Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick

by Lawrence Sutin

  This bitter "symbiosis" with the female must continue throughout his life, drawing Phil at times to the verge of suicide. Again from a 1975 Exegesis entry:

  [I]t is Jane-in-me-now, the anima or female principle, which is the lachrymose side, which is ailing and now seeks hospitalization [.... ] It is Jane trying to die. Or rather, it is a rerun of Jane who actually died, the steps repeated by my anima again and again, that fatal trip due to negligence. It is Jane-in-me who is afraid now and depressed. But if Jane-in-me dies, she will carry me (the male twin) with her, so I must not succumb. [...] Jane must live on a vestigial existence in me on this side, but be beyond on the other side. [...]

  The obsession, found in twins, with dualities-as complementary and conflicting at once-has been termed twinning by Dr. George Engel ("The drive is always to be two, yet unique from all others"). This "twinning" motif found expression in a number of Phil's stories and novels, notably Dr. Bloodmoney (1965), Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), A Scanner Darkly (1977), Valis (1981), and The Divine Invasion (1981).

  In Dr. Bloodmoney there is a fictionalized depiction of Jane's ongoing "vestigial experience" as Phil felt it inside him. The novel is set in the post-nuclear holocaust world of 1981. The story focuses on the survival efforts of a small population living in rural Marin County. The effects of radioactive mutation are omnipresent, and that is how Edie Keller's condition is explained for purposes of the plot.

  Seven-year-old Edie actually carries within her (in her left side, near the appendix) a twin brother named Bill. "Someday the girl would die and they would open her body, perform an autopsy; they would find a little wrinkled male figure, perhaps with a snowy white beard and blind eyes ... her brother, still no larger than a baby rabbit." Bill talks to Edie through an inner voice that only she can hear. But Bill wants to be able to see, to move about; the summaries of reality provided him by Edie will no longer do:

  "I wish I could come out," Bill said plaintively. "I wish I could be born like everybody else. Can't I be born later on?"

  "Doctor Stockstill said you couldn't."

  "Then can't he make it so I could be? I thought you said-"

  "I was wrong," Edie said. "I thought he could cut a little round hole and that would do it, but he said no."

  Her brother, deep within her, was silent, then.

  Edie and Bill are triumphs of Phil's art of characterization. They are believably wayward, willful children whose love and fierce loyalty for each other are mingled with casual cruelty. Bill possesses the ability to project his soul into any living creature held near him; Edie tricks him, at one point, by making blind Bill project into a blind worm. In one scene, brother and sister discuss, in a perfectly rendered childlike tone, the karmic cycle of existence. Bill possesses the strange power to talk with the dead-he can imitate their voices perfectly. Edie grows curious:

  "Do me," Edie said. "Imitate me."

  "How can l?" Bill said. "You're not dead yet."

  Edie said, "What's it like to be dead? I'm going to be someday so I want to know. "

  "It's funny. You're down in a hole looking up. And you're all flat likewell, like you're empty. And, you know what? Then after a while you come back. You blow away and where you get blown away to is back again! Did you know that? I mean, back where you are right now. All fat and alive."

  The fictional twins in Dr. Bloodmoney vividly embody the bonds and conflicts that Phil felt by virtue of his ongoing psychic contacts with Jane. The struggle with his twin lay at the root of his fiction and of his determination to probe the nature of reality. In the Exegesis, near the end of his life, Phil wrote:

  She (Jane) fights for my life & I for hers, eternally

  My sister is everything to me. I am damned always to be separated from her/& with her, in an oscillation. Very fast. Both: I have her in me, and often outside me, but I have lost her; 2 realities at once yin/yang.

  Two realities, out of which, as from rich loam, the multiverses of the stories, the novels, and the Exegesis blossomed. But always the loss of Jane hovered in Phil's soul. That loss is at the heart of the difficultiesthe toppling, twisting universes, death-dealing wives, desperate lovesthat his fictional characters must always overcome.

