However, Tony is still alive, I discovered last year [1974]. My cat had begun to behave in an odd way, keeping watch over me in a quiet fashion, and I saw that he had changed. This was after he ran away and returned, wild and dirty, crapping on the rug in fear; we took him to the vet and the vet calmed him down and healed him. After that, Pinky had what I call a spiritual quality, except that he wouldn't eat meat. He would tremble whenever we tried to feed it to him. For five months he'd been lost, living in the gutter, seeing God knows what; I wish I knew. Anyhow, after he was changed -- in the twinkling of an eye; that is, while at the vet's -- he wouldn't ever do anything cruel. Yet I knew Pinky was afraid, because once I almost shut the refrigerator door on him and he did a three-cushion bank shot of himself off the walls to escape, and clocked a velocity unique for a pink sheeplike thing that usually just sat and gazed ahead. Pinky had trouble breathing because of his heavy fur and what they call hairballs. Tony had asthma terribly and needed it cold. Pinky would sit by the door to get the cold air from under the crack, and struggle to breathe. I will not write a teaser article here; Pinky died of cancer suddenly; he was three years old, very young for a cat. It was totally unexpected. The vet diagnosed it as something else, which could be cured.
I hadn't realized Pinky was Tony Boucher, out of love served up by the universe again, until I had this dream about Tony the Tiger, the cereal box character who offers you Sugar Frosted Flakes. In my dream I stood at one end of a light-struck glade, and at the other a great tiger came out slowly, with delight, and I knew we were together again. Tony the Tiger and me. My joy was unbounded. When I woke up I tried to think who I knew named Tony. I had other strange experiences after Pinky died. I dreamed about a "Mrs. Donlevy," who was incredibly tall -- I could see only her feet and ankles -- and she was serving me a plate of milk on the back porch and there was a vacant lot where I could roam at will, forever. It was the Elysian Vacant Lot, which the Greeks believed in, just my size. Also, the day Pinky died, at the vet's, that evening as I stood in the bathroom I felt my wife put her hand on my shoulder, firmly, to console me. Turning, I saw no one. I also dreamed this dream: I had the album notes for Don Pasquale and at the end the conductor had added a note: five strings of catgut like a cat's cradle, like a musical stave. It was a final hello from Pinky, who was Tony Boucher; in the dream the album was an old 78 one, a rare classic, a favorite of Tony's.
Tony or Pinky, I guess names don't count, was a lousy hunter all his life. One time he caught a gopher and ran up our apartment stairs with it. He placed it in his dish, where he was fed, because that was orderly, and of course the gopher got up at once and ran off. Tony felt that things belonged in their places, being an obsessively tidy person, his enormous collection of books and records was arranged the same way -- each object in its proper place, and a proper place for each object. He should have tolerated more chaos in the universe. However, he recaught the gopher and ate it, all except the teeth.
Tony, or Pinky, was my guide; he taught me to write, and he stayed with me when I was sick back in 1972 and 1973, lying beside me day after day. That's why my wife, Tessa, brought him over, because I had pneumonia and needed help and we had no money for a doctor. (I think now in that regard I lucked out; he would have told me I had a bruised rib.) When the pain was really bad, Pinky used to lie on my body until I realized that he was trying to figure out which part of me was sick. He knew it was just one part, around the middle of my body. He did his best and I recovered but he did not. That was my friend.
Most cats fear the clattering arrival of the garbagemen each week, but Pinky detested them. Under our bed fixed, set eyes, but no Pinky was visible. Just the eyes, waiting for the bastards to go.
Four nights before Pinky unexpectedly died, before we knew he had cancer -- I started to say, before he had been diagnosed as having a bruised rib -- he and Tessa and I, as was our custom, were lying on the big bed, and I saw a uniform pale white light slowly fill the room. I thought the angel of death had come for me and I began praying in Latin: "Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo," and so forth. Tessa gritted her teeth, but Pinky sat there, front feet tucked under him, impassive. I knew there was no place to hide, like under the bed. Every child knows that. And it looks bad.
