Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick

by Lawrence Sutin

  In the spring, Phil received some welcome visits from friends and family. His daughter Isa was a brief houseguest, as was Loren Cavit, his loyal friend from the dark days of 1971. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who was then editing Arcade, made an overnight stop. He and Phil had first met in 1973, after Phil had written a glowing fan letter in response to a Spiegelman comic strip about Walt Disney coming back to life in a Tomorrowland world of robot presidents. Phil now proposed a collaboration; but the story Phil submitted in March 1975-"The Eye of the Sibyl"-was, like the 1974 Ubik screenplay, too intricate for adaptation to the intended (comic book/movie) medium.

  In this same month came an unfortunate rift with Harlan Ellison. The circumstances were ideally suited to hurt Ellison's feelings. Phil and Ellison had socialized on an occasional basis since Phil's 1972 move to Orange County, but the friendship had grown uneasy. Ellison felt that Phil was jealous of his financial success and Hollywood connections. For Phil, there was some lingering, if unjustified, resentment over the reference to Phil's LSD use in Ellison's 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions. Personal frictions aside, Phil had proclaimed that Ellison's story "The Deathbird" "will be read for centuries to come." It was hardly surprising that Ellison thought of Phil as an apt writer to contribute an essay to an Ellison tribute issue planned by F & SF. Nor is it surprising that, after telling Ellison he'd be glad to oblige, Phil declined in a letter to F & SF editor Edward Ferman (a friend of Ellison's), explaining that he hadn't been fully awake when Ellison called, didn't care for most of Ellison's work, and didn't do freebies. Ferman wrote back explaining that he'd intended to pay. Ellison, who regarded Phil's concerns over being paid as an affront to Ferman's editorial integrity, sent Phil a vituperative termination-of-friendship notice.

  But all this fury with Ellison was by way of the mails. In daily life, tender feelings and reasonably good tidings prevailed. The long collaboration with Roger Zelazny finally bore fruit when Deus Irae was completed in July. The Entwhistle Books edition of Crap Artist also appeared that month: a published mainstream novel at long last. Driving himself full bore, Phil finished revisions to Scanner by August. This effort was fueled in part by Phil's desire to collect the final advance installment from Doubleday and repay a loan from Robert Heinlein, who'd already been an SF giant back when Phil first started reading the pulps. Heinlein and Tessa had established a friendship after meeting at a 1974 SF gathering. Phil hadn't attended, but a warm correspondence between the two writers ensued. During summer 1975, as the bank account bottomed out, Tessa asked Heinlein for a loan. While Phil was grateful, his wife's going asking for money shamed him. After Heinlein turned down a second loan request, the letters stopped. (When the two finally met in 1977, the encounter was brief and awkward.)

  Meanwhile, Phil remained publicly circumspect on 2-3-74. When he learned that an essay on his work by Thomas Disch would appear in the December 1975 Crawdaddy, Phil wrote to Disch requesting silence as to 2-3-74. "I'm still having mystical visions and revelations (but that's our little secret, not for the readership of Crawdaddy who really wouldn't want to know anyhow, would they?)."

  The dramatic visions of the first months had not reappeared, but visionary dreams and the hypnogogic Al voice continued. To comprehend as best he could, Phil searched through the Britannica, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, works on Orpliic, Gnostic, Zoroastrian, and Buddhist thought, The New Testament Decoded, studies on bicameral brain research-no philosopher's stone was left unturned. In a July 1975 Exegesis entry he took stock:

  I feel a great peace now, at last, for the first time in my life. This whole period, including 3-74, has been arduous; j... I I believe I've worn myself out more with this than with any previous writing, any novel or group of novels. [... What does it all add up to (at this point in my knowledge)? I passed through the narrow gate in mid-74, and now 1 am told that he will come back for the world itself, fairly soon.