  And toward the end of his life, Phil's yearning for his twin-melded with the events of 2-3-74-became the basis for a divine cosmogony that attempts to explain the despair and persistent hope that mark our lives. In the "Tractates Cryptica Scriptura" that concludes Valis, Passage No. 32 reads:

  The changing information which we experience as world is an unfolding narrative. It tells about the death of a woman. This woman, who died long ago, was one of the primordial twins. She was half of the divine syzygy. The purpose of the narrative is the recollection of her and of her death. The Mind does not wish to forget her. Thus the ratiocination of the Brain consists of a permanent record of her existence, and, if read, will be understood that way. All the information processed by the Brain-experienced by us as the arranging and rearranging of physical objects-is an attempt at this preservation of her; stones and rocks and sticks and amoebae are traces of her. The record of her existence and passing is ordered onto the meanest level of reality by the suffering Mind which is now alone.

  Coming Of Age And The Onset Of Vertigo (1929-1944)

  I suppose that you can see by [my] letters that I am very changeable, but I can't help it. Sometimes I am sure I want to go home, sometimes I am doubtful, sometimes I am sure that I want to stay. I just don't know what to do, but I'm not doing anything for a while.

  PHIL, age thirteen, letter to Dorothy from the California Preparatory School, Ojai, California, November 1942

  The pre-schizoid personality is generally called "schizoid effective," which means that as an adolescent he still hopes that he won't have to ask the cute chick (or boy) in the next row for a date. Speaking in terms of my own schizoid effective experience, one gazes at her for a year or so, mentally detailing all possible outcomes; the good ones go under the rubric "daydreams," the bad ones under "phobia." [...] If the phobias win out (Suppose 1 ask her and she says "with you?" etc.), then the schizoid effective kid physically bolts from the classroom with agoraphobia that gradually widens into true schizophrenic avoidance of all human contact, or withdraws into phantasy, becomes, so to speak, his own Abe Merritt [popular SF/fantasy writer of the twenties]-or, if things go further wrong, his own H. P. Lovecraft.

  PHIL, 1965 essay "Schizophrenia & The Book of Changes"

  JANE'S body was transported to Colorado, where Edgar's family conducted a graveside funeral service in the Fort Morgan cemetery.

  When Phil returned from the hospital, the family hired a wet nurse and he recovered rapidly. Nonetheless, as winter abated, Dorothy and Edgar were in full agreement that Chicago was not for them.

  That summer they took a vacation trip to Colorado to visit their families. When Edgar returned to his job, Dorothy stayed on with Phil in Johnstown, Colorado. She was delighted that by the age of eight months Phil was already using words like "g'acious," his rendering of Dorothy's favorite exclamation. She conscientiously applied the favored behaviorist theories of the time to combat Phil's thumb sucking. These theories, coupled with Edgar's germ phobias, still further limited her own physical contact with the baby, much to Dorothy's later regret:

  The idea was that the infant was a healthy animal that should be cared for physically and left alone. [...] Cuddling, rocking, kissing were frowned on. [...] Pediatricians made an ignorant young mother feel that to violate any of the rules would cause irreparable damage to the child. [. .. ]

  Added to that really important prevailing thought about infant care was my own nature: I had been brought up in an undemonstrative household among people who kissed members of the family only on departing and returning from a trip. At least, that was the way I was treated. I do remember when I was seven and up, watching Mother kiss, rock, and cuddle Marion and call her pet names; and I remember wishing she would just once call me sweetheart or hug me.


  In late 1929, a livestock market news service position opened up in the Department of Agriculture's San Francisco office, and Edgar jumped at the chance. The family moved to the Bay Area-first Sausalito, where they stayed with Meemaw and Marion, and then the Peninsula and Alameda before finally, in 1931, settling in Berkeley. There Phil attended the Bruce Tatlock School, an experimental nursery school.

  Phil was a leader among his schoolmates. He also took to chatting with their parents on the school phone. At play Phil was a proud child who, if he fell down and hurt himself, would cry behind a tree rather than out in the open. Records for the 1931 summer session provide this portrait of Phil at age two:

  Philip is a very friendly and happy youngster. [...] He is a lover of peace and often steps aside rather than have an argument. This is a very natural, normal behavior and should cause no concern, for when Philip feels his rights have been encroached upon he is very capable of protecting them. [. ] He talks remarkably well for his years, has an intellectual curiosity and a keen interest in everything about him. He cooperates well with both children and adults and is, withal, a splendidly adjusted child.