It never occurred to me that death was arriving for anyone but me, which shows my attitude. I saw us all as painted ducks, on a painted sea, and thought of the thirteenth-century Arabic poem about "Once he will miss, twice he will miss. All the world's one level plain for him on which he hunts for flowers." We were as conspicuous as -- well, anyhow, finally I gave up praying, but I remember in particular I kept crying out, "Mors stupebit et natura," which I thought meant that death stood stupefied, as if in surprise (as in, "I was stupefied to learn that my car had been towed away." It means just standing there impotently. That maybe is not what Merriam-Webster 3 says, but it is what I say).
Pinky never noticed the pale white light; as was his custom he seemed awake, but dozing. I think he was humming to himself. Later when I slept, toward morning, I dreamed a disturbing dream: The report of a gun fired close to my ear: a dreadful shotgun blast, and when I looked I saw a woman lying dying. I went for aid, but got on to one of those electric trolley buses by mistake, along with three Gestapo agents (I dream that a lot). We rode around forever while I tried vainly to short-circuit the power cables of the bus or trolley car, whatever it was -- no luck. The Gestapo agents remained confident in that smug way they have and read newspapers and smoked. They knew they had me.
"The Short, Happy Life of a Science Fiction Writer" (1976)
I would like to speak to my friends, here, to let them know that (1) all the dreadful things they have heard have befallen me have indeed befallen me, and (2) I am fine anyhow. In February I had a heart attack. The paramedics came -- I was alone in the house at the time -- and it was just like a scene in the TV program Emergency. They arrived two minutes after I phoned them, and pretty soon they were monitoring my vital life signs, and then it was to the county hospital to the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit. I hovered between life and death, telling jokes and falling in love with one nurse named Beth, who always wore pink.
But I write this to say that I recovered completely, until I saw the bill for $2,000 anyhow, which brings up the point that it was to the county hospital that I was taken; I didn't have any money, and none of the other Orange County hospitals would accept me. My view here is, Thank God for a hospital that will take you if you're broke, asking no questions, just saving your life and billing you later. But...
When I was sprung eleven days later I had forty cents, no more. Some food at home in the freezer. My total income for that month was nine dollars. March was no better, and by mid-April they were going to shut off the utilities. Every phone call was someone wanting money. My agent, God bless him, loaned me money, and here is where I want to say something that at the time didn't affect my head, but that when I told it later to a dude, he got really funny and said, "That sums up the situation of the artist better than I've ever heard it summed up before." There was a French royalty check on its way by mail from Paris to my agent, and I phoned, desperately, to see if it had arrived yet, since much of it was to go to me. The check arrived, the previous day. My agent could hear the fear in my voice, the shaking; I was three months overdue in my child support payments -- and he said, in an oddly soft voice, "You know, Phil, you are one of the most respected writers in the world." I barely listened; all I knew was that I wouldn't be spending thirty days in Orange County jail for nonsupport, as Jim Croce says in one of his songs.
What I want to stress is not that I am either one of the most respected writers in the world or that my agent thinks so or said so but that here I am, after twenty-five years of professional SF writing, getting notices that they are going to turn off the water and gas and electricity if I don't pay in three days, and I say, What has it all been for? Well, recently I read an article by Barry Malzberg in F&SF [Fantasy and Science Fiction, a prominent SF magazine] in
which he says he's leaving SF forever because -- well, read it yourself; it is the greatest bunch of whining I ever heard in my life. I don't propose to whine, although probably what I've said so far seems to be whining. Really, though, I am more asking a question than making a statement, whining or otherwise. What have twenty-five years of work done to make me financially secure? I have a new novel coming out next January [1977] by Doubleday (A Scanner Darkly), which I honestly believe to be the best work I've ever done. I have the collaboration with Roger Zelazny coming out this year, the novel Deus Irae [1976] -- there was that long article on me in Rolling Stone ["The Worlds of Philip K. Dick," November 6, 1975, by Paul Williams], which gave me a lot of publicity, and (and here it comes; get ready) I am just about to make it big. The key words: just about to. It is another case of waiting for Godot; the little boy says, "Mr. Godot isn't coming today, but surely he'll come tomorrow." But I say, If it does come for me, will it matter? Will it make up for twenty-five years of shivering with fear as to whether, when I get up in the morning, the electricity will still be turned on?
