In Milton Lumky Territory

Rating:
Summary: Worth Your Time
Review: I'd advise only reading this if you're like me, you enjoy Philip K. Dick's writing, you've read a fair few of his books including 'Confessions of a Crap Artist', and you hope to read all his works (and steer clear of stuff like 'The Ganymede Takeover').
'In Milton Lumky Territory' may not be as exciting and quirky a read as 'Confessions of a Crap Artist' but it is a good read nonetheless and it's a shame that this was languishing as a manuscript on one of Dick's bookshelves until after his death.
It's set in the 50's, it has a purposeful main character in his mid-twenties who has that same horrible awareness of bad interpersonal situations that can be found in 'Confessions of a Crap Artist'. It's a good quality novel that you'll look back on and like.

Rating:
Summary: Attention must be paid
Review: This realist novel, written in 1958 and not published till 1985, is a concise, ironic story, set in Idaho, of the marriage of Bruce, a young man, to Susan, his former fifth grade teacher, and his devastating experiences in trying to run her business. Milton Lumky, a dumpy, red-faced salesman with a penchant for outrageous remarks, is not the main character in the novel, but he has center stage whenever he is on. Dick wrote In Milton Lumky Territory under the influence of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Both works deal with the tragedy of the common man, making the point, as Dick quoted in an interview, that "attention must be paid to this man." Like Willy Loman, Milton Lumky is a man of essential goodness who has been beaten down by what he has come to see as the degrading nature of his job. His Idaho is a provincial world of small towns, small minds, and a certain unrelieved nastiness. The only reprieve from the dreariness of this barren land and culture is to be found in the felicities of the heart, which Bruce and Susan take refuge in at the end when they move out of Milton Lumky territory.