250302: unlike anything j-lit I have read. not decadent (though lots of sex) not 'cute'(though characters are ya) not violent/gore (just weird) this g250302: unlike anything j-lit I have read. not decadent (though lots of sex) not 'cute'(though characters are ya) not violent/gore (just weird) this group protrait or rather prefecture portrait of various characters who are all interwoven in surprising ways. midwife mother, housewife cosplay sex addict, pedophile tutor, smart/ gentle/ helpful son of midwife, lover of cosplay... this is definitely Japanese culture. cannot see it in the West......more
250216: now I have to read it in French because: it is concise, it is poetic, its is mildly Pomo, it is clear. in fact, I translated this in my mind t250216: now I have to read it in French because: it is concise, it is poetic, its is mildly Pomo, it is clear. in fact, I translated this in my mind to French... who knows how well. it brought alive the suffering, the desperation, the tragedy, of those boatloads of refugees who try to cross the Mediterranean from war-torn lands, from Africa to Southern Europe. it tells this story simple language. there are no apparent difficult poetics. it is almost a fable, with characters named after functions eg Mayor, Doctor, Teacher. it is lucid and unsparing of small-town culture and big government/business mendacity. the good die young. the old live with guilt until they die. the island does not kill them, rather they kill the island in unique justice......more
250119: j'ai lu cette roman en française. c'est bref, belle, joli et triste, il ya des images de nature tres belle, interrogatif les culturalismes Inn250119: j'ai lu cette roman en française. c'est bref, belle, joli et triste, il ya des images de nature tres belle, interrogatif les culturalismes Innu et la cote nord de Quebec, la première characterise c'est la professeur de l'école d'une petit ville. la langue, pour moi, un anglophone, a été clair et exact, poétique mais pas difficile... ...more
??? 80s: this is now read 3 times: when the movie came out, when i took it at u, when i have read a lot of pkd and a lot of critical work on pkd and s??? 80s: this is now read 3 times: when the movie came out, when i took it at u, when i have read a lot of pkd and a lot of critical work on pkd and seen other movies of his work (total recall, minority report, screamers, paycheck, adjustment bureau, impostor, man in the high castle...) i am less bothered that the book is unfaithful to the movie, or original to the translation as borges might put it. having read the story, as book and as graphic, and seen the story, as graphic and as movie, i have decided to up the rating. it seems that hollywood took the hunting androids, the dystopic future, the andys on verge of humanity- and dropped the rest, those aspects not amenable to plot, to action, to images onscreen...
this is unfortunate. indeed the movie is beautiful to look at, a triumph of production design if nothing else, the throughline plot slimmed down to romantic moodiness, and doubtless a book asks for more stringent rationale of world, of character, of what it means to be human: emotions are the key, emotions are essential, something no machine can emulate- but the way this plays out in book vs movie is almost diametrically opposite. the andys are never sympathetic, are sometimes pathetic, are rather dick's bad dream of our dehumanized future, though humans seem here determined to get machine-like faster than andys get human, through everything from the 'enfield box'(stimulated emotional states by the dial) to the manufactured joy of simulated religion (that endless climb...)...
the title makes sense here as Do androids dream of electric sheep? refers to that desired status symbol of (robotic? real?) sheep, taking place of animals in this postnuclear future. this is the reason our protagonist does his job: money to get a(n) real (electric?) sheep. the title makes sense but little else if you are reading this after the movie, and hitting the pileup of science fiction, philosophy, pulp, satire... was dick just throwing everything into the mix, hoping it would be magicked into coherence? well the try failed: it is not coherent, it is confusing, contradictory, far from establishing any sort of unified world or meaning...
and this is why, on reflection, i like it so much. it seems over-real, hyperreal, firing off thoughts here and there, offering a world or worlds that escape any simple single sfnal idea- no big dumb object, no first contact, no aliens, no postapocalypse, no dystopia, none of these alone- instead we have every everything, tropes everywhere, all mashed together and running wherever they mean to go, all the time, all at top speed... kind of like, you know, our contemporary reality...
emotion is the answer, and you can use the book itself as an 'empathy test' for the self: through all the confusion, all the wandering thoughts, alongside our bounty hunter- do you care about these people and not people? do you sense fleeting emotions? the fact the sheep are electric does not mean they are less of a dream...