Puttering About in a Small Land in Philip K Dick

Apr 16, 2017 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

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Jun 22, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My Philip K. Dick Project
Entry #13 - Puttering About In A Small Land (written late ‘56, early ‘57, published posthumously Oct 1985)

Puttering, the fourth straight novel I’ve read so far, sees Dick writing much more efficiently than he has. The sort of scattershot plotting and underdeveloped subplots seen in Voices From the Street, Mary and the Giant, and The Broken Bubble are largely absent, despite Puttering being by my reckoning the longest of the four. This book goes full speed ahead, and I f My Philip K. Dick Project
Entry #13 - Puttering About In A Small Land (written late ‘56, early ‘57, published posthumously Oct 1985)

Puttering, the fourth straight novel I’ve read so far, sees Dick writing much more efficiently than he has. The sort of scattershot plotting and underdeveloped subplots seen in Voices From the Street, Mary and the Giant, and The Broken Bubble are largely absent, despite Puttering being by my reckoning the longest of the four. This book goes full speed ahead, and I found it to be every bit as much a page turner as his sci-fi novels.
While Puttering doesn’t reach the kind of muted and sad yearning found in some of the other straight novels, there’s a lot of new things Dick tries here, and the results are invariably interesting. The flashback structure in the first half of the book is well executed and is a neat look at Southern California during the war, as well as shedding some needed light on the characters and their motivations. The writing itself is sharper as well, and Dick changes it up with more poetic prose, particularly in the intriguing few scenes written from Liz’s point of view, and in Roger’s youthful scenes of frustration. Always welcome are just some hints of Dick’s weirdness, especially in the surreal and vaguely disturbing imagery from Roger’s boyhood on the farm in Arkansas.
Liz is another dark-haired bizarro Dick girl, although not in the usual manner. Some of the book’s most darkly comic moments come at Liz’s expense, as everyone thinks she’s a dumb ditz, and she is mostly, although Dick smartly hints that she may have a far more complex inner life than anyone suspects. All the characters in this seem fuller than in earlier novels. Their motivations are clearer, although not opaque, and they have the usual baffling rapidity to them. (Case in point: Chic’s extreme sudden interest in dropping everything and become Roger’s partner in retail electronics). The retail electronics world, familiar from Voices, figures prominently as well. There’s something very mildly pleasant amongst all of Dick’s mundane scenes of retail life, and he happens to capture an interesting era in the transition from radio to television.
What come through to me most in this novel, is that people don’t usually change. It’s a kind of sad realization, that for Roger and Virginia, they are doomed to repeat the mistakes they have made over and over again, even as they realize they’re making them. Dick’s characters are human and flawed, but don’t really find any redemption. It’s sadly realistic in this way, because they are just average folks, always fumbling, thinking they’re about to move on to something else. But they don’t really. Life just keeps going. For all their ambitions and hopes, they must realize that they are not fundamentally different, or better, than anyone else. Everyone has the hopes and fears, but we are not all great. We’re mostly just average, and our dramas play out quietly in the background of everyday life.
I’m not sure if this is better than Dick’s other straight novels, but it’s definitely better written. It’s tight, faster and more compelling, with the fat trimmed off. It was a good read.

Stray thoughts: #Ms. Alt is sure a strange character.

#Sign of the times: Liz doesn’t know what a clitoris is called.

#This book was set three years before it was written, for some reason.

#Also realistic: Roger’s casual racism, which comes up a few times but never becomes much of a plot point.

