Gather Yourselves Together

Gather Yourselves Together is one of the earliest Philip K. Dick novels and, although full of occasional typos and some awkward passages, is actually an endearing tale of a love triangle in China after the Communist victory. Three Americans left behind as representatives of the Company learn about themselves, relationships between men and women, and adulthood. Two of them, an older man and a young woman, Verne and Barbara, were once lovers (Verne taking her virginity some years earlier), and Carl, a blonde "boy" (and virgin) who sounds a lot like Philip K. Dick himself, is left with the two. Like all of Dick's subsequent realist fiction, the fundamental problem of love and relationships between men and women are fleshed out in all their problematic ways, as the three characters struggle to make sense of themselves and their lot in a rapidly changing world. Communist China, the end of the American company, and their shifting realities and recollections of life in the US intersect almost seamlessly in this early work. Unfortunately, perhaps too much time is spent on some of the characters' recollections, but one cannot help but find Barbara Mahler to be one of the most interesting female characters of PKD. She's fundamental to the story, and her own sense of herself as a woman with sexual agency and development brings to mind Mary in Mary and the Giant. This is a frustrating and endearing novel worth a read for a hint at some of the common themes throughout PKD's later work.