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From: Wintermute <3mal5@qlink.queensu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Disc: Martian Time-Slip
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 01:33:01 -0600
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As the end of the month draws near, the Martian Time-Slip discussion
will begin. It should go well.
I suggest we organize the discussion under the subject heading "Disc:
Martian Time-Slip" for clarity.
Myself, I hope to begin actually reading the novel in the next day or
two, and to finish over the weekend so not to miss too much of the
discussion.
--
Wintermute <3mal5@qlink.queensu.ca>
"If I really knew how to write, I could write something that someone
could read and it would kill them." - william s. burroughs
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From: mimyandy@interlog.com (A. Taylor)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Re: Disc: Martian Time-Slip
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 00:48:58 GMT
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Wintermute <3mal5@qlink.queensu.ca> wrote:
>As the end of the month draws near, the Martian Time-Slip discussion
>will begin. It should go well.
>I suggest we organize the discussion under the subject heading "Disc:
>Martian Time-Slip" for clarity.
>Myself, I hope to begin actually reading the novel in the next day or
>two, and to finish over the weekend so not to miss too much of the
>discussion.
Are you suggesting that we restrict the discussion to ONLY one thread? I would
have thought that there would be several threads addressing different aspects of
the novel. Perhaps each with "Martian Time-Slip: Your topic Here" as a standard
header.
Any comments?
Andy
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From: bsans@wam.umd.edu (Grok )
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: desc: MT-S Characters
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 21:04:57 GMT
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One of the first things that struck me about Dick's "Martian
Time-Slip" were the incredibly familiar characters. What I mean by
that, is that it usually takes a while to develop the characters, and
a "quickie" job can be very disappointing. Dick however is able to
give us characters upon whom we can predict future actions by making
them people we are familiar with. For instance, sexist though it may
be, (even by 1964 standards!) We know what kind of life Silvia Bohlen
lives by page 10! We have met her before, either as someone we know,
or someone we have seen portrayed on television. We are aware of her
level of boredom which can be attributed to gender discriminations as
well as to personal lack of initiative. With the Steiner's we are only
given foreshadowing, but it is of a srtong variety. We know this
because we have had or seen neighbors just like them.
As humans we are aware of the existence of such people even if we have
never seen them. It is part of the occidental paradigm. Then, once
again, starting at page 17 in my text and contiueing until page 26 we
have all we need to know about Arnie Kott, the Union boss. Dick plays
on our emotional/cultural response level in such a way that our own
cognitive biases take over as the author of the text. Through
nominalism we "re-present" the stories characters. At least this has
been my conclusion based on past conversations about Dick's style.
___ _ ____ _ ___
/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \ "Hey Rocky!
| _|@ @ __ | Watch me pull some intelligence
\________/ | | \________/ out of the InterNet!"
__/ _/ "But that trick never works."
/) (o _/ "This time for sure."
\____/ bsans@wam.umd.edu
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~bsans/
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From: 5mw1@qlink.queensu.ca (Moira Watson)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Re: desc: MT-S Characters
Date: 1 Mar 1996 01:58:02 GMT
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In article <4h54e4$jh7@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>,
Grok wrote:
> One of the first things that struck me about Dick's "Martian
> Time-Slip" were the incredibly familiar characters. What I mean by
> that, is that it usually takes a while to develop the characters,
> and a "quickie" job can be very disappointing.
Right now I'm reading A Maze of Death and doing a second read of MTS
(it's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm unfortunately behind
schedule). The most striking difference in style between the two is
the degree to which we are permitted to know the characters (in Maze
of Death, we barely get time to internalize even names before they
die.) I agree that Dick does an excellent job of introducing the
characters to us quickly in MTS -- but he had to do this because the
novel revolves around what is happening to the characters internally.
The gradual revelation of Arnie Kott in particular fascinated me.
Manfred we've met in one guise or another in other Dick works --
Sylvia as well. Usually my biggest problem with Dick is his depiction
of the female characters (even when vintage is taken into account),
but I didn't find him unsympathetic towards Sylvia.
> Through nominalism we "re-present" the stories characters. At
> least this has been my conclusion based on past conversations about
> Dick's style.
Nicely put. I just wish that 'Manny' weren't so ingrained in me from
Divine Invasion that I found myself doing this on the basis of name
alone :)
--
moira \ <5mw1@qlink.queensu.ca>
Random Sig: \
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
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From: 5mw1@qlink.queensu.ca (Moira Watson)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: MTS: children
Date: 1 Mar 1996 02:00:48 GMT
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Just something that struck me on my first read of MTS...
