The Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick
Why?
It is a bit late in the year but I wanted to extend my
reading list and not be continually drawn to the same books. I decided to have a go at Book Riot's
2019 Read Harder Challenge. This has
been going for 5 years and basically encourages “you to push yourself, to take
advantage of this challenge as a way to explore topics or formats or genres
that you otherwise wouldn’t try. But this isn’t a test. No one is keeping score
and there are no points to post. We like books because they allow us to see the
world from a new perspective, and sometimes we all need help to even know which
perspectives to try out. That’s what this is—a perspective shift—but one for
which you’ll only be accountable to yourself.” Have you tried any reading
challenges? Let me know in the comments please....
So here was my first attempt at a perspective shift; task no
2 was an alternate history novel and after a nose on GoodReads, I decided on
The Man in the High Castle.
What?
Otherwise known as amazon spiel:
Philip K. Dick's acclaimed cult novel gives us a horrifying
glimpse of an alternative world - one where the Allies have lost the Second
World War. In this nightmare dystopia the Nazis have taken over New York, the
Japanese control California and the African continent is virtually wiped out.
In a neutral buffer zone in America that divides the world's new rival
superpowers, lives the author of an underground bestseller. His book offers a
new vision of reality - an alternative theory of world history in which the
Axis powers were defeated - giving hope to the disenchanted. Does
'reality' lie with him, or is his world just one among many others?
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Rusty words ☕ ☕ ☕
I am not sure that I appreciated this book until the
end. It is a strange book with
characters that lightly touch but never truly connect within the novel
itself. A man and wife who think about
each other but never even manage to speak.
A businessman/shop owner who works the culture and is therefore
accessible to all and indeed the one character who connects everyone. People supposedly fighting against the ruling powers and
their oppression but we do not see them achieve anything. There is not an end to this book, it is
rather a transient state.
We remain in the Japan controlled part of the US which makes
Dick’s use of diction a bit annoying, I found it uncomfortable if not slightly
racist. Tagomi, who along with Juliana,
was actually my favourite character, spoke in a foreign-man-speaking-English
way. This made no sense – if he could
not articulate clearly in English, why was he thinking in it? Why would a Japanese owned state speak
English as its first language anyway? I
am probably missing the glaringly obvious; if they are going to fly to Mars
then evidently they will not converse in a logical way. It was almost as if Dick had access to an
English-German dictionary but it did not occur to him that other languages
existed. This was originally published
in the early 1960’s though so perhaps culture has changed as has our
awareness.
Poor old Germany as well; it doesn’t matter who writes the
book, they are always the easy enemy.
The Japanese were the nice baddies whilst the German’s were the
pantomime baddies – boo hiss.
Predictable.
Interestingly, the I Ching is not a figment of Dick’s
imagination and has been examined in detail by Japanese scholars (according to
my bible of Wikipedia) and also interestingly was translated in to German
before any other European language.
Juliana became a very powerful character, despite her
initially being suggested as needy. She
understood what no-one else had managed to grasp. She understood reality. It made me feel a bit better than only one
character within the book really knew what was happening; it meant I was OK to
be confused by the chaotic ramblings that sometimes filled the pages. There were moments of extreme clarity though:
“Evidently we go on, as we always have. From day to day….But we cannot do it all at
once; it is a sequence. An unfolding
process. We can only control the end by
making a choice at each step.”
I think The Man in the High Castle is a worthy read as it
makes us consider our perception of history and reality and, I hope, reinforces
that we really can only make tiny baby steps in our lives and try not to be
frustrated by the time that things take and our lack of control. We need to be patient and appreciative of the
moment we are in. Easier said than done.
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