Thursday, October 13, 2005

I am Alive and You are Dead A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick

This book was a fascinating read about an author named Philip K. Dick who was a very uncommon breed. Carrere takes the reader through the journey of this man’s life from the infant death of his twin sister, to the multiple marriages he experienced, to his upsetting lonely death. Throughout all of this, the reader learns of how involved the human brain can truly be, especially in the case of Philip K. Dick.

Although I had never read any of Philip K. Dick’s work before, Emanuel Carrere’s depiction of his life was quite interesting. However, in Carrere’s book, there was some confusion between the descriptions of Dick‘s actual life, and the parts which were only the autobiographical aspects that he had written about in his own novels. The “journey into the mind of Philip K. Dick” was a fascinating journey to take, and without giving too much away, I do not think that any regular person really knows someone of Philip’s character. Perhaps there are some aspects of his enigmatic mind that each one of us holds, but the intricacy that was described in Carrere’s creative way held a hazy difference between the reality and the imaginary. Perhaps these two things can be easily confused, as they seem to have been by Dick, in my opinion. Either way, Carrere wrote an impressive memoir that showed all of the details of Philip K. Dick’s life, when really picked through, and I can assume that the other authors who have written about him could not have done nearly as good of a job.

Rating (0 - 10 scale): 8
Reviewer Age: 16
Reviewer City, State and Country: Towson, Maryland USA