  When not immersed in night-shift Exegesis speculations, Phil was reestablishing contact with his original circle of Fullerton friends, including Mary Wilson and Tim Powers. Powers, who kept a journal, is the Boswell of Phil's life in Orange County. Here is Powers's account of "The Most Brilliant SF Mind on Any Planet" (as Rolling Stone had billed him in November 1975) imagining all the possibilities while graciously autographing his latest work:

  One time Phil was signing a book for a young lady who always, despite being the steady girlfriend of a friend of ours, managed to give an impression of lighthearted promiscuity. Phil scribbled in the book for a little while, then looked up at the young man and asked, "How do you spell `gorgeous'? Our friend told him, and Phil scribbled some more. Then, "How do you spell `anticipate'? Our friend spelled it out for him, not quite as cheerfully as before. Finally Phil paused again and asked, "How do you spell `consummate'?", and the young man burst out, "Goddammit, Phil ..."

  Phil enjoyed playful flirtations, but they grew increasingly painful for Tessa. Phil himself, in a 1975 Exegesis entry, confessed that he felt like a "dirty old man" after one party flirtation. To exacerbate matters, Tessa would tend Phil during his bedridden bouts of depression and agoraphobia, but was left behind when Phil arose ready for the world again. She writes:

  In late 1975 and early 1976, he found himself able to go out more often, but not with me. He could go with the guys, or even with another woman, but not with me. He assured me that these relationships were purely platonic, but I didn't care. I was tired of being confined to the house with a small baby. I did not enjoy going out alone. If I went out for more than half an hour, Phil became depressed. It upset him terribly when, in September 1975, I began school. I took two classes at the junior college: German and biology. The German was so I could understand Phil when he spoke it. The biology interested me because I had wanted to be a veterinarian.

  Phil had been getting counseling since 1973, and in addition to his psychotherapy, we had marriage counselling. The psychologists and the psychiatrist had tried all sorts of therapy and medication, all to no effect. Phil was diagnosed as manic depressive. I always disputed that. I felt that it all went back to his twin sister's death. He never got over that loss, and he was always looking for a substitute for that sister. As his wife, I would not do, because that would make our relationship incestuous. Therefore, he had to surround himself with women who were just friends. That was why he could go out with another woman, and not with me.

  While Phil griped about the marriage to friends, he felt an acute need for a stable family setting. In July 1975, Tessa and Christopher paid a weeklong visit to her family. For the prior three years, Phil and Tessa had seldom spent a night apart. Now Phil surprised himself by gritting it out. From a July letter:

  I've always thought of people who liked to be alone as sick, as schizoid. Now I find that I am having difficulty adjusting to other people in the house-my adjustment to solitude was that good, that complete. [... ] Secretly, in my own head, I thought my own thoughts and began to settle down and enjoy myself. It is, I believe, a permanent change in me. The lessons beaten into me in all that therapy at X-Kalay [survival as part of a group] burst into fragments last week; they had to; they no longer applied.

  It was not, in fact, a "permanent change," though it did mark the beginning of a changed attitude. In the last years of his life, Phil lived alone and came to appreciate solitude. But in 1975, life alone-for however brief an interval-could be outright anguish. Tessa and Christopher went off on another family visit over Labor Day; just prior to their departure, Phil grew depressed enough to contemplate suicide. While they were gone, he vented his anger and misery in the Exegesis:

  If she does return this time she will leave again [... ]; this is the fledgling practice flights. [...]

  It is important (to me anyhow) to note that I have achieved for Tessa just about every material thing she ever named as wanting [...] I have the hollow shell built to enclose this family, but the family is dead. [...] I equipped Nancy the same way and she left; in each case I took a young girl who lived at
home and had nothing, gave her what she wanted; whereupon she left, with my child. It is as if I am a bridge for fledgling girls, taking them to womanhood and motherhood, whereupon my value ends and I am discarded.

  As it happened, it was Phil who finally left Tessa, in the summer of 1976, after further struggles and "fledgling practice flights" on Tessa's part. But Phil was clearly aware of the difficulties his fifth marriage was facing, and he was, moreover, distracted by his deepening feelings for another woman.

  Phil first met Doris Sauter in 1972, while she was dating Norman Spinrad. Then in her early twenties, Doris was attractive and intelligent, a brown-haired California native with a love for SF and a growing commitment to her Christian beliefs. Their friendship intensified in the spring of 1974, when Doris confided to Phil about her recent conversion experience. Naturally, Phil was delighted, and in turn told Doris all about 2-3-74.

