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Stuart Hadley is a young radio electronics salesman in early 1950s Oakland, California. He has what many would consider the ideal life: a nice house, a pretty wife, a decent job with prospects for advancement, but he still feels unfulfilled; something is missing from his life. Hadley is an angry young man--an artist, a dreamer, a screw-up. He tries to fill his void first with drinking and sex, and then with religious fanaticism, but nothing seems to be working, and it is driving him crazy. He reacts to the love of his wife and the kindness of his employer with anxiety and fear.One of the earliest books that Dick ever wrote, and the only novel that has never been published, Voices from the Street is the story of Hadley's descent into depression and madness, and out the other side.Most known in his lifetime as a science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick is growing in reputation as an American writer whose powerful vision is an ironic reflection of the present. This novel completes the publication of his canon.… (more)
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* "Now Wait for Last Year" (my favorite)
* "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said"
* "The Man in the High Tower"
* "A Scanner Darkly"
To return to the point: as a long-time fan of PKD, it was a pleasure to discover (while following up on a friend's recommendation of the PKD biography "I am Alive and You Are Dead", review to come shortly) that not one, but two of the author's mainstream novels are now being printed widely for the first time, and over twenty years after the author's death. "Voices from the Street" is in fact the last of his unpublished novels to go to press, adding to my excitement in devouring the work.
Like his other mainstream novels, "Voices" is a work steeped in the culture of 1950s California. The salesman and their world, the attitudes of the characters toward race issues, even the details regarding music sales are familiar from PKD's mainstream works like "Mary and the Giant" and (my favorite) "In Mliton Lumky Territory". As always in both his mainstream and Science Fiction novels, the relationships between women and men are complex and often strained, as in "Mary", "Milton Lumky", and "Confessions of a Crap Artist".
"Voices" is an earlier effort along the same rough lines as his later mainstream work, and it shows a little. I was reminded of my experience in reading Henry Miller's "Moloch" a few years ago, which was a similar mining of an author's early work, with similar rough edges. A friend of mine who is also reading the book pointed out that the characters' voices are a bit too obviously mouthpieces for the author and not characters in their own right. I would reluctantly agree, although I tend to enjoy Dick's descriptive detail and narrative rather and not be bothered by his characterizations.
I won't go into the details of the story much further, as I'm increasingly wary of spoiling anything for future readers. I will say, however, that like so many of PKD's works, whether or not the end resolution is positive depends largely on the reader's perspective. For those of you that make it through the book, I offer this: the main character reminds me of Grady at the end of Michael Chabon's excellent "Wonder Boys". For anyone who's read both, I hope the comparison makes sense, if not, that's what the comments section of this blog is for.
Although I am far from an unbiased consumer of PKD's work, I enjoyed "Voices" very much, even though it was emotionally exhausting to read in comparison with his Science Fiction novels. If you have read and enjoyed "Milton Lumky" or other mainstream PKD novels, I highly recommend it. If you're unsure, you could do a lot worse than picking up one of the many new editions of his work that are now being reprinted.
Voices in the Street is Phillip K Dick's second novel, and last to be published, in 2007, fifty five years after it was written. Dick earned his place in a pantheon of Sci-Fi writers, over his long career. But this novel is more akin in style and subject matter to something by Theodore Dreiser. An unstinting look, in precise, naturalistic, and photographic prose, at way fate and society can crush the naive and their dreams. But style aside, "Voices" fits in with Dick's canon, whether chronologically viewed as a finial or a cornerstone. The grand themes of his Sci-Fi work concern the individual psyche, lost and searching for reality and identity, in a morphing world, controlled by hostile corporate and governmental forces. Stuart Hadley is that individual, on that same harrowing quest, and facing the same dominant forces, albeit in the mundane, bland world of 1950's Oakland. And for that reason, the novel still resonates - loudly - in this Age of "Businessantium" where many have no alternatives to McJobs, shopping mall serfdom, and a life in thrall to intertwined nexi of corporate and governmental powers.
Except
The story itself is the descent of a young man, typical of the age, or any age, into animalistic fury. He's a dreamer, stuck in a salesman job he hates, looking for meaning in his life while feeling stuck by the trappings of society. He starts to look for another way, tries out the big new religion sweeping through town, tries to drown himself in drink, even tries to become the most perfect everyday citizen; but it all leads him deeper and deeper into the hole of unfulfillment he digs for himself. Things get dark, incredibly, wickedly dark.
That's the genius of Dick's writing. He creates this vividly descriptive world and pulls you in, then takes you into the darkest workings of the human mind. He would later use science fiction to explore these emotions, playing with allegory and metaphor, but early on he wrote bleak, starkly contrasting reality, and it's terrifying.