Clans of the Alphane Moon

Although not his best work, Clans of the Alphane Moon is a hilarious self-referential novel about Dick's marriages (several, many not ending well), his workload (Chuck, the central character, writes scripts for simulacra), and the narrow boundary between mental health and psychosis. As someone who wrote similar novels about precogs, psionic powers, and time travel involving schizophrenia, Clans takes this interest in new directions. A colony of various schizophrenic types have formed an autonomous society on a moon in the Alpha system by rebelling against the hospital (which was established there to provide psychotherapy for the schizophrenics settled there by Terra). Now, after 25 years of isolation from Terra, a mission led by Chuck's psychologist wife is sent there to provide therapy, reassert Terran authority (a war between the Alphane race and Terra recently concluded, not to mention ongoing tensions between the US and the USSR), and impose therapy on the various clans of schizophrenic inhabitants. Chuck and his wife, who separate after years of acrimony, predictably duke it out on this moon in the later parts of the novel, after a series of manipulative moves and quirky characters (including a slime from Ganymede that communicates telepathically) culminates in a final showdown over the state of their marriage. Where this novel's hilarity reaches its peak is Chuck's use of alien drugs to stay up all night and write (scripts for Bunny Hentman's show, and scripts for the simulacra sent to accompany his wife to the lunar colony), something Dick must have meant as a humorous self-referential commentary on his own use of drugs to stay up all night and write science fiction novels (and support his wife). Despite it all, one sees through the fateful reunion of Mary and Chuck that effort, persistence, and selflessness are necessary for a marriage to work, and mental illness is more of a continuum and capable of change. Indeed, the the paranoid schizophrenic, Gabriel Baines, can change. 

We Can Build You

Philip K. Dick's We Can Build You is a novel of the kind only he could ever write: Simulacrum of Lincoln, schizophrenic love interest for the confused Jewish narrator, disdain for the corporate giants preying on the small businessman, and drug-fueled hallucinations. The schizophrenic child in Martian Time-Slip is more interesting than Pris, but one suspects that Ridley Scott's Blade Runner took some ideas from Pris in this novel when adapting Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to the big screen. Anyway, much like Dick's other novels, familiar themes of metaphysics, mental illness, and the struggle to define what it means to be human (with the accompanying ethical dilemmas that question raises) are tackled here, with some additional humor from the simulacra of Abraham Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton. There is talk of imminent colonization of the Moon and other planets, massive rates of mental illness in the general population, and defective people like the narrator's brother, Chester, born with an upside down face (caused by radiation). Unfortunately, the schizophrenic are not gifted with the power of precognitive powers, like Dick's other novels, but like Martian, it questions how society treats and defines mental illness, much like the simulacrum's humanity surfacing in ways not seen in the schizophrenic Pris.

As a rambling side note, sometimes while reading this, one gets the impression Dick's interest in psychology, lady problems, and perhaps some attempt at understanding his own anxieties or potential mental health status were clearly part of Louis Rosen's attempts at making sense of his world. Furthermore, the danger of Barrows and his corporate empire lends some credence to the view of Dick as a quasi-Marxist. Unfortunately, Dick does not expound upon his views on US public education like Martian Time-Slip, but the veiled criticism of the state's abuse of power to incarcerate those it designates as psychotic through two measly tests is just as potent and ludicrous as the propaganda machine schools for children on the Martian settlement of that other great novel. 

Martian Time-Slip

"It is the stopping of time. The end of experience, of anything new. Once the person becomes psychotic, nothing ever happens to him again."

Still working my way through the essential PKD list George gave me a few weeks ago. Just finished "Martian Time-Slip" today. Very intriguing story on many levels. UN, co-ops, unions, colonization, human nature, schizophrenia, metaphysics, education, and race (the 'black' Bleekmen) figure prominently in this novel, and I appreciate how intertextual PKD's 1960s novels are (precogs). In a sense, Three Stigmata, Ubik and other works are hinted at by the early exploration of 'psionic' powers and human settlement elsewhere in the solar system. The description of schizophrenia here also brings to mind the destructiveness of Substance D on the protagonist of "A Scanner Darkly" or even the questionable sanity of Dick's fictionalized version of himself in "Valis."Furthermore, there is some insightful social commentary, particularly on mental illness, avarice, and the limitations of industrial models of education. I suspect PKD would be quite critical of the corporate education reform movement had he lived to see the rapid changes in public schools, although the public education system of his own lifetime was horrid enough. Class, greed, the need for human intimacy, all illustrated quite movingly in this novel. 

One should certainly not ignore the prominence of race and colonialism as themes of this work. By far the most race-conscious novel by Dick (the indigenous Bleekmen of Mars, who live bleak, nomadic lives as a dying race, are often referred to as niggers, blacks, and compared to the "Bushmen" of Africa), racism, anti-Semitism, fear, and how human societies "deal with" those on the margins or periphery are disturbingly demonstrated by the corrupt union boss, the casual anti-Semitism of a black market dealer in Earth luxuries, and the willingness of some colonists to support eradication of schizoid or mentally ill children, unsurprisingly kept at Camp Ben Gurion in New Israel, the Israeli settlement on Mars. Although one could ask why Dick did not use Earth-born people of African descent in a discussion about race, since one does not need to resort to fictional alien blacks to dissect society's racial "issues," the "dark" race of indigenes broadens the discussion of race to become analogous with European expansion in the Americas as well as anti-black racism. Indeed, when reading Arnie's harsh words for his "tame" Bleekman servant, Heliogabalus, one cannot help but think of the white working-class unionists who opposed blacks, against their own class interests, a similar fate for Arnie as Mars is on the brink of attracting massive land speculation and development from the co-ops and UN. 