One time in early 1972 I came home and the utility company had shut off the electricity, and put a padlock on my circuit-breaker box. I got my tool kit, got out tools, and cut through the padlock and turned the power back on again. Technically, that's a crime, but the utility people were so surprised that they let me get away with it. I paid them the next day, but if you cut that padlock, you go into the slammer. I cite this to show that my fears are not merely neurotic. And the house that I was in then -- it was repossessed by the finance company that held the mortgage. So these are real and valid fears. After I moved down here to Southern California I had to start out from the bottom all over again; no car, no furniture, no house. And one day down here I got up and the electricity had been turned off. In early 1973 down here I was in bed with pneumonia, with no phone, no money to go to a doctor, to buy medication -- I remember that very well, because while I was lying there propped up in bed (so I could breathe), Mr. Death walked into my bedroom. Really. I saw him as clear as I see you now, my friends. He wore a sharp, modern, polyester suit and carried a briefcase, which he opened to reveal some simple puzzles, the sort you give grammar school children. I failed to pass, and Mr. Death said, "Then you can come with me." And I saw (I'm not kidding you) a vision of a long winding road up a hillside, with many trees, to a sort of lovely large safe-looking old building, which was a sanitarium of some kind. "I'm taking you there," he said. "These tests prove that your brain is totally burned out, so now you can rest. You can rest up there at the top of the hill forever." And I was flooded with a sense of total joy and relief. However, at that moment my chick came into the bedroom, on impulse, to see how I was. And I realized who I'd been talking to. After that I began to mend.
You will say, now, that this piece I am writing rambles, and it is supposed to, having no topic but the head of the author writing it, which is well known to be a rambling head that produces rambling writing -- with even a bit of chaos thrown in. What is my point? My point is that (1) twenty-five years of devoted writing haven't in any way given me financial security; (2) the fact that I am sure my new novel, A Scanner Darkly, is my best novel doesn't stop the fear; (3) I am not quitting. It's going to take more than all this to make me give up science fiction writing, for one simple reason. I love to write it. I am working on a thing now, called, To Scare the Dead, and already I've done two hundred thousand words of notes. It won't produce any financial security. The big break, just around the corner, will never come. One of these days I'll be back in the hospital, sick as hell, but I'll no doubt get out... and receive another $2,000 bill I have to pay off or go to jail. There are, in human beings, irrational drives. "Why don't you get a real job?" people say to me, mostly in fun, but not always in fun, and sometimes I say it to myself. They [sic; the big break] will always be on its way but not quite here yet; my agent will always help me (I should mention that he is Scott Meredith, and I've been with him about twenty-four years, and in 1973 when my son Christopher was born, Scott sent him the most beautiful silver rattle you ever saw) -- I guess there are eternal verities in the universe, all right, and the one that appeals to me is that man will keep on striving no matter how many times he is pushed down, which was what Faulkner said so thrillingly in his Nobel Prize speech. Man will be planning and scheming amid the ruins; the sound of his voice will still be heard.
So that is what's happened to me recently: three times in the hospital in a couple of years (plus the pneumonia), months of really being poor... one day I had to box up and mail off my collection of Unknown and Unknown Worlds, which was complete and which I had held on to through thick and thin, just to pay the landlord, BUT:
In this business of being an SF writer I have met either face-to-face, or talked with on the phone, or gotten letters from, some of the best goddamn human beings in the world. Schoolkids, for instance. Last week a black chick in Oakland. Today a guy from West Germany. Yesterday I wrote to a Swedish guy who came to this country mainly to meet me (sorry if that sounds egoish, but the point is, that was back in 1971, and we're still writing back and forth: Goran Bengtson; you may have seen letters of his printed in fanzines). I'm looking now in the stack, very huge and sloppy, beside my typewriter. A chick who did her master's thesis on me.
