The Man Who Japed

Rating:
Summary: Paranoia, a Wicked Sense of Humor, and Active Assimilation
Review: In this delightful early (1956) effort, Philip K. Dick reaches all the way back to Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and all the way forward to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

To jape is to cut up, to spoof outrageously a la Monty Python. Dick's hero, Allen Purcell, is about to assume the most powerful media position on the planet; at the same time, he is in fear of being imminently arrested for a jape involving the mutilation of a monument to Morec's beloved founder, the infamous Major Streiter.

Morec is short for Moral Reclamation, a kind of Moral Majority Heaven on Earth in which any offenses -- most particularly of the sexual variety -- trigger vicious Maoist self-criticism meetings culminating in the loss of one's apartment lease. And without a lease, there's nowhere to go but the outer planets.

Philip K. Dick weaves in a number of themes masterfully, from the devastation following a nuclear holocaust to the "Health Resort," a scheme for processing those who crack under the strain of Morec. There are juveniles everywhere (not what you think), not to mention the Cohorts, Active Assimilation, the Domino Method, "nooses," and the usual panoply of brilliant Dick inventions, such as all food dishes being enclosed in quotes, as in "His 'eggs' were cooling on the plate."

There are arresting throwaway lines such as when the character of Sue Frost is introduced: "Her eyes, he noticed, were an almost colorless straw. A strong kind of substance, and highly polished."

Although he has been compared to Borges and Kafka, Dick is very much an American original. THE MAN WHO JAPED's unusual combination of paranoia and a wicked sense of humor is unique, as if Orwell's Winston Smith in 1984 were played by John Cleese.

Rating:
Summary: an early Philip K. Dick short novel; both funny and clever
Review: Philip K. Dick novels are an acquired taste, and I'm not sure if I've reached the point of fully appreciating the man's talents. While never boring, it seems that he only lets 80% of the material to be logical and leaves the rest to the reader's interpretation/imagination. This is sometimes fun, but often frustrating.

'The Man Who Japed' is no different. Philip K. Dick paints a rather ugly picture of the USA some 100+ years in the future (after some nuclear holocaust). The moral majority has run amuck, the Earth is pretty much trashed, and life is miserable for our leading character (an ad executive). Sprinkle in some space travel and some mind-altering nonsense, typical of Philip K. Dick novels, and you have a rather fun if somewhat bewildering story. The author's blasting of the moral majority alone is well worth the price of the book; it must have been a shock when it was first published (mid-1950s).

Bottom line: a worthy read, especially for fans of the author.

Rating:
Summary: an early Philip K. Dick short novel; both funny and clever
Review: Philip K. Dick novels are an acquired taste, and I'm not sure if I've reached the point of fully appreciating the man's talents. While never boring, it seems that he only lets 80% of the material to be logical and leaves the rest to the reader's interpretation/imagination. This is sometimes fun, but often frustrating.

'The Man Who Japed' is no different. Philip K. Dick paints a rather ugly picture of the USA some 100+ years in the future (after some nuclear holocaust). The moral majority has run amuck, the Earth is pretty much trashed, and life is miserable for our leading character (an ad executive). Sprinkle in some space travel and some mind-altering nonsense, typical of Philip K. Dick novels, and you have a rather fun if somewhat bewildering story. The author's blasting of the moral majority alone is well worth the price of the book; it must have been a shock when it was first published (mid-1950s).

Bottom line: a worthy read, especially for fans of the author.

Rating:
Summary: A Minor Work, But Logical And Coherent
Review: This book is very short, and it is quite straightforward for PKD. As this is one of his earlier works, I was expecting an extremely outdated view of the future, but surprisingly, PKD kept the details of the mechanisms vague enough that there were no glaring 'futurisms', such as those that jammed the first chapter of "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch". Simply stating that they took a ship between planets rather than inventing the Amazing Steam-Powered Punch-Card Engine helped the book a lot.
Despite the fact that this book came before PKD really started to 'write outside the box', I was expecting the traditional PKD chestnuts- the nature of reality, psychotherapy, bleak futures, evil robots, etc.- to be mostly overlooked. Happily, he managed to investigate most of his favorite topics without tripping over himself or screwing up the plot, as he did in "The Simulacra". The plot flowed straight and true, and although one part seemed a little forced, it didn't detract from the book- it was simply a wee bit off.
If you are new to PKD, you should give this book a try, but don't expect any cosmic insights, just a good book. You might also try "Time Out Of Joint". If you are familiar with PKD, you should read this as his inventive take on the good old distopian novel. It is also proof that though the man wrote a lot of mind-bending novels, he could also get a point about individuals in a distopian system across perfectly clearly.

Rating:
Summary: 5 stars on general principle
Review: This is an early PKD, and probably isn't really worth 5 stars, but I rate it thus anyway, just because hints of work to come show up in this book. This is a story of a very repressive society (read cold war, McCarthy-era USA)and a man who breaks out of the pattern. As with all PKD books, read carefully or you will lose track of where you are.

Rating:
Summary: 5 stars on general principle
Review: This is an early PKD, and probably isn't really worth 5 stars, but I rate it thus anyway, just because hints of work to come show up in this book. This is a story of a very repressive society (read cold war, McCarthy-era USA)and a man who breaks out of the pattern. As with all PKD books, read carefully or you will lose track of where you are.

Rating:
Summary: Early PKD fights repression with humor
Review: This was an early attempt by Dick to infuse humor into his science-fiction novels. A minor novel by the standards of his mature work, its flashes of originality and light touches of satire more than compensate for the contrived and improbable plot elements. The novel is set in a society based on the ideology of Morec (Moral Reclamation). Morec regulates individual morality through compulsory block meetings, in which one's friends and neighbors have the opportunity to take one to task for sexual peccadilloes or other lapses from puritanical conformity. Dick based his critique of the state as moral policemen on the structure of Chinese communism. It is not difficult, however, to see the roots of satire in American society, which has a long history of repression, from the Puritans to the Moral Majority. The protagonist is a man working for the media that promotes Morec, but he finds himself unconsciously japing, making fun of, the symbols of the regime. The most interesting part of the novel is when, after he is subjected to reprogramming, he suffers a breakdown in which his entire reality disappears. This episode prefigures themes that will become central in later Dick novels such as Ubik and Valis.