The children born on Mars are characterized as tending to
reclusiveness, having "a large-eyed, taunted look, as if they were
starved for somthing as yet invisible." It is not mentioned at what
age this becomes noticable. Kott at one point decries his wife's lack
of physical affection for Manfred as a possible cause for his autism.
While Kott does not seem overly believable, I'd argue that if the
logic is applied to their society and the children that are not
anomolous, it might hold.
When reading about the teaching machines, I couldn't help but thing of
M$ bob -- and the host of sanitized CD-ROM encylopedias together; of
TV and segas. Essentially, these 'starved' children are nurtured and
shaped by the machines.
--
moira \ <5mw1@qlink.queensu.ca>
Random Sig: \
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
the soul of the boy sitting next to me. -- Woody Allen
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From: ewa1@rci.rutgers.edu (Ed Angelina)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Disc: MTS -- Construction of time and linear narrative in MTS
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 04:02:08 GMT
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(Page number references in the following are to the 1964
Ballantine version of Martian Time Slip, in its 1981 printing.
Since everybody else is probably using Vintage, I'm also including
chapter references, so we'll be in the same ballpark. I apologize
if this sounds very academic, but that's how I get when you give
me a couple of weeks to think about what I'll say. I'm throwing
this all out to the group to get things started, and give people
something to respond to.)
The thing I most remembered about Martian Time Slip was the way
the structure of the novel works to undermine (even deconstruct)
linear time and narrative. But the thing that most struck me upon
rereading it for this discussion was the way that Dick goes to
such lengths to meticulously establish and construct linear time
and narrative in the book. Let me explain.
Look at the very opening of the book. Sylvia wakes up, groggy,
from her drug-induced sleep, and notices "Time by the clock:
nine-thirty" (Ch. 1, p. 7). Then " 'Mom, the ditch rider's here!'
Then this must be Wednesday" (Ch. 1, p. 7). The passage of time,
hour by hour and day by day, the schedules and cycles of the
world, have all gone on, despite Sylvia obliviousness to it all.
They are the concrete reality to which she awakes. Over and over
in the opening paragraphs Dick returns to time, to schedules and
cycles which maintain the structure of the world: "This was 1994,
the second week in August. They had waited eleven days, and now
they would receive their share of water" (Ch. 1, p. 8), and ". . .
in the center of the visor of his cap was a red star. It was the
Russians' turn, this time; she had lost track" (Ch. 1, p. 8).
We cut to the next scene: Jack at work. A few pages into it, we
get this: "Looking at his watch, Jack saw that it was ten
o'clock. At this moment, as he recalled from his visits and his
son's accounts, David was with the Aristotle" (Ch. 1, p. 15). Not
only are reminded of the reliable cycles of the our schedules and
the schedules of those with whom we interact; also, the strict and
close chronology is established between the previous scene with
Sylvia and this one with Jack. Then Chapter 2 begins by telling
us that Arnie "rose from his bed at ten in the morning and as was
his custom strolled directly to the steam bath" (Ch. 2, p. 17).
Again, schedules and routines, linear passage of time makes the
world around us orderly and comprehensible. And again, the
narrative itself adheres to a brutally strict and explicit
chronological structure.
After this, however, things become very gradually less strict and
explicit. In fact, the breakdown of linear narrative begins, in
very subtle way, as early as the end of the second chapter. We
hear about the distress call for the Bleekman in the desert twice,
from two different perspectives. The overlap and double-vision,
which will later become multiple-vision, is showing up in small
ways. The focus on Norbert Steiner lacks the reassuring
references to time; this is appropriate, since he is confused,
lost in the world, unable to create an ordered relationship
between himself in the world around. This culminates, of course,
in his suicide.
But the chronology returns, less precise, but carefully
established, as Mrs. Steiner is alerted to her husband's suicide,
and as Arnie sees the aftermath of the suicide. And then finally,
Arnie and Anne go out for lunch, re-establishing the role of all
these events in the overall chronology. Late morning has become
midday, and the threat to strictly linear narrative, which doubles
as the threat of schizophrenia, as an inability to bridge the gap
between you subjective perceptions and the world around you, is
avoided, though only temporarily.
