Voices From the Street

Dick's Voices From the Street is a hot mess. One of his posthumously published realist novels set in 1950s California, the novel begins with some of the exact same passages used in another of his realist novels. Furthermore, he recycles some of the same names, occupations, and character types here, with a TV salesman, the universe of small retail, and an unhappy marriage. However, where Voices From the Street departs from PKD's other realist novels is the omnipresence of fascism, in the shadows and bulging at the seams. In this novel, the unlikable "Nordic" protagonist, Stuart Hadley, meets a woman whose small literary magazine turns out to be a fascist rag. Despite her having an affair with an African-American millenarian movement leader, she also had met Oswald Mosley and echoes many of the common fascist interpretations of the ills of modern society.

Of course, anti-Semitism and race play a major role, despite her relationship with a black man. For a while, Hadley is attracted to her, and her fascistic worldview, even going as far as employing anti-Semitic slurs against his old high school friend, David Gold. Hadley, who has ambition, creativity, and is unhappy with the way of the world, oscillates between the fascist persuasion of modern life, and that of the religious cult (while also attempting bourgeois existence, for a stint). Ultimately, the fascist persuasion loses, but Dick's novel might provide some utility for understanding the fascist predicament and its threat to the future of humanity in his science fiction novels. Indeed, the appeal of fascism to middling sectors of society with declining status, the bankruptcy of American life during the Cold War (as well as the Korean War), plus Dick's perpetual questioning of the meaning of reality means Hadley questions the social fabric of his time, while fumbling repeatedly along the way. Examples abound, such as Hadley's rape of Marsha, his initial pull toward the fascist persuasion of modern life.