The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
“A great and calamitous sequence of arguments with the universe: poignant, terrifying, ludicrous, and brilliant. The Exegesis is the sort of book associated with legends and madmen, but Dick wasn’t a legend and he wasn’t mad. He lived among us, and was a genius.”—Jonathan Lethem
Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the final presentation of Dick’s brilliant, and epic work.
In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called “2-3-74,” a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe “transformed into information.” In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary experiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels known as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with moments in Dick’s life and work.
Read an excerpt from THE EXEGESIS OF PHILIP K DICK.
so how is this different from In the Pursuit of VALIS: Selections from the Exegesis? is it the same material? an honest sequel (or second part in the series)? if I own the first one, why should I buy the second?
I believe In Pursuit of VALIS is somewhere under 300 pages, while The Exegesis is a little over 1,000. The Exegesis gives a much more complete picture of what the Exegesis is, and what it was to Dick. It’s also selected and annotated by a group of scholars, instead of selected by just one person.
Hi, A quick question; At the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt website that announces the publication of “The Exegesis” it notes that the “publisher plans to launch program with two-volume unpublished master work…” ["http://www.hmhco.com/content/houghton-mifflin-harcourt-acquires-philip-k-dick-library]. It is also noted in the book itself that this will be ‘an annotated two-volume abridgement…” So, is another volume in the works? Any idea when it might be published? Thanks.
Hi, We’d originally planned for this to be two volumes, but later changed it to one big volume to keep the total cost to consumers down, among other reasons. So no, no second volume in the works any longer.