Oh yes. I find another letter, too. The return address:
OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY.
So you can see what I mean, as my heart skips a beat and thuds itself with the old, old fear.
Dear Carl [editor of Scintillation, in which this piece appeared],
You should have received by now the five-page piece I wrote for you, yesterday. Well, I decided to send the carbon off to Germany, to Uwe Anton, who has asked me for something and to whom I'd already sent some fragments of Deus Irae, the new novel coming out by me and Roger Zelazny (Anton is putting together a PKD issue, you see). Today I added three more pages to go with the five, to be printed in Germany only, and then I thought, Shit. Why not send you the carbons on these pages and see if you want to add them, perhaps explaining that Phil had originally intended them for the German printing only... although I sort of say that in the pages themselves. It's up to you. In any case, here are three additional pages to the untitled piece I mailed you on May first, and you are welcome to print them or not. Okay? But on second thought it seemed sort of chicken-shit for me to say stuff abroad and not here in the U.S. You'll see what I mean when you read the enclosed.
This ends the part written to be published in the United States, but for my German friends I would like to add a little more. [The subsequent language did appear in the U.S. publication.]
During 1974 we who opposed the Nixon tyranny here exhausted ourselves in forcing that tyranny out of office, only to discover, the next year, that underneath it lay an even greater abuse of power and threat to freedom: a secret police apparatus that had worked since the forties, completely invisible in terms of its lawless acts against Americans. In fact, something much like the police state that I depicted in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said has come to light, and really to the astonishment of us all. I recall that back in the fifties, about 1953, two FBI agents came to visit me and asked me to spy on my wife, who at that time was attending the University of California at Berkeley and knew people -- students -- who were politically active. From then on, the secret political police apparatus grew.
And yet it was a thrilling year in 1974 when we began to dislodge what we thought was the tyranny... but then found the greater one, the intelligence community one, which really we cannot dislodge. The American people have lost the will to combat this tyranny; it has lasted too long, and we are tired. I am tired. As the disclosures came about the CIA and FBI, I could not believe them. What could I do? What could anyone do? It was not a question of one particular evil president, but all the presidents starting with Franklin Roosevelt: even our heroic ones, such as Kennedy. Freedom won only a limited victory in August 1974 when Nixon was forced out of office;
the political police apparatus remains and will remain, and we cannot vote on this issue. I myself have given up, as our newspapers say most Americans have, with a sense that we are helpless. True, under the Freedom of Information Act, I was able to get the CIA to admit that they had indeed opened my mail to the Soviet Union and photographed it, and also I obtained my file from the FBI, or anyhow portions of it; I would have to go to court to get the rest. At that point, perhaps only a coincidence, I suffered my heart attack, as if my body had given up. As if my body was saying, "No more. It is futile." Now the thirty-day time limit is past; I can't go to court. And perhaps it's just as well. Perhaps my days of being a fighter for freedom are over, due to age, due to worry, but due mostly to the discovery -- and existence -- of the enormity of the secret political police apparatus that has so long existed in this country, and the dreadful things they have done (e.g., to Dr. King, for instance, who was a hero to me).
Personally, back in March 1974, I had the overwhelming conviction that God Himself had decided to depose Nixon. Few of my friends believe in God, much less that He would or was actually intervening. I mentioned it to Marcel Thaon of Robert Laffont publishers, France, and he wrote in an article accompanying their printing of my novel Eye in the Sky:
On sait combien l'affaire Watergate a frappe qui a ete en butte par ailleurs a de nombreuses agressions voilees de I'administration Nixon. Comme le disait Klein a I'epoque, Dick propose que le decrochage systematique de I'ordre etabli -- par la desobtissance civique par exemple -- pent seul faire tehee au pouvoir. II pense par ailleurs que c'est Dieu qui un jour en a eu assez de Nixon et s'en est debarrasse -- melangeant une fois de plus politique et religion.
The Shifting Realities of PK Dick Page 6
