This Hardcover Book item from Metropolitan Books was reviewed on 17-Sep-2008.
Search ISBN:0805054642 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick Reference Book. Classifications : Authors Arts & Literature Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books General Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books Philosophers Professionals & Academics Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books History & Critic . Click the following link to view the cover of I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick. Related topics: Authors. Arts & Literature. Subjects. Books. General. Subjects. Books. Philosophers. Subjects. Books. requestid: ab278a8e-cde7-4a7d-a7c7-6b0780b7c07b
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1) Hardcover Book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick by Metropolitan Books. I don´t know much about Philip K. Dick. I´m not a fan. But surfing the web, I came across some articles about him that intrigued me enough to want to learn more. I found myself spending about an hour on Amazon´s Search Inside the Book, reading through as much of this book as I could (i.e., the first 3 or 4 pages of each chapter). Well, that wasn´t enough to quench my thirst. So I bought it, and it was a book that I swallowed in one gulp -- I couldn´t put it down. Fascinating stuff.
Carrčre is a very good writer, and this is a book that works on several levels. First, he brings to life the various phases of Dick´s personality, from his nerdy adolescence, to his semi-straight 20s, to his drug-drenched 30s and 40s. The book is also very good at evoking the three distinctive eras of American culture Dick lived through: the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Too, Carrčre limns with great clarity the complex twists and turns of Dick´s spiritual journey, and also offers thoughtful commentary on Dick´s prolific body of writing (with some especially interesting observations on how the details of Dick´s life were reflected and transformed in his fiction).
All in all, a great introduction to Dick. He was a fascinating man, and this is a fascinating book. Carrčre is clearly a fanboy, but he´s also a very smart and talented writer, so this book far transcends typical fanboy biographies. Indeed, it´s a first-rate work of literature.
By way of a postscript, I liked this book so much I picked up Carrčre´s The Adversary -- which is a superb non-fiction thriller, another mind-blowing great read (that appears to be Carrčre´s specialty).¤ 2) Hardcover Book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick by Metropolitan Books. What´s going on with these French novelists seeming to re-invent biography with their love letters to American weirdos? Michel Houellebecq wrote my favorite (non S.T. Joshi anyway) appreciation/bio of H.P. Lovecraft ever, and now here comes another in much the same vein, only more so. This is part biography, part literary criticism, and part attempt at doing just what the title suggests: inhabiting, for a short while, the mind and imagination of Philip K. Dick. I say it succeeds at all three, beautifully. Finishing it, I immediately wanted to start it again.¤ 3) Hardcover Book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick by Metropolitan Books. I Am Alive and You are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere has been on my books to read list for awhile. I have a weakness for biographies and autobiographies of writers, and if it´s a writer who I all but worship as a god, well, all the better.
Philip K. Dick is one of those writers who, once I discovered all those years ago with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, felt compelled to read every book I could get my hands on. There are a few here and there that I have missed, but I have read the vast majority of Dick´s works, and perhaps none was more haunting than Valis, particularly the author´s introduction to the novel. Not having any use for religion myself, I felt a bit betrayed that a writer I idolized could have written something so strangely spiritual. It seemed like it had to be all a joke. I know exactly how those French fans felt at that science fiction conference,Carrere describes in I Am Alive and You are Dead because I have been there. If anything, though, it was Valis that made me want to read more about the life of Philip K. Dick.
Carrere calls the biography he´s written "a peculiar book," and says he has attempted to portrary Dick from the "inside." I can´t say whether this is the result, but the book chronicles Dick´s life with an empathy that seems born of a true fan, who wants to understand this writer and share his story with the world.
He tells the story of Dick´s decent into madness with honesty, and yet avoids passing judgment. It is a tragic story and a dark story, all the more disturbing because it is a true story and not a work of fiction.
I have seen what madness can do to a person firsthand, and I´m always the last person to classify what others call crazy as insanity. Sure it sounds crazy that Jesus could appear in some girl´s toilet bowl, but then millions of people go off to church each Sunday, many of them believing in things that look a whole hell of a lot like insanity - a virgin that gives birth to a semi-divine child, a person turning into a pillar of salt, a dead person disappearing from a tomb. When it comes right down to it, The Bible is full of as much weirdness as say, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I appreciated the fact that Carrere never tried to paint a caricatureof Dick, but presented the man as he was, and showed the way he struggled to understand the seeming insanity taking over his life.
Carrere also does his best to link the different epochs in Dick´s life with the books he was writing at that time. He doesn´t cover all his novels, but a fair number. The result is that the reader can see the inspirations behind some of the themes, and in some cases the outright autobiographical nature of the works.
