URTH |
From: Jeremy Crampton <jcrampto@osf1.gmu.edu> Subject: (urth) Re: Variant 5HC and also PKD Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 21:40:53 mantis et al., >Re: PK Dick. FWIW I don't recall ever seeing any mention of PKD in Wolfe >interviews. But on the personal reader's association front, I felt that >THERE ARE DOORS was quite like PKD, and the scene in URTH with little >Tzadkiel by the Brook Madregot reminded me very much of similar wassername >toward the end of PKD's DIVINE INVASION (was it? I'm pretty sure). I hadn't thought of There Are Doors. That's a good one. The Tzadkiel/Zina (for it was she) connection in Divine Invasion (you're right!) is another good one. Dick had in mind a kind of fairy/Athena Pallas/Mnemosyne (Gk. goddess of memory, cf. same (?) person in the _Soldier_ books, there epitomised as [daughter of] Gaea/sphinx) who plays to the boy Manny ("Emmanuel" ie the savior) who is damaged. She revives his memory of his true state in what PKD called "anamnesis" or unforgetting. Anamnesis is something others can go through as well. There are some weakish parallels to Tzadkiel/Severian and godhood here, perhaps. Zina is also the beside-helper PKD sometimes imagined, which some people cite as originating in the loss of his twin sister 1 month after birth. (Dick also sometimes identified this knowledgeable female companion with girlfriends, such as Joan S. in Sonoma.) An analogous character is Angel Archer in Transmigration of Timothy Archer. That's enough PKD (ed). Ps why does nobody ever discuss the Soldier books? I would rank them among his best work. best, __ Jeremy W. Crampton http://geog.gmu.edu jcrampto@gmu.edu Dept. of Geography & Earth Science [MS 1E2] ’Tis true; there’s magic in the web of it. George Mason University --Othello (III.iv.69) Fairfax, Va 22030 *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/