#1 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Of Philip K. Dick's novel and of its world and characters
When thinking about a novel, which includes talking about it, one thinks about how the novel makes us feel— I enjoyed it, it was thrilling, I was bored, etc.— or about what it makes us think— what is PKD trying to say in this novel? The first is low hanging fruit since we have immediate access to our feelings. If I'm bored, I'm bored, and not only can I do nothing about the feeling, I can't even do anything about feeling that feeling. In other words, I cannot be unaware of it. Thinking about it is harder than considering my feelings of it because it involves work that we prefer to reserve for the office or the classroom. Thinking is often fun when in the form of games, like playing games of chess or solving crossword puzzles, but thinking about literature is not something one does unless one has to. Fortunately, something like fun emerges when talking and engaging with others about books, particularly when those others are good company to be around and to engage with.
Engagement with the public in the form of this essay is rather abstract. I don't know if anyone will ever read this, and if they do, I may not hear a response, and if I do hear a response, the responder may not be one of that pleasant company with whom I like to engage. The impetus to write must then be some other motivation than the joy genial exchange. Fortunately for me, I don't have to choose between those motivations as I am able to discuss these thoughts with my friends in person, and for now at least, this essay serves as a prelude to that discussion (which is not to say that self expression and mental challenge cannot be their own rewards).
But back to that low hanging fruit: enjoyment of the novel is mixed. The novel is easier to read than more abstract novels like Joyce’s Ulysses or Pynchon's Gravity’s Rainbow. If Socrates was correct that pleasure is the absence of pain, then the pleasure I find in reading PKD’s novel of putting down the heavy mental weights of the former, but I have to be honest and admit that in addition to relief, the novel also feels claustrophobic.
In PKD’s novel, the whole fate of the solar system relies on only three protagonists. I tend to prefer novels where even when the protagonists are of no smal consequence, like Gandolf in Lord of the Rings or Paul Muad’dib in Dune, there's still an awareness that these powerful characters are part of a more complicated, vast world. Certainly, in our own history, men of power like Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Hitler had great impact on society and subsequent historical development, but we are still conscious that they are part of a larger, complex society and are not gods, no matter their pretensions. Dick’s world and character development thus feels, well, honestly, a little amateurish and its obsession with frat boy sexuality, a bit juvenile. If there is no patience or capacity for world building, then the world could have been made larger by implication, by having its characters exercise there fantastic abilities in a narrower scope. Sherlock Holmes confined himself more or less to London, which made him more plausible than Bulero or Eldritch or Mayerson, and it made his readers feel like they were entering a small part of the big world rather than into a world made small.
Having registered that complaint, that the novel does not go far enough in developing a world that can stand as its own character, and by extension, impoverishes the development of its other characters by cutting off the oxygen of a rich context, let's turn to thinking about the novel and its characters. The main characters, who would qualify for best actor nominations were this a movie performance, are
Barney Mayerson, a fashion consultant of PP Layouts
Leo Bulero, the CEO of PP Layouts
Eldritch Palmer, CEO of a company competing with PP Lyouts
Palmer Eldritch, is the antagonist, another character. Mayerson is the antihero protagonist. Bulero is a little more confusing, sometimes seeming like a good guy when acting in opposition to Eldritch but also quite obviously a bad guy who is just as corrupt as Eldritch. The characters are all a bit like Achilles and Agamemnon who are heroes as the victors of the Wat favored by the gods that matter most but are even so hard to sympathize with.
There are characters in the novel that act in a supporting role to outline plot points and the features of this world. The Hnatts are there to reveal Mayerson’s emotional flaws through his mistreatment of his ex-wife, and the hovel dwellers of Mars are there to tell us what it's like to live on Mars and why the narcotic CanD is so tempting to people living in the miserable conditions of enforced labor in exile where Mars has become the future sci fi equivalent of a Siberian gulag. The Hnatts and the colonists also reveal the severe global warning that has taken place on earth as well as the concepts of “minning” and “E-therapy”. Minning refers to the process of miniaturization, of developing Barbi and Ken dolls together with their Malibu dollhouse and accessories, which in combination with CanD can create a virtual reality for the miserable colonist to escape into. E-therapy or evolution therapy refers to what I suppose we today would call gene therapy, the manipulation of a human being to expand mental powers and physical adaptation to the environment. If global warming continues to develop here on earth, we too may need to take advantage of it to develop chitonous shells like the characters of the novel. And we too like power ourselves on the back more advanced when we shouldn't be kicking ourselves for allowing things to get to these desperate straits.
At the start of the novel, and throughout most of its course, Mayerson is looking out for himself. Even his attempt to reunite with his ex-wife seems selfishly motivated. Near the end of the novel, he feels the need for some atonement but the only options available to him are to choose between two corrupt individuals, Bulero or Eldritch, neither of which feels like a particularly satisfying choice. Unless Meyerson can undergo some transformation, he is stuck in this position of a pawn played by unlikable kings, and the novel’s lesson then is more Machiavellian than moral.
Which way will it go?