A review by isabellarobinson7
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

1.5

Rating: 1.5 stars

Something monumental has occurred. Make note of this day. Mark your calendars. I read a Philip K. Dick book I actively disliked. Yes. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, my seventh book by the author, was officially a dud. I mean, I suppose it was bound to happen, but I just didn't expect it to be one of his most famous.

Now, seven books in, I am used to what I call the “Philip K. Dick Wife”. She is usually the wife/partner/mistress of the main male character and she doesn’t do much. But this is a whole other thing. I recently read We Can Remember It for You Wholesale/Total Recall (well, I read that after Palmer Eldritch, but because I took so long to publish this review, it is before for me who is currently writing this section) and that had the most cardboard cut-out, one-dimensional wife I have ever seen from PKD. And yet, I almost prefer that to the women in Palmer Eldritch. They were constantly objectified and treated as eye candy throughout the entire novel. I even have proof:

"She had a narrow, erect body, a truly superb carriage, Barney noted, and small, up-jutting breasts with nipples no larger than matched pink peas. Or rather matched pink pearls, he corrected himself."

" 'Do you think I'm pretty?' Rising on her toes she all at once stretched, reached above her head, then, to his amazement, began to do a brisk series of exercises, hopping and leaping, her breasts bobbing.
'I certainly do,' he murmured, taken aback."

Yep. And those two quotes are both from a single page. And it's page five. You get five pages into this book before you encounter the misogyny. And to prove how wide spread these kind of lines were throughout the book, this one is from page 284, a measly two pages from the end:

"...she was blonde and pretty, with green eyes the texture of good polished stones, and when she bent forward her articulated, spherical breasts were partially exposed."

These characters seem to be ogling the chest of every women they come across. (I mean, at least we now know whether PKD was a boobs or butt kind of guy.) Because even when the women were not in a sexual environment or surrounding any kind of promiscuous behaviour, the size of their chest is almost invariably brought up.

"She eyed him, and her bosom, already overextended and enticing, became even more so; it expanded with indignation."

For context, this is talking about a secretary. This man sees her in the office regularly and is not romantically involved or attracted to her in any way. All this is said during a normal, run of the mill conversation between two ordinary people, one just happens to be female. The scene has absolutely nothing to do with this woman's sex appeal. Yet still she's described like this. And just to clarify, no men are described in a sexual manner whatsoever. This is all completely one sided.

Now you can blame the time period in which the book was written for all this, but in my opinion, that excuse holds little to no weight. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was published in 1964, and an entire decade before that, Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings without a trace of any kind of sexist bigotry. I bring this up to compare the way that Tolkien writes his female characters to the way PKD does in Palmer Eldritch. Because all this is not to say that women can't be described as attractive. They most certainly can. It's about the way their beauty is described. This is a passage from The Two Towers, and marks the first time Aragorn sees Éowyn:

"Grave and thoughtful was her glance, as she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood."

Writing style aside, you can see how Éowyn is indeed described as beautiful, but is not objectified, nor her characteristics confined to her outward appearance. Her breasts are not mentioned. Her figure is barely touched on. Aragorn - a man - is the one who sees her as good looking, yes, but it is not said in a lustful manner. So it was and is very possible to introduce an attractive woman without the misogynistic undertone in lines like "if she was as good in bed as she looked" from PKD. (A direct quote. I am not kidding.)

And of course, PKD doesn't stop at that. To top all the sexism off, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch even has this wonderful display of blatant racism:

"After all, Hepburn-Gilbert, that dark-skinned sneaky little unevolved politician, hadn't exactly said that.
That's what you find yourself involved in when you talk to the UN, Leo reflected. Afro-Asian politics. A swamp. It's run, staffed, directed by foreigners. He glared at the blank vidscreen."

There is no way in which you can interpret that without it sounding really questionable, regardless of when it was written.

Ok, I am essentially writing a dissertation now, so I better wind down and talk about something else. Maybe about how I didn’t really get the Chew-Z thing. I got that Can-D was a play on the word "candy", but when it came to Chew-Z, I was reading it “chew ZED” and didn't get that it was supposed to sound like "chewsy" or "choosy". But that's not PKD's fault... that's just the US's fault for not wanting to be like the other girls.

So with all that going on from cover to cover, it is unsurprising that I found it difficult to actually pay attention to what The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was actually about. I suppose you can say that it simply wasn't interesting enough to over shadow the sexism. It was too distracting. It also didn't help that the dude worked at a place called P. P. Layouts... and when you listen to the audiobook... it sounds like "peepee". I know, I'm a child... but... it said peepee *giggles*