One last point. As a recovering housing cooperative community member, the depiction of cooperatives in Dick's future world is fascinating yet never elucidated. Clearly, Earth is crowded and the cooperative apartments have become exclusive underworlds with shopping centers, supermarkets, or, in short, mini-cities in themselves. This future of cooperatives in which the wealthy can afford to invest in their own, separate reality, apart from the "real" world, as experienced in the schizophrenic episodes of Jack Bohlen, depicts a dystopia none of the cooperative housing proponents I have met would ever imagine. Alas, sometimes I think the housing cooperative umbrella I joined was too similar to this science fiction construct...

Miyako: Wayne Shorter, Japan, Jazz, and Universal Spirituality

Japan is one of the lands best known for its voracious appetite for American jazz. The above image, depicting Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, whose musical partnership included membership in Miles Davis's Second Quintet, shows the depths to which the Japanese jazz audience follows quite religiously some of jazz's greatest. A probably little known fact, however, is Wayne Shorter's first wife was of Japanese origin. Their daughter, Miyako, would inspire "Infant Eyes" from Speak No Evil as well as a ballad, "Miyako," from Schizophrenia. One can detect the influence of Japanese music, culture, and religious traditions on Wayne Shorter's music and life beyond his first wife (depicted on the cover to Speak No Evil below). For instance, Shorter converted to a Japanese form of Buddhism, and some of his own compositions and jazz tracks he's recorded on featured Japanese titles, allusions, or, more generally, "Eastern" themes. Moreover, he is better able to escape the stereotypical "exoticism" of "Eastern" influences other jazz artists often succumbed to for American jazz audiences who lacked any knowledge of the music of East Asia, largely because his music suggests those influences rather than endeavoring to reproduce it.

Listen to his playing with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers from a live show at Birdland in 1963, just after a return to the US from tour in Japan. On Cedar Walton's "Ugetsu" (wrongly translated as fantasy) features a Japanese title for a jazz waltz-like composition. Lacking any overt "Oriental" theme, Walton's piano plays suggestively of a fantasy. Shorter, Curtis Fuller, Blakey's thunderous drumming, and the song's beautiful melody do create a fantasy world that, unfortunately, comes to an end. From the same album, "On the Ginza," by Shorter, refers to a shopping area or district of Tokyo, and reveals not only Shorter's knowledge of Tokyo (the Jazz Messengers performed there), but also a personal interest in Japan. Moving on, the song features a strong, funky head with the aforementioned thunder of Blakey, particularly on the nice drum work. Nothing overtly "Oriental" appears here, too, another positive sign. Shorter's solo is also uniquely Shorter, bursting forth from the hard bop funk to play around the head with Blakey adding elements of his African-influenced percussion and well-placed 'thunder' and 'tremors.' Likewise, Freddie Hubbard's solo keeps things straight ahead, with no 'exotic' flair or touches, but, in line with Blakey's drumming and the funky head, a busy street or area of a city on a hectic day. Cedar Walton's brilliant piano solo ends things nicely, with perfect rhythmic accompaniment throughout from Blakey and Reggie Workman. Simple, funky, catchy, and fun.

As for Shorter's other work with "Japanese" or "Eastern" themes, "Infant Eyes," "Miyako," "Mahjong," and "Oriental Folk Song," obvious "Eastern" and "Japanese" lines do arise, though Miyako, like "Infant Eyes," is inspired by Shorter's biracial daughter, and not "Japanese" sounding at all but a father's love song for his daughter. Pure, lush beauty here. Shorter's "exotic Oriental" pieces are quite moving, with elements of the blues in "Oriental Folk Song," an ancient, Chinese majestic sound in "Mahjong,"and quite simply, mastery of post-bop in "House of Jade." I am sure Shorter has recorded more "Asian-themed" jazz tone poems, as I would consider them to be, but, they primarily escape simplistic jazz 'exoticism' in the works of someone such as Cal Tjader and his pseudo-Latin jazz flourishes. Moreover, like Coltrane and McCoy Tyner, one detects an element spiritual universalism in the music of Shorter, which often takes the form of homage to African and Asian cultures, bossa nova, and the magic in everyday life through mythology, darkness in the night, and fantasy. Thus, Shorter's forays into Japan and East Asian cultural and musical flavors, as well as his other broader interests and ties to African-American and African-derived influences (listen to Juju, or his work on The Freedom Rider with Blakey and Lee Morgan to see how his jazz connected to the Black Freedom Movement) and an aesthetic that, like Coltrane's, often engaged in a force of spirituality (though with stronger composing skills than Coltrane) that was grounded in quasi-ecumenism in regards to appropriating spirituality for an inclusive purposes. I wonder how many Japanese jazz fans of Shorter are aware of his debts to Japan in particular and East Asia more generally?