Gather yourselves together in Philip K Dick

Aug 22, 2012 Erich Franz Linner-Guzmann rated it really liked it

Shelves: ab-do, asien, fiktion, nordamerika, klassiker, 1950s, realism, male-protagonist, author-male, romane

Gather Yourselves Together is one very weird and strange book; bizarre would be a good word to describe the story too, but not in the traditional Dickian bizarre fashion, only because it is one of Phil Dick's mainstream novels, but a weird one none the less. For an even stranger reason I actually enjoyed it. The only plausible reason I can think of as to why I enjoyed it, is because I am truly a Dickhead. This book is unique in a lot of ways and had a lot of what would be to come in his later no ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Jul 21, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it it was ok · review of another edition

My Philip K. Dick Project

Entry #23 - Gather Yourselves Together (written June 1952, published posthumously June 1994)

In the course of this project, I’ve done my best to read through Dick’s works in the order of composition. However, this book, Gather Yourselves Together, was out of print until a new version was released last month. I wasn’t willing to pay over a hundred dollars just to read in perfect order. Now after having read this, I’m glad I didn’t.
There’s some debate, but most Dick schol My Philip K. Dick Project

Entry #23 - Gather Yourselves Together (written June 1952, published posthumously June 1994)

In the course of this project, I’ve done my best to read through Dick’s works in the order of composition. However, this book, Gather Yourselves Together, was out of print until a new version was released last month. I wasn’t willing to pay over a hundred dollars just to read in perfect order. Now after having read this, I’m glad I didn’t.
There’s some debate, but most Dick scholars agree that this is his first complete, finished novel, most likely written shortly before Voices From the Street (#2), when he was just 24. And it shows. This book succeeds more as an interesting peek into Dick’s evolution than as a story itself.
So I find myself in an interesting position on this project. Having just finished with all of Dick’s mainstream novels, his last one, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, itself a sort of throwback to his earlier works, and having read his masterpiece The Man in the High Castle, I find myself in the position of having to go back in time to Dick’s very beginnings. Probably if I had read this book when I was supposed to, I would have been a little kinder. It’s very primitive compared with his later novels, even more so than Voices From the Street. Unfortunately, it’s also about 100 pages longer than any of his other books, although far less happens.
In fact, hardly anything happens. My main problem with this book, and there are many, is that it’s kind of boring. Although the book takes place in China, it might as well have been anywhere. Aside from a brief, somewhat interesting chapter near the end when an actual Chinese person shows up, and the new communist Chinese are compared with the early Christians, the entirety of the book, aside from flashbacks, follows three Americans in a huge abandoned metal working complex. No one comes in, and they never go out.
The flashbacks are the only respite from the monotony of the plant, and take up the majority of the first half of the book, following Verne and Barbara between Castle, north of Boston, and New York. The characters wax endlessly about their woes, and when we finally found out what happened between Verne and Barbara, it’s pretty anticlimactic. It’s hard to see why it’s such a big deal, especially when four or five years have passed since then.
Carl, especially, is virtually ignored in the first half of the book, and it’s not until near the end that we get any idea of why he is the way he is (which is earnestly annoying), which points out some major structure programs. It’s hard to see how Carl could hold any appeal for Barbara, except as a counterpoint to Verne. He’s childlike and hyperactive, full of half-baked philosophizing and prattling on about anything just to fill the silence. I found dour old cynical Verne to be much more likeable.
Both the dialogue and the prose are overwrought and overcooked. The young Dick was obviously striving for profundity but fell short. There are moments of beauty and mystery, especially in the apparently semi-autobiographical sections detailing Carl’s childhood and development, but on the whole it’s kind of a turgid affair, too many words detailing too little story. This one is for Dick completists only.

Stray thoughts: The name of one of the bars Verne frequents, The Lazy Wren, was reused as the black bar in Mary and the Giant.

My edition: Mariner Books paperback, 2012

Up next: “Martian Time-Slip”!

August 9th, 2012 ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Jul 07, 2013 David Merrill rated it really liked it

Reading some of the other reviews of this novel and the afterword by Dwight Brown in the Mariner edition, I came away feeling as though I read a different book than they did. I liked it very much, but it definitely didn't follow the usual PKD format of introducing three characters who converge later in the novel. In fact, we're presented with little more than three characters to begin with. aim a sense, they've already converged before they meet, being isolated as the only three people left behi Reading some of the other reviews of this novel and the afterword by Dwight Brown in the Mariner edition, I came away feeling as though I read a different book than they did. I liked it very much, but it definitely didn't follow the usual PKD format of introducing three characters who converge later in the novel. In fact, we're presented with little more than three characters to begin with. aim a sense, they've already converged before they meet, being isolated as the only three people left behind by a nameless company expelled from China in 1950. Narrowing the scope to three characters allows Dick to explore what makes each tick through flashbacks and their actions in the present day. Since the three are two men and a woman, there's obvious tension as to who will get the girl and which man will she choose? The tension is exacerbated by Verne and Barbara's already established sexual history. Will this give him an edge or not? There's also Carl's virgin status to consider. Throughout Dick examines the nature of power between women and men, and two men. There's also the looming specter of the "Yuks" coming and kicking them out, but until then, they have the place all to themselves. Dickheads get a glimpse of the dark-haired girl and some seeming autobiographical passages attributed to Carl.

According to Brown, "it doesn't come close to the tear-your-your-heart-out intensity of Dick's best work." I would have to disagree. Dick creates incredible tension even with the most mundane passages in this novel, so I would say it does come close to what we find in his work later. We have the implied near rape of Barbara by Verne in flashback and the we find her doing the same thing to Carl in real time. If this book was written in 1950 as Rickman and Sutin surmise and one of his earliest, this seems rather advanced and ahead of his time. I suspect there was some later polishing, probably when he was living with Ann R. Dick and he tried to push his literary work again. There's argument whether Voices from the street was written before or after, so I guess I'll have to read it next.

A lot of his literary novels ( and I've read all but 2 now) to me come off as very much like his SF, just with the SF element removed. Not so with this book. To me this one reads more like a straight literary novel than the others and probably more successful, as a result. I seem to be in he minority, though. ...more

Like · see review