8/6/2019 Dear Phil an Epistolary Discourse No 5

1/3

Dear Phil: An Epistolary Discourse #5

By Frank C. Bertrand

[NOTE: This first appeared at the original philipkdickfans.com website,created and so ably administered by Jason Koornick, in the second half of2001. Please see Discourse #1 for an Introduction to the series of six thatwere completed]

Dear Phil,

I recently finished rereading, Phil, you 1964 novel Martian Time-Slip(serialized in 1963),while recovering from right inguinal hernia surgery. And Im not too sure, at this point,which had a more deleterious effect, because I found your novel even more dark,depressing and somber than I had remembered it. Its as if Eliots The Hollow Men

were put in a literary Cuisinart with most anything by Kafka to which is added a strongdash of Beckett. I mean, the indigenous Martians in that novel are aptly named,Bleekmen. Bleek, indeed, even more so than A Scanner Darkly.

Then I happened to recall an essay by one of your favorite intellectual heroes, CarlGustav Jung. Its the one titled Psychologie und die Literaturwissenschaft, from 1929,also available in his 1933 collection Modern Man In Search Of A Soul. No, Phil, I dontthink this was caused by the post-op Percoset fog I was in but by two particular phrasesin Jungs essay: for it is a vision seen as in a glass, darkly, and, it is awakenedwhenever the times are out of joint Sound familiar, dont they? Say, you didnt liftthese from him, did you?

Anyways, in his essay Jung writes primarily about two modes of artistic creation, thevisionary and the psychological. Of the latter he writes:

I have called this mode of artistic creation psychological because

in its activity it nowhere transcends the bounds of psychological

intelligibility. Everything that is embraces the experience as well

as its artistic expression belongs in the realm of the understandable.

These experiences are drawn from the realm of human consciousness, that is,emotional shocks, lessons of life, passion, and crises of human destiny. The writer

psychically assimilates them and gives an expression which forces the reader togreater clarity and depth of human insight As examples Jung cites many novelsdealing with love, the environment, the family, crime and society, as well as didacticpoetry, the larger number of lyrics, and the drama, both tragic and comic. In particularhe noted the first part of the Faustdrama, in that The love-tragedy of Gretchen explainsitself, there is nothing that the psychologist can add to it that the poet has not alreadysaid in better words.

8/6/2019 Dear Phil an Epistolary Discourse No 5

2/3

8/6/2019 Dear Phil an Epistolary Discourse No 5

3/3

A great work of art is like a dream, for all its apparent obviousness

It does not explain itself and is never unequivocal.

This last sentence, Phil, is an accurate characterization for me of Martian Time-Slipbleek, doesnt explain itself, and is never unequivocal.

Yours in Kipple,Frank