Status
Available
Call number
Publication
HarperCollins Publishers (1988), Paperback
Description
In 1950s San Francisco, elderly garage owner Jim Ferguson prepares to retire and sell his business, but when he is offered the deal of a lifetime by record-company owner Chris Harman, Al Miller, one of Jim's mechanics who thinks that Harman is a crook, sets out to protect his mentor.
User reviews
LibraryThing member duhrer
He picked up his science fiction book and dropped it flat to the desk again. "You know, these guys who write these things... these rocket ships and time-travel machines and faster-than-list drives, all that stuff. If you want the hero to be on Mars you say something like -- 'he turned on the
"I see," Fergesson said, not following the man's talk.
"I'd like to meet one of these science fiction boys. I'd hire myself out as a technical consultant." Carmichael's great horse-teeth showed in irony. "Ten or fifteen percent of the price he gets. This stuff is just fake. They fake it as they go along"
--Philip K. Dick, "Humpty Dumpty in Oakland"
"Humpty Dumpty in Oakland" is the first PKD book I've read since finishing "I am Alive and You are Dead", the excellent biography of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère. Having read about Dick's feeling (or at least his second wife's feeling) that science fiction work was somehow beneath a real writer and knowing that he always wished for success in mainstream novels, the above passage is striking.
The work itself is pretty typical of Dick's mainstream novels. So many of the elements (the dynamic of salesmen and engineers in retail, health food stores, 1950s San Fransisco) are common to "Humpty Dumpty", "Voices from the Street", "In Milton Lumky Territory" and "Mary and the Giant". The narrative itself is fine. As with so many of Dick's novels, there are uncertainties to be resolved, competing views of reality that accumulate evidence until one is revealed to be if not true, then at least the view that all the characters are willing to act on. This and the general paranoia of the main character are typical Dick, and enjoyable enough. What distracts in the characterization.
There's a passage in "I am Alive and You are Dead" where Carrère compares Dick's characters to termites in a fumigated colony, coming together by reflex rather than design. Although a bit harsh, there's a kernel of truth that stayed with me as I read "Humpty Dumpty". It's not that the characters are entirely unsympathetic or their situations unbelievable. It's just that they are seemingly creatures of intellect and whim with a few "tics" thrown in rather than consistent, emotionally mature, living creations. By way of comparison, I finally got around to reading "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula Leguin a while back. The central conceits of "Lathe" (altering reality by subconscious thought) seemed very Phildickian to me, but the characters in LeGuin's work have a more believable emotional center.
Characterization not withstanding, "Humpty Dumpty" is not bad, but is perhaps best left for those who enjoy Dick's mainstream writing well enough to seek it out.
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automatic high-gain propulsion tubes.' This one isn't so bad but some of them are. They go barreling around the universe. It must be easy to write this stuff; they must bat it out""I see," Fergesson said, not following the man's talk.
"I'd like to meet one of these science fiction boys. I'd hire myself out as a technical consultant." Carmichael's great horse-teeth showed in irony. "Ten or fifteen percent of the price he gets. This stuff is just fake. They fake it as they go along"
--Philip K. Dick, "Humpty Dumpty in Oakland"
"Humpty Dumpty in Oakland" is the first PKD book I've read since finishing "I am Alive and You are Dead", the excellent biography of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère. Having read about Dick's feeling (or at least his second wife's feeling) that science fiction work was somehow beneath a real writer and knowing that he always wished for success in mainstream novels, the above passage is striking.
The work itself is pretty typical of Dick's mainstream novels. So many of the elements (the dynamic of salesmen and engineers in retail, health food stores, 1950s San Fransisco) are common to "Humpty Dumpty", "Voices from the Street", "In Milton Lumky Territory" and "Mary and the Giant". The narrative itself is fine. As with so many of Dick's novels, there are uncertainties to be resolved, competing views of reality that accumulate evidence until one is revealed to be if not true, then at least the view that all the characters are willing to act on. This and the general paranoia of the main character are typical Dick, and enjoyable enough. What distracts in the characterization.
