EXEGESIS Qubikuitously

Originally I set out to read EXEGESIS page by page. That worked for the first part. Then I stopped. When I came back to it, I resolved to re-read the first part because I wanted to re-experience what Dick said about orthogonal time. Then I thought to start the EXEGESIS blog. I would methodically proceed through the book and post particularly interesting passages.

Bits and pieces became interesting enough to post. Lots of those. And some bigger ideas. Then I wanted to trace comments on Ubik through the EXEGESIS via the index and cite passages while I re-read Ubik with the idea of commenting on this site.

So I was reading linearly, then selectively via the index, then scanning the pages as they flew by and suddenly I had four different bookmarks peeking out the top of the volume and yellow highlighter time-slipping through my mind.

Order and entropy chasing each other  . . . qubikuitously.

When not doing Dick stuff, I am reading the New Testament. Orthogonal time on the move.

For example.

EXEGESIS Blog Site

This post serves to introduce a blog site I have set up which deals with Exegesis exclusively. The purpose of the Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis: A Reader’s Diary blog is to encourage my own involvement with this work and to encourage others to read it.

Reading Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis is an adventure undertaken by readers individually. Even from within the group-think of the collective fandom, to acknowledge where this came from in Dick’s life is to tack into the whole of his existential adventure, which is also the adventure of all of us. Not everybody wants to do that. Never mind. All are welcome to the Dickian feast. Deciding not to read Exegesis is an option, but that decision contains within it some of the essence of the book. Once you know about it, you are in it. Philip K. Dick is a mirror for all who read him. What we get depends upon the angle where we stand when looking in.

To the left on the home page of the blog, there is a brief orientation.

Getting Started

A prominent effect of Dick’s 2-3-74 experiences was the sense that some intelligence was “coming across” to him from outside of his personal existence and was educating him to a specific end. In pages 22-37 of the published Exegesis, Dick searches for a definitive explanation of what this influence is. There are two main themes (among others) in Dick’s probing of this question: first, the idea that someone from his life had passed over to “the other side,” (died) and was tutoring him from beyond the grave (specifically James Pike); the second, ascribing his tutoring to a time in the past (classical) and attributing it to a living influence from that time period. 

James Pike from the "Other Side"

A Classical Source from a Living Past

I recommend reading the entire section and then asking a few questions:

1. Does dick definitively eliminate any options? Why?

2. For which option does he seem to write more confidently?

3. Which passages seem minimally adorned with theorizing?

4. Does a subtle, non-verbal sense come across here? What might that be?

Have fun.