This gets us through Chapter 4. It isn't until the middle of
Chapter 5 that we encounter the first flashback in the book, as
Jack recalls his previous schizophrenic episode. This is about 60
pages of text structured around something like strict and
objective linearity of time, which is pretty remarkable in any
Dick novel. His distinctive use of multiple third-person point of
view in his novels tends to always draw the world as seen by
individual characters, in a subjective way. We don't see through
their eyes and identify with them, but rather we look over their
shoulder and temporarily share their view of reality with them,
including moments of introspective flashback. Here, Dick has
avoided that, shifting perspectives, but turning to the passage of
time to maintain a bedrock of (seeming) objectivity on which his
narrative is based. Only in the middle of Chapter 5 does that
bedrock begin to crumble, as Dick fails to follow a linear
narrative movement, and it is significant that it does so with a
recollection of a moment of schizophrenia, which Jack himself
suspects to be a break in his individual participation in the
linear flow of time.
I won't continue with the blow-by-blow, and I don't really need to
in order to make my point. It's clear that the structure of the
story is breaking down, that the linear narrative is fall apart,
around the middle of the book, in Chapter 8 or so, when we begin
to start seeing things from Manfred's perspective. And (as I've
argued earlier in this group) the plot itself, and the structure
of the narrative break down in brilliant unison. The point I'm
making now, however, is that this clever wedding of form and
content doesn't only occur in the second half of the book, when
the deviations from linear narrative in the form parallel the
widening schizophrenic inability to participate in the linear flow
of time in the content; it occurs from the first paragraph of the
book, where schizophrenia is held in check not only by individual
characters' ritualistic adherence to the linear passage of the
time, but also by the narrative's strictly linear form.
And the point of all of this? Well, it's Dick's recurring point,
come back in a new way. The passage of time is not the stuff of
reality. It is something that must be constructed, ritualized,
repeated to ourselves and to one another, over and over, to keep
us sane. Or, in other words, sanity is not participation in the
real, but participation in a carefully crafted and fragile shared
vision of the world. Even more, every inward turn, each personal
reflection on the past (or worse, each inexplicable vision of a
possible future) is not only a break with linear time, but it is a
withdrawal from this shared vision into a subjectivity which
always threatens to become solipsism. That is, after all, what
Manfred's autism represents: a total withdrawal from a shared
perception of the world. And it is what Jack's schizophrenia
represents as well: what makes him different from those around is
simply that he's too tired to continue to go through the motions
of constantly rebuilding his fraying corner of the shared reality.
Simply put, the question is Dick's recurring question: What is
real? The answer is that there is, ultimately, no answer, but
that our sanity depends on, and is in fact the same thing as,
making ourselves believe in a shared reality which doesn't exist
at all.
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From: bsans@wam.umd.edu (Grok )
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Re: Disc: MTS -- Construction of time and linear narrative in MTS
Date: Sun, 03 Mar 1996 03:38:40 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland College Park
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ewa1@rci.rutgers.edu (Ed Angelina) wrote:
First of all I would like to applaud Mr. Angelina for hitting the nail
on the literary head in his analysis. As I read along I was able to
anticipate many of the directions in which he was headed.
>The thing I most remembered about Martian Time Slip was the way
>the structure of the novel works to undermine (even deconstruct)
>linear time and narrative. But the thing that most struck me upon
>rereading it for this discussion was the way that Dick goes to
>such lengths to meticulously establish and construct linear time
>and narrative in the book.
I think one of the purposes for his demonstrations of linear time, or
"chronophonism" was to provide contrast with its alternative. He was
also demonstrating to us the folly of chronophonism as well. Dick uses
time as an "agent", that is to say that time becomes a causal force,
and Dick is very carefully avoiding a "celebration" of chronophonism.
>Again, schedules and routines, linear passage of time makes the
>world around us orderly and comprehensible. And again, the
>narrative itself adheres to a brutally strict and explicit
>chronological structure.
This is true. And as Mr. Angelina states later, all of this is a
construct. Until recent times clock had only one hand. We did not
need to break time down into smaller units than the hour. Our concept
of time is imaginary. Can we really break time down into increasingly
smaller sections? I don't know, and nobody else does either, but we
can break our image of time into as many smaller sections as we
wish...it is our invention after all.
