Voices From the Street in Philip K Dick

Mar 14, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it really liked it

This is written from my perspective as a newcomer to PKD. This is my first novel, all I have read is the first volume of the short stories.

And now for something completely different. This was quite a surprise after having read the first volume of the short stories. This is Dick’s second novel (the first, Gather Yourselves Together, is out of print until July, so I won’t be reading it until then). Dick initially aspired to be a mainstream literary author, publishing his SF short stories to suppor This is written from my perspective as a newcomer to PKD. This is my first novel, all I have read is the first volume of the short stories.

And now for something completely different. This was quite a surprise after having read the first volume of the short stories. This is Dick’s second novel (the first, Gather Yourselves Together, is out of print until July, so I won’t be reading it until then). Dick initially aspired to be a mainstream literary author, publishing his SF short stories to support himself. However, most of these novels, including Voices on the Street, were rejected. One wonders how his career would have differed had this been published in 1952.
Certainly this is much darker than most of the trippy little SF stories in Volume 1 of the Collected Stories. It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who wrote “The Variable Man”. The structure of the book is a little loose. Characters show up and disappear, or they reappear without serving any real purpose. Some of the dialogue is a little ridiculous. I’m thinking especially of any scene involving Stuart’s wife explaining her husband, or the really bizarre quasi-incestuous dialogue between Stuart and his sister, the most glaring example of a character who suddenly appears, seems to be a major element of the story, and then abruptly leaves, never seen nor mentioned again.
The main character, Stuart Hadley, is interesting. Dick pulls off the feat of having a frankly unlikable protagonist who you can still sympathize with, at least until he goes off the deep end and does some pretty horrible things. His wife is really a saint for putting up with his bullshit the way she does. In fact, that’s pretty much all she is, as her character is pretty one-dimensional and underdeveloped. But I at least could identify with Stuart while still wanting to slap him in the face. Egotistical and narcissistic, idealistic and well-meaning. He embodies all the contradictions we all live with but keep hidden to ourselves. He thinks he is destined for greatness and so grates under the soul-crushing repetition of electronic sales. Anyone who’s worked retail and wondered what the hell you’re doing every day can relate. And yet, like so many, he thinks he’s destined for something, but is just waiting for it to come to him. And it does, in a way, when Stuart gets involved in a religious cult, The Society for the Watchmen of Jesus, and its charismatic “negro” leader Thomas Beckheim. Stuart is looking for someone he can trust completely, and it might as well be Beckheim.
Of course, this goes bust for Stuart, as do one idea after another, because he just can’t hold it together, until things get ugly.
A lot of the plotting and characterization is scattershot, but Dick succeeds in bringing to vivid life a sleepy California town in the 50s. I really felt like I was there. In that respect, at least, the book is a fascinating time capsule of a specific time and place. When Dick wrote it, he was just writing the time and place he knew, but now, sixty years later it is one of the most compelling aspects of the book. Of course, the character’s attitudes toward race reflect the times as well. Casual bigotry is rampant, and Stuart’s musings on his Jewish friends the Golds can frankly be difficult to read. Even if these aren’t Dick’s views himself, he still wrote some pretty disturbing things. Of course, Cold War paranoia is rampant, as is the Korean War, which informs much of the cult’s rhetoric in the beginning.
Unfortunately, this being my first Dick novel, I can’t really put this into context, but I would recommend it with some reservations. That being said, it’s fairly impressive considering Dick was only twenty-four at the time. An interesting contrast to his sci-fi shorts.
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Feb 11, 2009 James added it

Everybody's wagging their tails about how this is "Philip K. Dick writing straight fiction," not science fiction in other words. Yet, to me, it retained a slightly fabulist or science fictional flavor the whole way through, especially in the scenes that have to do with Theodore Beckheim and his cult. I think it's just Dick's way of looking at things, at finding the strangely epic little details in everyday life and them somehow bringing those to the center of the story. I think that's most of hi ...more

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Oct 02, 2010 Chanpheng rated it liked it

On the surface, this book seems like the flip-side of John Updike's 'Rabbit' series. His main character slaves away in an appliance store, his 'normal' life punctuated by fugue-like states brought on by drinking. Whereas Rabbit leaves his comfortable life and takes up by weirdness, PKD's MC scares himself by dancing at the lip of the abyss. I got the sense of another world on the other side of the tattered wallpaper.

While PDK paints his characters more completely than other books, this book was ...more

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Jul 16, 2010 P rated it liked it

This is not a sf. but good source to observe dick's process of characterisation. Same old theme, unfulfilled gap of central character and his redemption, discussed obviously in deep level. ...more

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Jun 24, 2008 Themistocles rated it really liked it

Shelves: lit, p-k-dick

Certainly not one of PKD's best works, but it was so nice reading something "new" from him. Maybe this accounts for liking it so much. Madness, sadness, Dick. Yeah. ...more

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