  Doris-the principal inspiration for Sherri Solvig in Valis and Rybys Romney in The Divine Invasion-believes that, at root, Phil was Christian in outlook. "Christianity helped him to integrate aspects of his personality. The life of Christ helped Phil put his own past poverty in perspective, and he became even more ethical and caring for the poor." Would Phil have felt comfortable being defined as Christian in belief? Doris replies:

  If you had asked him what he believed, his answer would have depended on what kind of theoretical fever he was running at the time. When the rubber hit the road, he wanted a priest to talk to. One of the first places Phil went after his March religious experiences was an Episcopal church in Placentia-not a Moony parlor.

  In a sense, religion became Phil's business when he started to write theological novels in the seventies. Not that he wasn't religious. But it also had this quality of being useful-as material for the next book. Imagination was his stock in trade, and he tried out theories to see how people reacted.

  Phil and Doris planned, for spring 1975, to help The Agitator, a liberal-left Catholic newspaper, by subscribing to fifty copies, which they would hand out free to Cal State Fullerton students. They also contacted the House of Hospitality soup kitchen in Los Angeles, to which Phil had previously donated funds. It was to be a time of commitment and high adventure.

  But then everything changed. And their bond grew stronger.

  In May 1975 Doris was diagnosed as suffering from cancer. She lost weight, her eyesight diminished, and she was in the last stage of lymphatic cancer. Even prior to her cancer, Phil had been struck by the fact that Doris, like himself, had undergone a premature birth. He explained his own barrel-chested physique as the result of struggling for air as an infant. Doris recalls during her cancer sufferings that Phil would insist that her struggle "started with that first struggle to breathe. Premature birth was an important determinant, and metaphor, to Phil. He would attach to certain women because he was looking for his twin."

  During the latter half of 1975, Phil repeatedly urged Doris and two of her friends to move into the house with his family. Fortunately, her cancer had gone into remission by the end of 1975, though Doris continued to suffer from grand mal seizures. But Phil's yearning to live with Doris continued apace. In January 1976, Phil asked Doris to marry him. Doris refused: She loved him but did not wish to disrupt his marriage to Tessa. Also, she was skeptical: "Phil had a way of bonding to people who were in trouble. One of the reasons I never wanted to marry him was that I felt that might be operative in our relationship, and that it wasn't healthy. But he really did want to help-some of that could be manipulative, but most was genuine."

  Meanwhile, the domestic harmony Phil and Tessa had known was increasingly punctuated by fierce quarrels. Their marriage was spiraling into precisely the scenario Phil feared most-his wife, their child in her arms, leaving him alone in a house filled with memories. In February 1976, after a bad fight, Tessa took Christopher and left. Powers, in his journal, recalls visiting Phil while Tessa was packing-she took the coffee table on which their wineglasses rested. "Never oversee what they take," Phil advised his friend. "It is better to let them take what they like and inventory afterwards." Tessa states that Phil had demanded that she leave. However it all went down, what happened next is undisputed.

  Chapter 4 of Valis opens with a droll, hellish, and largely accurate account of, thankfully, the last serious suicide attempt Phil would ever make; Powers's journal is an invaluable complementary source. Phil ingested forty-nine high-grade digitalis tablets (over twelve times the daily dose prescribed to him for his arrhythmia), assorted Librium, Quide, and Apresoline (an antihyperintensive, used to treat high blood pressure) pills, and half a bottle of wine. For good measure, he slashed his left wrist and sat in his Fiat in a closed garage with the engine running. "Fat was technically dead," explains Valis narrator Phil Dick. How did he survive? The wrist bleeding coagulated, the Fiat stalled, he vomited up some of the drugs. In the morning he somehow made it to the mailbox: There was the typescript of Deus Irae. He put out water for the cat. And suddenly Phil no longer wanted to die. He phoned his therapist, who told him to call the paramedics. Time was of the essence; the digitalis had all but depleted the potassium in Phil's body. He was rushed to Orange County Medical Center and was shortly thereafter transferred-by an armed cop pushing him in a wheelchair-from cardiac intensive care to the psych ward.

