[Book Club] June: Valis

[ShannonA]

Valis was one of Dick's later books, based on a real-life hallucination/encounter-with-god that occurred in 2-3-1974 (meaning February and March of that year).

It was also the start of a trilogy of books chronicling and rechronicling his vision of god, but it's the only one of the three that's largely autobiographical.

This is the second time I've read Valis, and as before I wasn't terribly impressed by it. I think the Valis trilogy as a whole is a well-done, with some stuff in the later books reflecting upon the earlier and making you reconsider them in interesting ways.

However, Valis itself is so mired in Dick's largely unreadable exegesis that it really falters as a book. Moments of brilliance pop up in spite of that, but IMO it's a slog.

Other thoughts?

[Celephais]

I actually couldn't get a hold of this in any store in Dublin :( Couldn't order on the net as me credit card is completely maxed. Ah well, hopefully I'll come across it in the next week and tear through it so I can leave some comments; this was one of the books that caught my interest immediately.

[Borogove]

At this point (maybe two-thirds of the way through), I'm of the opinion that it is bloody strange. Interesting, so far, but kind of hard to read (I've stopped actually reading the exegesis parts, and now just skim them).

[Eilonwy]

I happen to be reading this now (hey, I just signed up with the site, how was I to know I was running a month behind?) and I'll let you know. I find it very engaging on the level of the page, so far -- there's lots of character and humor in it -- but I'm not quite so engrossed in the plot.