I have read no other biographies of Dick´s life to date, and so, have nothing to compare this book with, but found it a solid and well-rounded effort. It may not be quite as page-turning as one of Dick´s novels, but it is written in a way that is engaging and entertaining.¤ 4) Hardcover Book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick by Metropolitan Books. This book is not just a biography of Philip K. Dick, famous science fiction writer; the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report are based on his stories. It is also an attempt to find out what made him tick, to get inside his mind. And that is a strange place to be.
Dick was born in 1928, near Berkeley, California, half of a set of twins. Evidently, his mother knew little or nothing about child rearing, because Jane, his twin, died at 6 weeks of age, possibly of starvation. Her death affected Dick for his entire life.
He was a big lover of classical music, and a voracious reader, especially of psychology, philosophy, and later in his life, religion. Dick never achieved his dream of becoming a "serious" novelist, though not for lack of effort. Writing science fiction simply paid the bills, until he became successful at it.
His first wife was a Communist sympathizer (having an FBI file in 1950s Berkeley was practically a badge of honor), he got his second wife sent to a mental hospital, and his third wife left him, and took their young daughter, when he objected to her getting a job outside the home. Dick had a fear of being alone. Dick was a paranoid agoraphobic who was subject to panic attacks. He was, shall we say, well acquainted with the world of prescription drugs, taking them for all sorts of physical and mental ailments. On speed, he could write a novel in two weeks, without sleeping, though he knew that he would physically pay for it later. In later years, he was perceived as some sort of LSD guru, even though he took it only once. There were a couple of stints in drug rehab.
As a youngster, during one of his rare trips to a movie theater, Dick was suddenly convinced that nothing existed outside the theater. The four walls and the pictures on the screen were the sum total of reality. Another time, he wondered if he was really alive, or if he was simply an android who was programmed with false memories so that he would think that he was alive. In later years, Dick turned a couple of innocent fan letters from Eastern Europe into a plot to get him behind the Iron Curtain, and keep him there.
Anyone who has ever read one of Dick´s novels, or seen one of the movies based on his stories, needs to read this book. For those not familiar with Philip Dick, read this as a look into the mind of a very strange person.
¤ 5) Hardcover Book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick by Metropolitan Books. Overall, this is a nice work, but it seems to be an interpretive biography, with emphasis on interpretive.
Some may love it, depending on what kind of biography one is looking for. I would describe Emmanuel Carrere´s PKD bio as melodramatic.
This is the first PKD bio I´ve read. Emmanuel Carrere uses PKD´s books as the timeline, without much emphasis on years, which can be frustrating to some (like me). Also the author´s style is somewhat flowery and heavyhanded. I almost stopped reading it in the beginning because I wanted something more straight forward.
The kicker is, PKD´s life is so interesting to me, I got caught up in it and eventually appreciated Emmanuel Carrere´s style.
The book is appropriately titled, A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick. Emmanuel Carrere was looking for motivation, not just describing events.
Fortunately there are other PKD bios, which I intend to read.¤ 6) Hardcover Book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick by Metropolitan Books. From the master chronicler of psychological extremes, an unforgettable portrait of the “Shakespeare of science fiction” whose work has influenced millions
For his many devoted readers, Philip K. Dick is not only one of the “most valiant psychological explorers of the 20th century” (The New York Times) but a source of divine revelation. Dick, whose work inspired such films as Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report, dedicated his life to solving one ultimately unanswerable question: What is real?
In the riveting style that won accolades for The Adversary, Emmanuel Carrčre follows Dick’s strange odyssey from his traumatic beginnings in 1928, when his twin sister died in infancy, to his lonely end in 1982, beset by mystical visions of swirling pink lights, three-eyed invaders, and messages from the Roman Empire. Drawing on interviews as well as unpublished sources, Carrčre traces Dick’s multiple marriages, paranoid fantasies, and vertiginous encounters with the drug culture of sixties California. He vividly conjures the spirit of this restless observer of American postwar malaise whose more than fifty novels subverted the materials of science fiction—parallel universes, intricate time loops, collective delusions—to create classic works of contemporary anxiety.
As disturbing and engrossing as a book by its subject, Carrčre’s unconventional work interweaves life and art to reveal the maddening genius whose writing foresaw—from cloning to reality TV—a world that looks ever more like one of his inventions.
¤Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 15-Oct-2008, 08050546429780805054644, 650-770-310-420-811-971-HCB-8 
I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick, Book, Image © Metropolitan Books
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