  Beth, Fat's wife in Valis, is based upon Tessa. It is, for the most part, an unpleasant and accusatory portrait. Tessa writes: "He was angry; so was 1. I do not take offense at the portrayal of Beth." In Valis, Beth refuses to visit Fat in the hospital. Tessa visited twice, once with Christopher, and brought clothing. Snuff and a Bible were provided by Powers. The amenities were nice, but winding up in a lockup nut ward after barely surviving a suicide that by all rights should have succeeded scared the hell out of Phil. Lying on his cot, he went through his dark night of the soul in true American style: "Fat could see the communal TV set, which remained on. Johnny Carson's guest turned out to be Sammy Davis, Jr. Fat lay watching, wondering how it felt to have one glass eye. At that point he had no insight into his situation." Where was the higher wisdom of 2-3-74? "Either he had seen God too soon or he had seen him too late. In any case, it had done him no good at all in terms of survival. Encountering the living God had not equipped him for the tasks of ordinary endurance, which ordinary men, not so favored, handle."

  Phil did rouse himself by the time his fourteen-day hospital stayunder observation, with the prospect of ninety days more being tacked on-ended. One frequent visitor was Doris Sauter, who recalls that one day "Phil looked up at me and asked, 'Now will you move in with me?' But I played hardball with Phil. I didn't want to be manipulated, and I told him to 'get up off your butt.' The paramedics were staring, but Phil admired me for how I handled him that day." Phil also felt a new respect for his own body-its will to live even at the height of the digitalis convulsions-which helped him to refrain from future attacks upon it.

  After his discharge, Phil and Tessa stayed together through May. But he had resolved to live with Doris. His arguments to Doris focused on mutual need: Doris was in a weakened state and in danger of suffering further grand mat seizures; Phil had high blood pressure and was subject to unexpected collapse. He pledged to end his marriage even if she refused him. Despite his ardor, breaking up marriage and family troubled Phil. There were memories of father Edgar's traumatic departure to dispel. "I was not roaming off into fields of pleasure, like my father did," Phil avowed in one letter.

  The move took them from Fullerton to Santa Ana: 408 East Civic Center Drive #C1, which would remain Phil's address for the rest of his life. It was still Orange County, but there were important differences. The building featured an elaborate security system-a reassurance to Phil, who'd had more than his share of uninvited guests. Also, it was situated on the edge of the barrio. Across the street was the Catholic St. Joseph's Church-the pealing bells delighted him. Down the block was the Episcopal Church of the Messiah. Nearby was a twenty-four-hour Trader Joe's, where, during nighttime shifts, P
hil could break for roast beef sandwiches and Orange Crush. Also nearby was Tim Powers's apartment, where Phil was always welcome.

  Money Phil had in something like abundance for the first time. Mark Hurst, a young editor at Bantam Books, was a staunch Phil Dick advocate. Publicity in Rolling Stone and other venues gave Hurst the leverage to strike the best deals in Phil's career to date. In May 1976, Bantam acquired three novels-Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, and A Maze of Death-for $20,000, a far cry from Phil's typical $2,000-per-title reprint advances. Still more dazzling was a $12,000 Bantam advance for a novel to be called Valisystem A (finally published, in 1981, as Valis). Of course, SF in the mid- to late seventies was enjoying a boom. Phil's big money paled beside the six-figure advances less talented peers raked in-but then, his sales hardly rivaled theirs. No matter. Phil was flush, and the novel targeted for so long in the Exegesis had a contract.

  Phil enjoyed a summer of happiness with Doris. Their new apartment had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, assuring him privacy for writing. He'd brought along his cat Harvey and his massive record collection. One album cover depicting an alien being (probably the Starship album Dragonfly) led to a startle for Doris during their first week together. Phil confided to her that, while looking at this cover, he'd realized that, fundamentally, his being was not of this Earth. Was he sincere or testing the limits of future readers' credulity? Both, most likely. Doris confirms that Phil seemed sincere when he said it-and that such speculations came and went.

  Together they explored the barrio neighborhood, but Phil continued to be troubled by agoraphobia. To Doris, he ascribed his anxieties to his chronic mourning for Jane. In restaurants, Phil was careful to take large enough mouthfuls to provide an adequate bolus for easy swallowing. In their apartment, Doris recalls, "Phil only had two switches: 'I'm not writing now and I want your attention entirely' and 'I'm writing now and I want no one's attention.' " In the first mode, Phil was a charming man with a sly, weird sense of humor that could pull Doris out of her blackest moods. They would cook dinner together and then sit down to a cable movie. In the second mode, you wanted to stay clear.