  You can't do much better than that in nursery school. Indeed, it was the apex of Phil's academic life. The report lends credibility to Edgar's gushing boast that back then Phil was "the most handsome little fellow I ever saw in my life. He just bubbled with life." But as relations between Edgar and Dorothy grew strained, the "splendidly adjusted child" took on new complexities. A Mental Test Report compiled when Phil was four rated him "Definitely Above" average in intelligence. The accompanying "Comments" show that the child had become father to the manconceptually adept and fluid, emotionally wayward and yearning:

  His highest scores are for memory, language and tests in manual coordination. His reactions are quickly displayed, and just as quickly reversed. His independent initiative and executive ability are shown in rapidly varying techniques which are frequently replaced with strongly contrasting dependence. It might be well to guard against the development of this degree of versatility at his age by encouraging the frequent repetition of very simple situations which demand uniformity of behavior on the part of any or all participants.

  If anyone did, in fact, attempt to discourage Phil's "degree of versatility," they failed resoundingly. Instead, the tensions between Edgar and Dorothy-which would lead shortly to divorce-encouraged the boy to develop "versatile" strategies to retain the love of each. Phil's strategies for seeking out affection were not confined to the home. Forbidden by his parents to cross the street during his playtime, he would walk around the block, getting to know the elderly neighbors, who would make him little toys that he brought back proudly to the house. Edgar recalled this as exemplifying Phil the "promoter."

  But Phil's consuming playtime passion was the all-American choice: cowboys. His parents bought him a complete cowboy outfit: hat, vest, chaps, holster, gun, and boots. They must have made mention by this time, in some manner, of Jane's death, for Tessa Dick, Phil's fifth wife, relates that during his cowboy games

  [Phil] used to pretend he had a sister named Jane, and she was a cowgirl. He would dress up in his cowboy suit and "ride horses" with Jane. Jane was small, with dark eyes and long dark hair. She was also very gutsy, always daring Phil to do things he was afraid of, helping him to get into trouble.

  Bear in mind this description of cowgirl Jane. It embodies the look and character of the "dark-haired girl"-Phil's anima and obsession-that guided him persistently in his choice of wives and lovers and in his depiction of the ambiguous (fiercely brave/waywardly evil) heroines that appear in so many of his novels.

  Neither Edgar nor Dorothy regarded themselves as religious, but they did send Phil to Sunday school for a time. Phil's stubborn insistence on understanding just what was being said, even in that pious setting, gratified his father. Edgar recalled that during a group sing Phil "got out of his seat and walked up and asked for a psalm book. He said he couldn't sing unless he had a book. Right in the church ... it shows how natural he was."

  Formal religion was not important to Phil in his boyhood. But one incident-an act of spontaneous kindness, and of faith-stayed with him always. While out for a walk with his parents, they met a "great bearded white-haired old beggar." Edgar gave four-year-old Phil a nickel to give to the poor man, who in turn pressed upon the boy "a little pamphlet about God." In the Prologue to Radio Free Albemuth (written in 1976), Phil retold this incident with the intent of identifying this beggar with the prophet Elijah.

  As to more everyday questions of right and wrong, Edgar prided himself on dealing with Phil on an "adult" basis. "If I scolded Philip, he'd analyze it and come back and tell me. We'd talk it over. I'd admit it when I was wrong." Phil was "irritable" as a boy, and Edgar felt that his calm approach-as opposed to Dorothy's stricter style-gave the boy "a little lift." Between Phil and his father grew a conspiratorial bond against the mother. Even before the divorce, Edgar feared that Dorothy was somehow seeking to exclude him from Phil's upbringing, so he fought back by courting the boy with movies and trips to the country. When Dorothy would come along on trips, Phil would lock the car doors and urge his father to drive off before she could get in. And there were strictly father-son events-such as trips to nearby ranches that Edgar knew through his work-that promised, and sometimes delivered, adventure.

