Philip K. Dick: Canonical Writer of the Digital Age

ISBN-13: 9780415962421 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 192 str.

Lejla Kucukalic

Opis

Kucukalic looks beyond the received criticism and stereotypes attached to Philip K. Dick and his work and shows, using a wealth of primary documents including previously unpublished letters and interviews, that Philip K. Dick is a serious and relevant philosophical and cultural thinker whose writing offer us important insights into contemporary digital culture. Evaluating five novels that span Dick's career--from Martian Time Slip (1964) to Valis (1981)--Kucukalic explores the the intersections of identity, narrative, and technology in order to ask two central, but uncharted "Dickian" questions: What is reality? and What is human?

In this timely study, Kucakulic examines the major themes of Dick's novels--including critique of consumer society, mass media, and technology--ultimately concluding that transcending these concerns is Dick's preoccupation with the traditional moral and religious issues of American literature as manifested in the modern world.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction: Philip K. Dick, Canonical Writer of the Digital Age  Chapter 2: Biography of a Writer  Chapter 3: Martian Time Slip: "The Mindset of Otherness"  Chapter 4: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: "Mechanical Universe and Its Discontents"  Chapter 5: A Maze of Death: "Life Is A Dream, But Is It Better That Way?"  Chapter 6: A Scanner Darkly: "The Reel Identity"  Chapter 7: The Search for Truth as an Antidote for Suffering in Valis

O autorze

Lejla Kucukalic received her Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Delaware. She is currently translating the Bosnian-Herzegovinian novel, It Happened in July, about the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. Professor Kucukalic is teaching in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York.