Thoughts:

I liked the story and characters. My time in the 'drug scene' allowed me to laugh at some of the accurate ridiculousness of the characters. Spending hours talking about a carburetor, check. Hours more considering the deepest darkest corners of a baseless philosophy, double check. Worried that you are going to run out of drugs, because you only have a week's worth left. Infinite check.

Overall it was much better than the previous Philip K. Dick books I've read (and didn't like). This was the same characters and basis for Valis, which was interesting, revealing, but anti-climactic.

I still say PKD was an agent, promoting societal eroding ideas for the intelligence community. Robert talks about how his life with a wife and a pair of daughters was boring, how he didn't want to live like that. So he ended up burning out his brain on drugs. Rings all too familiar of the current state of affairs.

The mentions of Timothy Leary and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are icing on the cake. A known, admitted, agent in the case of Tim. Pierre might be even more subversive with his Piltdown Man hoax that misled for decades and his inspiring of the new age movement, not to mention Omega Point leading to Timewave Zero, 2012, and culminating (for now) in Kurzweil's singularity.

"Turn on, tune out, and good-by," Barris said, and hung up.

Barris's sign-off was a direct quote of Tim Leary's original funky ultimatum

An allusion to president picking, intelligence community, covert ops:

And if any other officer monitoring Barris's actions sees what I probably will see, they'll conclude Arctor is the biggest drug runner in the western U.S. and recommend a-- Christ!--covert snuff. By our unidentified forces. The ones in black we borrow from back East that tiptoe a lot and carry the scope-site Winchester 803's. The new infrared sniperscope sights synched with the EE-trophic shells. Those guys who don't get paid at all, even from a Dr. Pepper machine; they just get to draw straws to see which of them gets to be the next U.S. President. My God, he thought, those fuckers can shoot down a passing plane. And make it look like one engine inhaled a flock of birds. Those EE- trophic shells-- why fuck me, man, he thought; they'd leave traces of feathers in the ruins of the engines; they'd prime them for that.

Exceptional Excerpts:

Notes:

Table of Contents

01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

• // Pages numbers from the pdf.

01

02

03

04

page 52:

• But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that.

• Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected.

05

06

07

08

page 106:

• Luckman opened the book he was carrying. He puffed up, then, to much larger than usual; his great chest swelled, and so did his biceps. "Barris, I'm going to read to you." He began to read from the book, in a particularly fluent way. "'He to whom it is given to see Christ more real than any other reality...'"

• "What?" Barris said.

• Luckman continued reading. "'. . . than any other reality in the World, Christ everywhere present and everywhere growing more great, Christ the final determination and plasmatic Principle of the Universe--'"

• "What is that?" Arctor said.

• "Chardin. Teilhard de Chardin."

09

10

page 134:

• "Psilocybe mexicana."

• "What's that?"

• "A rare hallucinogenic mushroom used in South American mystery cults thousands of years ago. You fly, you become invisible, understand the speech of animals--"

page 138:

• "Turn on, tune out, and good-by," Barris said, and hung up.

• Barris's sign-off was a direct quote of Tim Leary's original funky ultimatum to the establishment and all the straights. And this was Orange County. Full of Birchers and Minutemen. With guns. Looking for just this kind of uppity sass from bearded dopers.

page 140:

• And if any other officer monitoring Barris's actions sees what I probably will see, they'll conclude Arctor is the biggest drug runner in the western U.S. and recommend a-- Christ!--covert snuff. By our unidentified forces. The ones in black we borrow from back East that tiptoe a lot and carry the scope-site Winchester 803's. The new infrared sniperscope sights synched with the EE-trophic shells. Those guys who don't get paid at all, even from a Dr. Pepper machine; they just get to draw straws to see which of them gets to be the next U.S. President. My God, he thought, those fuckers can shoot down a passing plane. And make it look like one engine inhaled a flock of birds. Those EE- trophic shells-- why fuck me, man, he thought; they'd leave traces of feathers in the ruins of the engines; they'd prime them for that.

11

12

13

14

15

• // New-Path has secret intentions.

page 226:

• To build, he thought, their civilization within the chaos. If "civilization" it really He did not know. He had not been at New-Path long enough; their goals, the Executive Director had informed him once, would be revealed to him only after he had been a staff member another two years.

• Those goals, the Executive Director had said, had nothing to do with drug rehabilitation.

16

17