>After this, however, things become very gradually less strict and
>explicit. In fact, the breakdown of linear narrative begins, in
>very subtle way, as early as the end of the second chapter. We
>hear about the distress call for the Bleekman in the desert twice,
>from two different perspectives. The overlap and double-vision,
>which will later become multiple-vision, is showing up in small
>ways. The focus on Norbert Steiner lacks the reassuring
>references to time; this is appropriate, since he is confused,
>lost in the world, unable to create an ordered relationship
>between himself in the world around. This culminates, of course,
>in his suicide.
Dick is de-centering the story at this point. He is forcing our
attention onto the margins of the story. As to Norbert's suicide
though, I feel that it was more the result of Norbert's rejection of
the ordered world of societies "shared reality". The world does make
sense to him, and he chooses not to live with that reality. It is
possible though that Norbert subjectively sees it as being a matter of
society rejecting/ejecting him from the shared reality where society
offered a haven for his son Manfred.
> We don't see through
>their eyes and identify with them, but rather we look over their
>shoulder and temporarily share their view of reality with them,
>including moments of introspective flashback.
I was pleasantly surprised and delitghted that My Angelina has
mentioned this perspective. In earlier postings it was spoken of as if
time itself was experiencing a hick-up. In a way this is true, but we
ourselves experience this everytime we gain understanding of the point
of view of the "other". When we look back on a past event and we all
of a sudden see it from "their" perspective, time seems to hick-up for
us.
>The point I'm
>making now, however, is that this clever wedding of form and
>content doesn't only occur in the second half of the book, when
>the deviations from linear narrative in the form parallel the
>widening schizophrenic inability to participate in the linear flow
>of time in the content; it occurs from the first paragraph of the
>book, where schizophrenia is held in check not only by individual
>characters' ritualistic adherence to the linear passage of the
>time, but also by the narrative's strictly linear form.
Is it actually held in check, or is linear time concepts and beliefs
only masking it from those who are subjectively experiencing it?
>The passage of time is not the stuff of
>reality. It is something that must be constructed, ritualized,
>repeated to ourselves and to one another, over and over, to keep
>us sane.
Or is it so we can have others support our belief systems? This
construct is a "hyper-reality", meaning that the *model* is more real
than the reality it supposedly re-presents.
>Or, in other words, sanity is not participation in the
>real, but participation in a carefully crafted and fragile shared
>vision of the world. Even more, every inward turn, each personal
>reflection on the past (or worse, each inexplicable vision of a
>possible future) is not only a break with linear time, but it is a
>withdrawal from this shared vision into a subjectivity which
>always threatens to become solipsism.
This is true, and when these *breaks* occur the characters literally
implode, thus destroying their shared reality and isolating them from
their peers. Manfred alone seems to escape this ultimate implosion by
removing himself from the oppressive, occidental notion of linear time
and taking to the hills with the "Noble Savages" that live there. As
an anthropologist I must comment on Dick's usage of the 19th century
concept of the Noble Savage. I think he used this in order to
reinforce the vision of the European Colonist of a past period. The
"history repeats itself" story line. This is further supported by
Kott's use of the word nigger when descibing the natives.
>That is, after all, what
>Manfred's autism represents: a total withdrawal from a shared
>perception of the world. And it is what Jack's schizophrenia
>represents as well: what makes him different from those around is
>simply that he's too tired to continue to go through the motions
>of constantly rebuilding his fraying corner of the shared reality.
>Simply put, the question is Dick's recurring question: What is
>real? The answer is that there is, ultimately, no answer, but
>that our sanity depends on, and is in fact the same thing as,
>making ourselves believe in a shared reality which doesn't exist
>at all.
The act of grounding ones inquiries or thoughts on pre-given
principles assumed true beyond a mere belief or unexamined practice
(such as our notions of linear time) is called foundationalism.
Questions of fact, truth, correctness, validity, and clarity can
neither be posed nor answered.
All in all Dick's story is paralogical. He attempts to destabilize the
language game of Truth.
___ _ ____ _ ___
/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \__/ \ "Hey Rocky!
| _|@ @ __ | Watch me pull some intelligence
\________/ | | \________/ out of the InterNet!"
__/ _/ "But that trick never works."
/) (o _/ "This time for sure."
\____/ bsans@wam.umd.edu
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~bsans/
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From: dougmackey@aol.com (Dougmackey)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Re: Disc: MTS -- Construction of time and linear narrative in MTS
Date: 4 Mar 1996 01:53:39 -0500
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In article <4h5t5v$43s@nn.fast.net>, ewa1@rci.rutgers.edu (Ed Angelina)
writes:
> That is, after all, what
>Manfred's autism represents: a total withdrawal from a shared
>perception of the world. And it is what Jack's schizophrenia
>represents as well: what makes him different from those around is
>simply that he's too tired to continue to go through the motions
>of constantly rebuilding his fraying corner of the shared reality.