There's a passage in "I am Alive and You are Dead" where Carrère compares Dick's characters to termites in a fumigated colony, coming together by reflex rather than design. Although a bit harsh, there's a kernel of truth that stayed with me as I read "Humpty Dumpty". It's not that the characters are entirely unsympathetic or their situations unbelievable. It's just that they are seemingly creatures of intellect and whim with a few "tics" thrown in rather than consistent, emotionally mature, living creations. By way of comparison, I finally got around to reading "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula Leguin a while back. The central conceits of "Lathe" (altering reality by subconscious thought) seemed very Phildickian to me, but the characters in LeGuin's work have a more believable emotional center.
Characterization not withstanding, "Humpty Dumpty" is not bad, but is perhaps best left for those who enjoy Dick's mainstream writing well enough to seek it out.
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LibraryThing member figre
Meh.
Because this is a Philip K. Dick book, you might be expecting science fiction. This is not science fiction (and the blurbs on the book cover provide adequate warning of such.) Because this is a Philip K. Dick book, you might expect an inspection of the mind - the struggle to determine what is
The book is not awful, it just lies there. This is not Dick’s best, and it is not a very good book. Not good enough to be three stars. Not bad enough to be one.
Because this is a Philip K. Dick book, you might be expecting science fiction. This is not science fiction (and the blurbs on the book cover provide adequate warning of such.) Because this is a Philip K. Dick book, you might expect an inspection of the mind - the struggle to determine what is
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real to each character in the story and what is real to the reader. While this book does include some of the questions about reality that Dick does so well, it is only a small part. And, because this is a Philip K. Dick book, you have every right to expect and interesting ride. That is probably the greatest failing of the book. And the primary cause is that, while he has done a good job of building his characters, they are all just a little too pathetic and sad to engender the sympathy that is needed. It feels as though these players have been placed on the stage, run through some standard paces, made to do a few weird things, and then their stories all tied up with a quick question about what the real reality is.The book is not awful, it just lies there. This is not Dick’s best, and it is not a very good book. Not good enough to be three stars. Not bad enough to be one.
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LibraryThing member g026r
It's no secret that Dick longed to escape the genre-fiction straight -jacket and bask in the respect and success of being a literary writer. Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is part of a series of non-science fiction novels he wrote during the late '50s through to 1960, and while reading it it's easy to
First, the good: the book isn't bad, per se. It's written to the same prose-standard as any other Dick work, and passes easily enough. Which brings us to the bad: in there lies the problem; because it passes so fluidly, the fact that nothing really interesting happens, that events just flow past without raising much interest, means that you're quickly finished without having become engaged.
It may be a symptom of popular literature at the time, but it reminds me of other novels of the 1950s aimed squarely at the mainstream that also flowed simply past without engaging. But where books, like runaway-1950s-success The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, spoke to the fears and insecurities particular to the nation at the time, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland does no such thing.
In the end it reads like Dick was merely going through a checklist for the popular-style, without really understanding what makes the style work.
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see why mainstream success alluded him.First, the good: the book isn't bad, per se. It's written to the same prose-standard as any other Dick work, and passes easily enough. Which brings us to the bad: in there lies the problem; because it passes so fluidly, the fact that nothing really interesting happens, that events just flow past without raising much interest, means that you're quickly finished without having become engaged.
It may be a symptom of popular literature at the time, but it reminds me of other novels of the 1950s aimed squarely at the mainstream that also flowed simply past without engaging. But where books, like runaway-1950s-success The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, spoke to the fears and insecurities particular to the nation at the time, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland does no such thing.
In the end it reads like Dick was merely going through a checklist for the popular-style, without really understanding what makes the style work.
