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 Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Nicholas 
Date:   03-23-05 06:30


Hi all.

I've just dived back into Philip Dick, having spent the last years with Asimov etc.

Yesterday I finished 'The Man In The High Castle', and maybe I was tired or something, but I just didn't get the ending at all. She comes to 'the high castle', and meet the writer, but what does it mean? That the I Ching said that his book was right?

Thanks for your time,

Nicholas
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Aaron Barlow 
Date:   03-23-05 13:36

There are lots of ways...

That "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy," where the allies won the war, is the "truth" and that the world of "The Man in the High Castle" is fiction is one. Of course, that doesn't work, for the world of TGLH certainly isn't "our" world.

Oh well!
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: MY 
Date:   03-26-05 16:19

"...They read an American book and want me to explain it to them; they hope that I, a white man, can give them the answer. And I try? But in this case I can’t, although had I read it, I no doubt could...

...Both he and Betty looked sad, Robert Childan thought. He wondered if they, too, sensed the unbridgeable gap between themselves and him. Hope so, he thought. They deserve to. A shame - just have to ferret out book’s message on their own."

(The Man in the High Castle, chapter 7)
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Mercer 
Date:   03-30-05 15:52

Dick famously wrote about the ending of the novel as he allowed the I-Ching to give him the answer while he composed the end of the novel - even he felt cheated by the ending.
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Lord RC 
Date:   03-31-05 13:40

As Aaron says, there's lots of ways... I look at it as an analogy: "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" is to THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE as THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is to our world. In other words, the simple fact is that THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is the truth -- We *lost* World War 2. We've been bamboozled into thinking we won. And, you know, looking at the world today and the police state the USA is becoming, this novel by PKD could well represent the truth (and not the penultimate truth either...)
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Henning Strandin 
Date:   04-02-05 12:28

As with so much of Dick's work, it's the dynamics of the inquiry that is the substance. I think I worked my way through my first ten Dick novels out of pure frustration. What does the ending in Flow My Tears mean? Don't look for a conclusion. Don't look for a simple twist. Even when there is one, it's ultimately just as deconstructable as the original version you had of events. And _that_ is the PKD lesson.

"Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing."
--Patricia Churchland
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Ross RWBALCOM@aol.com 
Date:   04-03-05 23:51

The reductionistic Patricia Churchland line tells me more about her than about the actual marvels of the nervous system. What a debased bitch.
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Henning Strandin 
Date:   04-04-05 19:47

My signature quote was obviously not meant to drive people into a spit-flying hate frenzy and I apologize for that--but let's not make this thread about Churchland's philosophy. If someone has something more interesting to say about her than that she's a bitch, I wouldn't mind contributing to another thread with that topic.

"Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing."
--Patricia Churchland
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Ian 
Date:   04-05-05 13:11

I think Henning more or less encapsulated the best philosophy to adopt when reading Dick. Don't do it for the punchline, do it for the journey and for what you may learn whilst on it.
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: lowenzahn 
Date:   04-05-05 14:50

That chick was really a man, er, I mean, man what a good movie.
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Mercer 
Date:   04-07-05 17:05

well said Ian, and I also just noticed how woefully incoherent my last post on this thread was, i apologise!
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 Re: Just read 'Man In The High Castle', please help!
Author: Zanti Prison Guard 
Date:   04-23-05 15:51

My advice is, read VALIS. Then you'll get the ending of The Man in the High Castle.

"The Empire never ended."

'nuff said.
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