  Edgar was afraid of rattlesnakes and taught Phil how to recognize them. One day they visited a friend of Edgar's with a pet bull snake that slept on the open front porch. While the adults were talking inside, Phil came in to announce a "jingle snake on porch." Assured that it was a bull snake, Phil kept to his story. At last the two men checked-and found a thirteen-rattler, the largest ever seen in that area, which they killed. On another nearby ranch, Edgar had noticed rabbits kept in an exposed cage without food or water. One Sunday, while the ranch owners were off at church, lie and Phil freed the rabbits. Of their own volition, the rabbits returned to their cage. Undaunted, the two engineered a second great escape, this time transporting the rabbits by car twenty miles away.

  But Edgar failed flat out in his attempt to win Phil over to football. Unlike Edgar in his youth, Phil was not an active boy. Together they attended a U Cal football game when Phil was about six (the divorce was final by this time). Recalled Edgar: "That was a show in itself, him [Phil] seeing those people running and chasing each other. He thought they were chasing each other and it was hard for him to see why in the world they were doing things like that."

  Underlying the affection between father and son was a persistent ambivalence in both. Edgar saw Phil as "physically lazy" and perhaps resented his son's status as Dorothy's possession. Phil was often sick-he had asthma attacks throughout his childhood-and, for the most part, Edgar left the health concerns of the child to his mother. "Dorothy took great care of Philip, though she was too involved with Phil's glasses and his teeth and various medicines," Edgar recalled. Among Phil's medicines was aphedrine (an amphetamine) in pill form, which he took for the asthma.

  Phil's own ambivalence is manifest in a much-anthologized 1954 short story, "The Father-thing." The basic plot: A young boy, Charles, discovers that his father, Ted (Edgar's familiar name), has been killed and replaced by a malignant alien life form:

  He was a good-looking man in his early thirties: thick blond hair, strong arms, competent hands, square face and flashing brown eyes. [.]

  Ted jerked. A strange expression flitted across his face. It vanished at once; but in the brief instant Ted Walton's face lost all familiarity. Something alien and cold gleamed out, a twisting, wriggling mass. The eyes blurred and receded, as an archaic sheen filmed over them. The ordinary look of a tired, middle-aged husband was gone.

  The new Ted-unlike Edgar with his alleged "adult" approach to child discipline-has no qualms about spanking young boys who are overly quizzical of apparent reality. Phil later wrote of "The Fatherthing": "I always had the impression, when I was very small, that my father was two people, one good
, one bad. The good father goes away and the bad father replaces him. I guess many kids have this feeling. What if it were so?"

  One strange aspect of the story is Charles's composure: After a brief cry, the eight-year-old becomes a methodical avenger. The "good" father is innocent of the deeds of the "bad" alien impostor-a device that not only skirts anger (implicit in the killing of the alien) but also parallels the Gnostic view that our world is created by an evil demiurge-and not by the benign supreme deity who has cosmically absconded. Phil's adult fascination with Gnosticism may have stemmed in part from a need to make intellectual sense of the enduring pain caused by Edgar's flashes of anger and his all but total departure (absconding) from Phil's life.

  Edgar and Dorothy were divorced in 1933, at the height of the Depression. The National Recovery Administration had asked Edgar to open an office in Reno, Nevada. Dorothy refused to move and consulted a psychiatrist, who assured her that divorce would not have a detrimental effect upon Phil. The psychiatrist was dead wrong: To Phil it felt as if his father had abandoned him, and the scar endured. As for Edgar, his first response was incomprehension. "It came out of the clear blue sky," he recalled fifty years later.

  What finally drove the couple apart? Lynne Cecil, later Dorothy's stepdaughter, observes: "Part of the problem was that as Dorothy grew up she just `matured away.' But the main reason was that Edgar was extremely jealous. She couldn't stand it-he would be jealous if somebody looked at her." At this time, Dorothy was slender, with shoulder-length brown hair and features resembling those of the cinema's reigning beauty, Greta Garbo. But Phil never spoke of Dorothy's having lovers during his childhood and adolescence, or even of any polite courtships.