Let's also consider Arnie Kott. We can tell early on that he's being set
up for a fall because he's such a control freak. But in his own way he
questions the consensual shared reality. He is not afraid to try to bend
time itself to his own ends, easily discarding the mindset about the
necessary linearity of time. As unreflective as he is about many things,
and self-centered as he is, he is relatively unconstrained by conventional
notions of time: without much help he quickly intuits and accepts the
existence of the time distortions of schizophrenia posited in the book. Of
course he hardly understands what he is getting into, and ultimately dies
thinking he is still trapped in Manfred's illusory universe. Was he wrong?
We are led to believe that at that point, he had escaped from it, that the
universe that he died in was the "real" one, independent of anyone's
subjectivity. However, there is always an implication in Dick that there
is no such thing as an objective reality divorced from the subjective
element; Ubik is the classic example. In MTS there is still some hope that
a sane world exists outside the inherent insanity of the individual "idios
kosmos." as Dick put it, the individual universe which when cut off from
other human beings turns to gubbish. There is the hope that in
reestablishing links with other people (as in Jack and Sylvia's
reconciliation at the end) lies a kind of redemption, and a reintegration
with a shared bond of kindness and love, although gaining a permanent
sense of "reality" may be impossible after what characters like Jack and
Manfred have experienced.
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From: u9418672@muss.cis.McMaster.CA (J.W. Scott)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: MTS: Miscellaneous
Date: 3 Mar 1996 16:23:43 -0500
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Literary criticism generally bores me to tears but I know what I like etc
etc etc... Anyhow, there's this one part of MTS that really sticks with
me and I don't know why. Namely, the instructions Heliogabalus writes
down on a card for Arnie Kott's pilgrimage to Dirty Knobby.
The card reads:
(1) Enter chamber.
(2) Light fire.
(3) Turn on portable radio to 574 kc.
(4) Take Nembutal (boy not take).
(5) Throw enclosed packet on fire.
What is Dick doing here, consciously or otherwise?? Whatever it is, it
works. That is, at the point in a sci-fi novel where an explanation of an
impossible phenomenon is called for, the author conventionally chooses
between either a mechanistic pseudo-scientific explanation (the hard
sci-fi paradigm), or going for (relying on) a fantastical
suspension-of-disbelief (the "magic" paradigm). But somehow at the
aforementioned point in MTS Dick escapes deciding.
Perhaps, the effectiveness of this part of the book comes from Dick's
successful subversion of this distinction. Resultantly the reader is
surprised and made disoriented. But there's more to it, something ominous
about the words on the card, tying into the enigmatic Heliogabulus
character, that I can't quite place...
--JW
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From: proff@suburbia.net (Julian Assange)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: MTS in not available in Australia
Date: 5 Mar 1996 00:34:10 GMT
Organization: AUSNet Services pty. ltd.
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Does anyone have a spare copy, or know where I can otherwise locate this
book in this country?
--
"I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's
admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even
considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So
I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we
can make it. You get me?" - Leo Burlero/PKD
+---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+
|Julian Assange RSO | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union |
|proff@suburbia.net | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID = |
|proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 |
+---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+
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From: 5mw1@qlink.queensu.ca (Moira Watson)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Re: MST - Heliogabalus, Manfred & Schizophrenia
Date: 12 Mar 1996 12:56:28 GMT
Organization: http://supernova.uwindsor.ca/staff/watson6/
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Message-ID: <4i3s9s$a90@knot.queensu.ca>
References: <4hqhmk$enk@clarknet.clark.net>
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My apologies if this shows up twice. We had newsserver problems on
the weekend and this apparently did not get off-site.
====================================================================
In article <4hqhmk$enk@clarknet.clark.net>, wrote:
Sorry I've ducked out for so long... been a busy couple weeks :(
A little off-topic from this, but still to do with the Bleekmen...
What struck me most while reading MTS was how everyone but the
Bleekmen and Manfred were concerned with the passage of time only with
respect to their current place in it. Would they have water *today*?
Will the UN nose in on my position of power in the near future? While
the Bleekmen seemed so unconcerned about the now that they would
wander the desert with so few supplies that their immediate survival
was not even ensure and Manfred was terrified not of his current
situtation, but of a future that was tangible to him at the present.