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LibraryThing member CBJames
Long before he became Science Fiction's best know paranoid, Philip K. Dick wrote several mainstream novels. Long overlooked and forgotten, they were finally published in England several years after his death and in the United States in 2007. Dick's Science Fiction is characterized by paranoia and
The novel's two main characters share a common workspace. Jim Ferguson is an older man forced into retirement from the auto garage he runs and owns by a bad heart. Al Miller, a younger man, runs a low-end used car lot in space he rents from Jim. The two have a tortured relationship. Ferguson at turns needs and is repelled by Miller. Some times he feels sorry for him and wants to lend him a leg-up; other times he turns on him with venom, berating him for his lack of ambition and the dirty tricks he uses to sell cars that have no value. At times, Al tries to look out for Ferguson, to protect him from shady dealers who might want to take advantage of him. Other times he rails against the older man for selling his business leaving Al in the lurch.
Like In Milton Lumky Territory, reviewed here, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a novel about work. The ins-and-outs of running a garage, running a used car lot, and later running an independent record company and land development business, make up much of the nove'ls plot. It is rare to see a portrayal of an average working life in modern fiction. Philip Dick's portrayal gets at the "quiet desperation" of so many men trying to eek out a living on the margins of society, fearing that those with more money and more power have stacked the deck stacked against them. It's easy to feel for Philip Dick's protagonists.
Even to feel for a shyster used-car salesman like Al Miller.
It's also easy to see why these early novels by Philip Dick were rejected by publishers. Look at that opening sentence above--do you want to read the rest of this book? Philip Dick's science fiction elevates the pulp nature of the genre, takes it to a level where his paranoia becomes a comment on modern society. His realistic fiction makes that paranoia seem, frankly, just paranoid. Science Fiction is considered by many to be a lower genre of fiction, it largely was in the early 1960's. But I'd argue that Philip K. Dick had to take a step down into a lower genre in order to rise. He stooped to conquer. If you're curious about him, go with his classic Science Fiction, A Scanner Darkly or The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. If you're already a fan of those and want to know how the author got there, you might want to check out Humpty Dumpty in Oakland.
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by plot twists that reveal what the reader, and the main character, thought was real is not. Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, though set in the real world of 1960, feels right at home in Philip K. Dick's paranoid world view.The novel's two main characters share a common workspace. Jim Ferguson is an older man forced into retirement from the auto garage he runs and owns by a bad heart. Al Miller, a younger man, runs a low-end used car lot in space he rents from Jim. The two have a tortured relationship. Ferguson at turns needs and is repelled by Miller. Some times he feels sorry for him and wants to lend him a leg-up; other times he turns on him with venom, berating him for his lack of ambition and the dirty tricks he uses to sell cars that have no value. At times, Al tries to look out for Ferguson, to protect him from shady dealers who might want to take advantage of him. Other times he rails against the older man for selling his business leaving Al in the lurch.
Like In Milton Lumky Territory, reviewed here, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a novel about work. The ins-and-outs of running a garage, running a used car lot, and later running an independent record company and land development business, make up much of the nove'ls plot. It is rare to see a portrayal of an average working life in modern fiction. Philip Dick's portrayal gets at the "quiet desperation" of so many men trying to eek out a living on the margins of society, fearing that those with more money and more power have stacked the deck stacked against them. It's easy to feel for Philip Dick's protagonists.
Even to feel for a shyster used-car salesman like Al Miller.
It's also easy to see why these early novels by Philip Dick were rejected by publishers. Look at that opening sentence above--do you want to read the rest of this book? Philip Dick's science fiction elevates the pulp nature of the genre, takes it to a level where his paranoia becomes a comment on modern society. His realistic fiction makes that paranoia seem, frankly, just paranoid. Science Fiction is considered by many to be a lower genre of fiction, it largely was in the early 1960's. But I'd argue that Philip K. Dick had to take a step down into a lower genre in order to rise. He stooped to conquer. If you're curious about him, go with his classic Science Fiction, A Scanner Darkly or The Man in the High Castle or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. If you're already a fan of those and want to know how the author got there, you might want to check out Humpty Dumpty in Oakland.
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Language
Original publication date
1960-10/11 (manuscript)
1986
ISBN
0586086706 / 9780586086704