My edition: Tor Trade Paperback, 2009

Up next: “Time Out of Joint”!
June 26, 2012 ...more

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Nov 30, 2014 Marissa Uden rated it really liked it

Shelves: philip-k-dick, audiobooks

Here's my review cross-posted from SFFAudio. Puttering About Review. I'll update with our podcast discussion on it when the episode drops.
>>
Puttering About in a Small Land (written 1957 but first published in 1985) feels very different from Philip K Dick’s usual stuff. It’s a dark and funny slow-burn set in 1950s Southern California, but there are no simulacra, no time slips, and no telepaths, and the only artificial reality is the one built out of society’s expectations of suburban married life Here's my review cross-posted from SFFAudio. Puttering About Review. I'll update with our podcast discussion on it when the episode drops.
>>
Puttering About in a Small Land (written 1957 but first published in 1985) feels very different from Philip K Dick’s usual stuff. It’s a dark and funny slow-burn set in 1950s Southern California, but there are no simulacra, no time slips, and no telepaths, and the only artificial reality is the one built out of society’s expectations of suburban married life.

It also seems unusually sensitive for PKD – not in a corny or sentimental way but just finely tuned into human relationships. He captures the subtle and imperfect communications of a dysfunctional marriage where two people are pretending to work together but are really pushing and pulling below the surface, wanting different things and resenting each other for it.

“I’ll be back pretty soon,” he said. From his eyes shone the leisurely, confident look; it was the sly quality that always annoyed her.
“I thought maybe we could talk,” she said.
He stood at the door, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted on one side. And he waited, showing his endurance, not arguing with her, simply standing. Like an animal, she thought. An inert, unspeaking, determined thing, remembering that it can get what it wants if it just waits.
“I’ll see you,” he said, opening the door to the hall.
“All right,” she said.

The story is told in three alternating points of view: Roger, his wife Virginia, and the “other woman” Liz. All three are trapped, one way or another, in self-made realities they don’t enjoy.
Some readers complain that PKD writes unflattering female characters, and as usual these ones aren’t much to admire: Virginia is gossipy and judgmental, her mother is a controlling nag (who often corners Roger and has some of the funniest scenes in the book), and Liz Bonner is so naïve and childlike she verges on the idiotic.

“She’s sort of a—” Mrs Alt searched for the word. “I don’t want to say lunatic. That isn’t it. She’s sort of an idiot with a touch of mysticism.”...

But even so, Virginia has her strengths, and Liz Bonner is lovely in a quirky way. Her flaws and naïve unpredictability are exactly what free her from society’s expectations, and are what attract Roger. Despite the deceit and infidelity, their love story is somehow still beautiful.

And to be fair, PKD also writes pretty unflattering men. For example, Roger not only cheats on his wife, he also abandoned his previous wife and daughter and seems to be a compulsive liar. He’s a bristly, bad-tempered, and indifferent to his wife’s gestures of love and compromise. All he really cares about his TV retail-and-repair business, which is where the book title comes from: he’s a little king “puttering about in a small land.”

The waning of a marriage and infidelity appear in a lot of PKD’s stories, but in this one they really drive this plot. Normally I wouldn’t try to detect an author’s own life in his fiction, but since PKD has openly admitted he weaves autobiographical details into all his stories, it seems safe to see something of him in Roger.

His essay “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” might give some more clues to his approach to fiction set in the real world. Just because the characters’ universe is based in reality doesn’t mean PKD won’t try to disintegrate it.

“I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. … Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live.”

I listened to Puttering About in a Small Land on audio and read the print version too. The audiobook was read by Amy McFadden, Kate Rudd, and Luke Daniels, one for each of the main characters. All three were great, although using three narrators didn’t work so well for me since the story is in third-person. Hearing the same characters read in three slightly different ways gave the audiobook a patchwork feel and was a bit jarring and distracting sometimes.

I’d recommend Puttering About in a Small Land for PKD fans but not so much as an entry to his works. For anyone who knows his style, it’s very cool to see a more subtle side of him and to see how beautifully he can write about human relationships in the artificial universe we call reality. Definitely worth the read. ...more

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Jun 24, 2008 Themistocles rated it really liked it

Shelves: lit, p-k-dick

Yay, another PKD book that came out after his death to satisfy long-term Dickheads.

It really makes you wonder, what if? as it's not a SF novel. It's great nonetheless, exploring some of Dick's themes in a more conventional setting. ...more

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