February 20, 2009
The fish that ate Philip K. Dick (1974)
On this day, reality split and claimed science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick. In great pain from the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth and awaiting pain medication from the pharmacy, he answered the door at his Fullerton, Calif., home and was dazzled by the sunlight reflecting off the delivery girl's Christian fish necklace.At that moment, Dick experienced anamnesis, Greek for "loss of forgetfulness." He briefly saw himself living in the Roman Empire after Jesus Christ was crucified. It lasted a moment, but Dick went down the rabbit hole.
For two years, Dick experienced visions. He would fall into a trance and mutter in Greek. A pinkish light would strike him, and he would be overwhelmed with information from an unknown source. For a month, he thought he was a man living under the Romans. Dick lost the ability to drive and feared police officers, believing them to be Roman soldiers hunting for Christians. In another incident, he believed himself possessed by Elijah’s spirit.
One day, while his wife was caring for their infant son, Dick fell into a trance while listening to "Strawberry Fields Forever." The lyrics told him his son was suffering from a potentially fatal inguinal hernia. He ordered his wife to take the child to the doctor, where the diagnosis was confirmed.
Dick would spend the rest of his life seeking the truth behind his visions, filling notebooks with his theories and using them in the novels “Valis” and “Radio Free Albemuth.” While his experiences suggest schizophrenia helped by longtime amphetamine abuse, the depth and consistency of his visions do not. So while there's no doubt that something happened to Philip K. Dick, the question remains: what?
Born: Ching-jen Huang, poet, China, 1749; William Carleton, essayist, short-¬story writer, Prillisk, Co. Tyrone, 1794; Shiga Naoya, novelist, Ishinomaki, Japan, 1883; Russel Crouse, journalist, author, playwright, Findlay, Ohio, 1893; Ansel Adams, photographer, San Francisco, 1902; Pierre Boulle, novelist, short-story writer, Avignon, France, 1912; Alex La Guma, novelist, anti-apartheid activist, Cape Town, South Africa, 1925; Hugo Williams, poet, travel writer, Windsor, England, 1942.
Died: Eugène Scribe, playwright, Paris, 1861; Frederick Douglass, anti-slavery activist, memoirist, Anacostia Heights, Md., 1895; Laurence Housmen, playwright, author, Glastonbury, Somerset, 1959; Walter Winchell, journalist, broadcaster, Los Angeles, 1972; Rolf Jacobsen, poet, Oslo, Norway, 1994; Hunter S. Thompson, journalist, Woody Creek, Colo., 2005.
Quote for the Day: “Whenever you cause distress, be it deliberately or not deliberately, you also cause delight in others. It balances out, and you get your readers. Folks who don’t like what you do aren’t going to like you anyway. The more people are hostile to you, the more people rally to you. That always happens -- no action without reaction.” — Gore Vidal
Also from "Writers 365”:
- Berryman Misses the Mississippi (1972)
- Best Head of the '70s (1975)
- Norman Mailer’s song (1981)
- Blast rocks Jonathan Safran Foer’s world (1985)
- Salman Rushdie Resurfaces (1991)
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