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A review by kurtiskozel
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
1.0
This book rung a bell, but it didn't toll for me.
I didn't find the characters nor scattered plot compelling, nor the themes interesting enough to be praised. The book flitted from on scene to another, one subject to another, and it felt like something that would only be understood by someone who read this in reminiscence; as if every moment had some power of lived memory behind it.
For example, the whole narrative was actively hurt by the investigation sub-plot. it was a completely impotent distraction that drew me out of being able to "live" within the world and seemed completely unnecessary from the start. If I were the writer, I would have completely dropped all of the science fiction (scatter suit, Substance D, etc) and political, investigative genre tropes and focused on: degeneracy, love-romance, relationships, and character change. The rest just didn't give me anything I wanted to have.
I can say, to it's credit, the idea of living a life not your own, unknown to either side of yourself, was fascinating and the most salient of any theme in the book. However, I still find it underexplored and largely impotent. Honestly, not to draw too strong of a comparison, but Fight Club did this much better.
I have never been more sure that I would enjoy a book much more on a second read. Having finished it, I'll make my mea culpa and admit there were explorations on PKD's identity-empathy-reality themes found in the other work of his I've read (Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?) that I'm highly tempted to go back and review that I more or less missed on the first pass. However, considering the narrative they're found in... I'll just go on to his other works.
For me, this "gritty" encapsulation of an under-class, drug-fueled quasi-science fiction seemed muddled from the start. I am sure this is meaningful for some, but not at all for me.
I didn't find the characters nor scattered plot compelling, nor the themes interesting enough to be praised. The book flitted from on scene to another, one subject to another, and it felt like something that would only be understood by someone who read this in reminiscence; as if every moment had some power of lived memory behind it.
For example, the whole narrative was actively hurt by the investigation sub-plot. it was a completely impotent distraction that drew me out of being able to "live" within the world and seemed completely unnecessary from the start. If I were the writer, I would have completely dropped all of the science fiction (scatter suit, Substance D, etc) and political, investigative genre tropes and focused on: degeneracy, love-romance, relationships, and character change. The rest just didn't give me anything I wanted to have.
I can say, to it's credit, the idea of living a life not your own, unknown to either side of yourself, was fascinating and the most salient of any theme in the book. However, I still find it underexplored and largely impotent. Honestly, not to draw too strong of a comparison, but Fight Club did this much better.
I have never been more sure that I would enjoy a book much more on a second read. Having finished it, I'll make my mea culpa and admit there were explorations on PKD's identity-empathy-reality themes found in the other work of his I've read (Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?) that I'm highly tempted to go back and review that I more or less missed on the first pass. However, considering the narrative they're found in... I'll just go on to his other works.
For me, this "gritty" encapsulation of an under-class, drug-fueled quasi-science fiction seemed muddled from the start. I am sure this is meaningful for some, but not at all for me.