and purpose. But what is the significance or meaning of that?
In the end,
I don’t feel like these themes add up to something substantive. They seem more like a lark than any kind of
sustained comment or criticism. It’s
funny and fitting that Walt Disney’s head would wind up on a coin, but I don’t
think Dick has any interest is going farther than that. Whereas Pynchon feels to me like he is
drawing ties to all kinds of cultural and social trends, Dick lacks the
profundity, and simultaneously, for me, the sense of play that fuels
Pynchon. And that lack is what makes
Dick more of an amusing surface read for me rather than something I want to
keep probing as I do with Pynchon. There
is a lot to think about with Ubik, but it feels more like a collection
of astute observations and funny insights than a call to probe deeply into anything,
like a stand-up comic that makes us laugh and nod our heads but after which we
are invited to finish our drinks and seek out more entertainment.
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