/ 13 October 2006

A lurid potboiler of a biography

I am Alive and You are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K Dick

by Emmanuel Carrère

The cover of Emmanuel Carrère’s biography of American science-fiction writer Philip K Dick states it is a journey “inside” his mind, while it is “into” on the title page. Is this sloppy translation by Timothy Bent from the French original, or a deliberate Phildickian moment? Carrère does warn us that his “very peculiar” book is an imaginative reconstruction based on the templates of Dick’s novels, “a man who regarded even his craziest books not as works of imagination but as factual reports”.

Carrère argues that the main motivations underpinning Dick’s life cannot be gleaned from biography or history, but from his actual novels. This approach makes for a lurid and vapid potboiler of a biography. It is undeniably provocative and entertaining because of the sensational facts of Dick’s life, such as his “compulsive monogamy” resulting in multiple marriages, and a series of prophetic visions that convinced him of the existence of an alternate reality.

Dick died just before the release of Blade Runner in 1982 turned him into the darling of Hollywood science fiction, with several major motion pictures based on his work. Sadly, many cinemagoers remain unaware that his life story is more eccentric than Hollywood could ever imagine. This is where Carrère tries to fill the gap, but his approach is by no means strange or even novel­. Michael Bishop featured Dick as a character in Philip K Dick is Dead, Alas, while Lawrence Sutin’s Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K Dick is regarded as the definitive biography.

Given his decidedly modern take on alienation and bent for prophetic visions, Dick has become a pop-cultural icon in an age fraught with millennial anxieties. Carrère teeters precariously on the Dick bandwagon.