A Partisan Electorate

America is becoming more partisan , I suspect in part, because debate is fueled by niche cable news channels.

Review: A Scanner Darkly

A while ago I sent out a call on Facebook asking people if they could recommend any good Science-fiction books. You see, I recently purchased a Kindle DX and felt like sprouting my genre wings. Two names popped up: Phillip K. Dick, and my namesake, Neal Stephenson. I went with Dick because I enjoyed Minority Report, a movie based on one of his books. Usually the books are better than the movies; the logic appeared sound, and it was. A Scanner Darkly is essentially about addiction and identity. Written in the 70s, Dick is preoccupied with the questions of his age: fluidity of identity, counter-culture and drugs, and resisting authority.

We are introduced to a group of Californian addict friends. The addicts we meet are all helpless: victims of their own aversion of straight, authoritarian society. They lack much in common except their addiction to Substance D, and penchant for waxing lyrical on crack-pot fantasies, paranoid delusions, and mindless banter. The book is set in the midst of a Substance D epidemic. The drug has nasty side effects including massive paranoia, schizophrenia, brain damage, and delusions.

Here's the trailer for the movie (which was very closely based on the book):



Fred (undercover alias Bob Arctor), is a NARC agent hoping to slink his way higher up the food chain and tap into supply nodes of Substance D. He secretly monitors his addict housemates -- Ernie Luckman, James Barris, and Charles Freck -- through clandestine cameras, which he watches from another house.

The book runs as a psychological narrative of drug users -- especially Arctor. We glean insights into drug culture: The paranoia, amorphous lifestyle, pointless conversations, hair-brained schemes and assorted banter of the users are all front and center. The basic plot investigates if and how Arctor can maintain himself to successfully infiltrate the drug ring. His management of his nut-job housemates, his feelings toward Donna Hawthorne, a love interest and drug supplier, as well as his own psychological demons all coalesce into a spooky, but riveting story-line.

I'll spare a more detailed plot summary and go into what I got out of the book.

There are some interesting themes which emerge. One is that of identity. Fred, the undercover NARC agent, has been ingesting substance D as much as anyone. He develops brain difficulties which essentially prevent him from cognitively translating reality effectively to his brain. He gets confused as to his core identity. He starts out posing as a drug user (alias Arctor), but then becomes a real drug addict. This calls into question if he (Arctor) is actually posing as a NARC agent (Fred). Also, in a twist of irony, it transpires that Fred is narking on Arctor -- writing reports about his activities in the house -- which is essentially Fred narking on himself. He struggles to realize this point.

The police also wear special 'scramble suits' which are head-to-toe suits that project changing body parts, a kaleidoscope of eyes, hands, mouths etc. No-one knows anyone else's identity because of these suits. It logically ties in because all the undercover agents need to remain secret from each other, even their bosses. However, it certainly emphasizes a chameleonic view of identity, one that was popular among the counter-culture of the 60s and is still so today in many circles.

Also, the reader is constantly reminded that we don't really know anyone for real. The prevalence of the in-house cameras and Arctor constantly monitoring his housemates on them gives a voyeuristic element. Arctor's distrust of lunatic housemate Barris, and Barris' constant scheming reinforces a deep skepticism about trust. Arctor's unrequited amorous feelings for Hawthorn, and her tidal comings and goings reflect a shallowness of heart and lack of commitment to humanistic ideals of compassion and love. All this takes place in the midst of each character's central focus: Substance D.

There's also a heavy anti-authoritarian current to the book. California has turned into a police state. Police officers use force easily, and are always on the lookout for drugs, evidently bugging houses in the case of the housemates and Arctor. Even though Arctor is a police officer, the reader is not encouraged to have empathy for the police. Rather, we view them as monopolists of violence and persecutors of the lower class. When the vulnerable start to view the police and government as not acting for or with them, it is a symptom of a breaking and lop-sided society. The housemates are constantly and justifiably worried about being watched, bugged, followed, and busted by the police. Barris, the lunatic, is highly given to waxing ad nauseum about this, often concocting hilarious but utterly insane scenarios, which the housemates (including Arctor) take at least moderately seriously.

And finally, there is the drug itself. Dick gives a brutal account. There are no redeeming qualities to Substance D. We see it take away from its users. Arctor's addled mind, Barris in a paranoid whirl, Freck's suicide attempt, and the general effect on the populous are lucid points. Modern equivalents might be crack cocaine.

However, to read A Scanner Darkly as just a drug book would miss the point. I think it is, at its heart, a view into an alternative world, one which sympathizes with its hapless members: people who made a decision to follow an alternative lifestyle, but ultimately paid too high a price. It is easy to moralize with such hell-raisers. But such posturing is lazy, and Dick doesn't do this.

The post-script to the novel is edifying. I'll quote liberally from it.

Dick details how many of his friends died from taking too many drugs in the 60s. They didn't want to grow up, they wanted to remain playful and possibly coveted their alternative status. This was keeping with the times.The narrative of the rise and decline of the American 60s experience has been well covered so I won't repeat it here. I think it is illuminating to read Dick's work as a bookend to the 60s because their was no 'up' in the novel, just futility and meandering despair. Also, I think that one can take a structural view, but this is only implicit in the novel. If small numbers of people in a given society go off the beaten path, we can probably justifiable say that this is of no concern. But if large numbers of people feel so isolated from society, its people, institutions and processes, that they take to a life of drugs, paranoia, and ultimately a dead-end, then more serious questions need to be raised outside of the self-aggrandizing and justifying morality usually leveled at these patrons by more privileged members of society. Sure it's a choice, but reality is so much more complex.

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This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed—run over, maimed, destroyed—but they continued to play anyhow ....

In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years ...

If there was any “sin,” it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all.

It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful."

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