A Scanner Darkly

"A Scanner Darkly" starts pretty humorous, then loses a lot of humor but starts getting schizophrenic and interesting, before seemingly losing itself a bit and ending rather abruptly and poorly. I actually think it should have been a bit longer. Still, I had a good enough time with it to go for 3/5 stars.

My favorite character was Charles Freck and he basically disappears from the book halfway through. His disappearance actually reminds me a lot of the character Timothy Price in "American Psycho" -- the funniest character vanishing and leaving a tangible void behind. Charles' drive through town, some of the first few pages, was probably my favorite part of the whole story -- and it's almost totally disconnected from the rest of the book.

Still, there's stuff to enjoy. Bob Arctor, the undercover cop, having to investigate himself is funny and written in an interesting way (where the line between "Bob" and "Fred" goes, etc.). I believe PKD wanted to speak a lot about 'Identity' and perceiving ourselves, perhaps even asking what is "ourself" while using substances? He clearly wanted to speak about how fragile our internal chemistry is, how 'You' can be changed into someone new, irreversibly, with enough drugs. A horror he's undoubtedly seen.

I hesitate to call it "the most interesting" part, but I did really like PKD's brief writing in the Author's Notes at the end. I thought his candid insight on drug usage would be considered by many to be... "mean", but I think there was a sincerity to it. I agree that the natural and intertwined punishment is too severe, but what can be done?

I enjoyed "A Scanner Darkly" enough, but I'm not sure I liked it enough to recommend it. PKD likely has better material to check out.

Nobody does it better.

"When a person went to the doctor--there was only one, and he specialized in everything--there was only one medicine. After he had diagnosed you he prescribed the medicine. You took the slip to the pharmacy to have it filled, but the pharmacist never could read what the doctor had written, so he gave you the only pill he had, which was aspirin. And it cured whatever you had."

I cant say its Dick's most mind blowing plot book, but more of a "reality" in some parallel universe. Liked the development of the character and see how they start changing into something the initially disliked.

A real brain scrambler.

I found A Scanner Darkly difficult to finish, but luckily, it's short. So when I woke up this morning, I grimaced and set out to read through. An ingenious premise is not enough to save any novel, and it doesn't save this one. Sorry, P.K.D. We can't be friends.