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From the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick's twisty and paranoid Time Out of Joint is "marvelous, terrifying fun, especially if you've ever suspected that the world is an unreal construct built solely to keep you from knowing who you really are. Which it is, of course" (Rolling Stone). "The time is out of joint, O curs'd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!" (William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act I, Scene V) Ragle Gumm has a unique job: every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn't consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town in 1959. At least, that's what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet he's never heard of named Marilyn Monroe. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them like "bowl of flowers" and "soft drink stand." When Ragle skips town to try to find the cause of these bizarre occurrences, his discovery could make him question everything he has ever known.… (more)
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A paranoiac psychosis. Imagining that I'm the center of a vast effort by millions of men and women,
Many of Philip K. Dick's books concern paranoia about the nature of reality, and in "Time Out of Joint", both Ragle Gumm and his brother-in-law Vic, start to have grave concerns about their lives. Ragle becomes paranoid because that everyone seems to know who he is, due to his fame as the long-term winner of a newspaper contest called Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next? and when he starts to hallucinate that objects disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with the name of the object written on them, he fears that he is insane, since the paper strips seem too be real and he keeps a collection of them in a box. Vic starts to wonder when he has a strange experience with a bathroom light cord that doesn't exist and later has an odd experience on a bus when self-hypnosis lets him see the truth behind the illusion. Thin support struts, the skeleton of the bus. Metal girders, an empty hollow box. No other seats. Only a strip, a length of planking, on which upright featureless shapes like scarecrows had been propped.
My first clue that this not our world's 1950s America came with the discussion about radio stations all going off the air once television came in, but there may have been earlier clues that Americans or people who remember the 1950s would catch. That reminds me of a big plot hole; at the end Ragle suggests that the significance of Sammy's crystal set was overlooked because the person who should have seen it as a threat was distracted by playing poker and didn't remember that radios were not allowed. But I looked back at that scene and the crystal set wasn't just present in the room, as Sammy put it on the table next to the poker strips and the adults were all involved in a conversation about what Sammy might be able to pick up on it since no radio stations were still broadcasting.
All in all, it was a more straightforward story than the author's more famous later works, and I felt that the ending was too simple and fell, but I enjoyed working out what was really going on, as the story progressed and my original thoughts about alternate histories and time travel were proved wrong.
basic plot
If you read the afterward in this
Ragle Gumm, his sister Margo, her husband Vic and her son Sammy all live together in a house in what could best be described as stereotypical suburbia. Vic is a grocer, but Ragle doesn't work -- instead he fills his days by solving an ongoing newspaper contest. Everyone knows Ragle because of his continuous winning streak. Life is pretty much picture perfect in this town. But the author right away alludes to some strange contradictions: there are no radios anywhere in the town; Uncle Tom's Cabin is featured in the Book of the Month Club, Margo is envious watching a friend drive her Tucker automobile, Marilyn Monroe is featured in a magazine but nobody's heard of her. While on an outing one day, Ragle goes to the soft-drink stand, puts his money on the counter and watches while his money disappears into the wood, then where the soft-drink stand was, he sees only a slip of paper that says "soft-drink stand." He thinks he's going crazy and takes the slip of paper, adding it to several others he has collected and stored in a metal box he carries around. It's not only Ragle, either. Vic notices some odd occurrences; together the two decide to investigate what's going on.
I have to say that I thought the outcome was a little bit of a letdown - but it was so well written and such an amazing story that I can overlook it. The book looks at such themes as what does it mean to be sane/insane, paranoia, what really constitutes reality and what is only a signifier, etc. I highly recommend this one and now am ready to plow through the rest of my books by Philip K. Dick.
This was an excellent introduction. We are introduced to Ragle Gumm and
Things indeed are not all they seem and a chase for escape and reason begins. This is in many ways a forerunner of other books and films based on this theme e.g. Truman Show. It was a great read and I will be trying some of the others.
The only slight criticism is that the ending is all a bit sudden. It comes almost as if it is grafted on to explain the mystery. But it takes nothing away from an excellent read.
2 stars.
Ragle Gumm who had been decorated for his service in the second world war has settled down in a quiet American town, living with his brother and his bother's wife. He is making a living by winning a daily competition in the local paper and has become something of a celebrity. The competition involves plotting the location of a randomly generated item in one of over a thousand locations. Ragle does this by charts, records and graphs that he works on and updates every day. He has won the daily competition over a two year period. A young couple (Mr and Mrs Black) have recently moved next door and Ragle is starting to feel constrained by the Blacks constant overtures of friendship, but he becomes attracted to Mrs Black and worries that an affair will interrupt his work and would cause trouble with her husband. One day Ragle while sitting on a bus feels the world dissolve around him, his fellow passengers appear as skeletons, this only last for a minute, but he is profoundly shaken. He becomes paranoid about Mr Black and after yet another unwelcome social visit he runs out the backdoor jumps in his car and drives off. He soon finds himself on an unfamiliar dangerous dirt road in the dark and has to abandon his car, he sees the lights of a house ahead.......................He must get help because he needs to be able to post his entry for the competition the next day and there is work to do.
Dick manages in the first part of the novel to create a scenario that is just about believable, there is something not quite right about the world that Ragle and his family inhabit, for example there is television, but no radios, and there is something off kilter in Ragle himself. It is a mystery with an overlay of menace that works well. When the mystery starts to unravel as Ragle pushes for answers to his dilemma; Dick holds back the information skilfully enough to keep the reader entertained. The resolution, even if was too fantastic did not disappoint this reader.
Philip K Dick's novels have been the subject matter for many films and Blade Runner is the most famous, but apart from Man in the High Castle, this is the only other novel from him that I have read. This is an early example of his work and I was impressed. It now appears in the S F Masterwork series and I would rate it at four stars