The Man in the High Castle

To have no historicity, and also no artistic, esthetic worth, and yet to partake of some ethereal value–that is a marvel. Just precisely because this is a miserable, small, worthless-looking blob; that, Robert, contributes to its possessing wu. For it is a fact that wu is customarily found in least imposing places, as in the Christian aphorism, ‘stones rejected by the builder.’”

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Why did no one make me read this book earlier? Or, considering that I have smart friends who certainly recommended this book to me over the years, why didn’t I listen and read this book a long time ago?

At the very least, I would have understood Mirage a lot better.

The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history–the Axis powers win World War II and divide the United States into Nazi and Japanese spheres of influence–but it’s much more than that. It’s a hall of mirrors, with an alternate history–”The Grasshopper Lies Low,” in which the Allies win the war–buried within the alternate history; it’s a political intrigue about the machinations of the fascist state, with its various overlapping branches and organizations attempting to thwart each other during a time of regime change; it’s a love story, a road story, an esoteric meditation in which the world is a book written by a book, the I Ching, that is randomly generated by the world.

It’s a subtle book–except for some jarring moments of violence (a Nazi operative is murdered, a skirmish in the Japanese consulate in San Francisco thwarts a Nazi kidnapping raid), there isn’t much action. But it’s a strangely unsettling book, packed with unstated ideas and unexamined consequences. As soon as you grasp what’s going on, something happens to throw it all out of place again.

from Michael Hartford Blogger http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MichaelHartford/~3/xvKb5dZTeuc/

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