Arnie is so caught up with what he thinks is the now, that he cannot
distinguish it from his/Manfred's vision at near the end of the book.
He doesn't even understand that he is dying, or that the reason he is
dying is a result of another short-sighted decision (to destroy a
competitor, Otto). When presented with the opportunity to see the
future through Dirty Knobby, Kott can only thing to alter the past to
change his present. Even the teaching machines, despite the fact they
depict historical figures, skirt around the passage of time. Here are
simulacrums represting almost every era of (esp) Western civilization,
yet they are all together in one building, all speaking English and
accessible to a group of schoolchildren. No wonder Jack has problems
dealing with them.
> Personally, I take Helio's comments as very insightful when combined
> with the passages of Manfred's schizophrenia. Manfred looks inside
> himself for meaning, sees the deconstruction of his own life, the
> horror of AM-WEB and deals with them. He finds some people he can
> communicate with, some Bleekmen, and he goes with them. Leaving
> humanity and the UN to sweat Mars' development. Maybe in the world
> of the MTS, Manfred really is the only one who is correct.
The sequences in which the evening at Arnie's (starting in Chapter 10)
are played out from a number of different perspectives also speak to
this. Manfred can look past the events of the evening and sees that
one of the men will be dead. This information was also available to
Jack, but no one but Manfred is willing to fight against what they may
see as fate -- there is nothing but a very basic level of
contemplation about what results their actions may bring about.
Manfred is fighting his fate from the beginning... for him time is not
linear -- but neither is it a loop; it is changable.
--
moira \ <5mw1@qlink.queensu.ca>
Random Sig: \
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
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From: mimyandy@interlog.com (A. Taylor)
Newsgroups: alt.books.phil-k-dick
Subject: Re: MST - Heliogabalus, Manfred & Schizophrenia
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 17:50:43 GMT
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allegro@clark.net wrote:
> One of the most striking things in MTS to me is the insightfullness
>of Knott's butler Heliogabalus. In chapter six, as Arnie Knott is
>degrading Helio for giving up his own religion, and the two are
>discussing Schizophrenia, Helio comes up with what in my opinion is
>the central mental illness theme in much of Dick's fiction: "Question
>[psychoanalysts] never deal with is, what to remold sick person like.
>There is no what, mister."
Reading your post, I was reminded of the scene where Jack Bohlen is at the
school working on the teaching machines. Jack expresses what it is about the
teaching machines disgusts him. (Page 72 of the Vintage edition)
"The school was there not to inform or educate but to mold, and along severely
limited lines. It was the link to their inherited culture, and it peddled that
culture, in its entirety, to the young. It bent its pupils to it; perpetuation
of the culture was the goal, and any special quirks in the children which might
lead them in another direction had to be ironed out."
Dick goes on to comment about how the battle to bend the children their will
causes the mental problems they are experiencing.
"A child who did not properly respond was assumed to be autistic -- that is,
oriented according to a subjective factor that took prececdence over his sense
of objective reality. And thta child wound up by being expelled from the school;
he went, after, to another sort of school entirely, on desidned to rehabilitate
him; he went to Camp Ben-Gurion. He could not be taught; he could only be dealt
with as ill."
Jack clarifies this stream of thought when he gets into an arguement with Kindly
Dad arguing that its the teaching machines and public schools that are destined
to rear a new generation schizophrenics. (pg 85)
"You're going to split the psyches of these children because you're teaching
them to expect an environment which doesn't exist for them. It doesn't even
exist back on Earth, now; it's obsolete."
This all relates to Helioglabulas quote that you cited earlier. The children of
the planet are sick and attempts to remold them in the shape of Earth children
is a misguided experiment. Despite Arnie Kott's contempt of Helioglabaus'
answer we see how aware Arnie is of the situation early on in the novel when he
describes how life has changed the settlers of Mars and that children born on
Mars have a peculiar air about them. He describes his son and his nephew, both
residents of Camp B-G, as follows (pg 24):
"The children had a large-eyed haunted look, as if they were starved for
something as yet invisible. They tended to be reclusive if given half a chance,
wandering off to poke about in the wastelands."
As always with Dick and his novels much of what he is saying can also be applied
to contemporary civilization. I think what Dick is saying about the education
system bending students to their will is a very apt description of how it really
is.
Andy