I Am Alive and You are Dead: A Journey Inside the Mind of Philip K. Dick - Softcover

Carrère, Emmanuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747579717 ISBN 13: 9780747579717

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

For his many devoted readers, Philip. K. Dick is not only 'one of the most valiant psychological explorers of the twentieth century' ("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 Carrere 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 light, three-eyed invaders, and messages from the Roman Empire. Drawing on interviews as well as unpublished sources, Carrere traces Dick's multiple marriages, paranoid fantasies, and vertiginous encounters with the drug culture of sixties California.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 novel by Philip K. Dick himself, Carrere'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.

About this title

About the Author:

Emmanuel Carrere is one of France's most critically acclaimed writers, the author of several screenplays and novels, including Class Trip and Moustache, as well as The Adversary, a New York Times Notable Book of 2001. He lives in Paris.

Review:

'Emmanuel Carrere's I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE DEAD: A JOURNEY INTO THE MIND OF PHILIP K. DICK is remarkable - a depth charge, a CAT scan, and an exorcism. Carrere, whose own eerie novels include THE ADVERSARY, proves that it's still possible for the French to write like Voltaire rather than Derrida. Informed, affectionate, sardonic, he is also crystal clear' Harper's US 'Startling ... Carrere gets so far inside the head of the deeply troubled author ... the resulting text is remarkably vivid, intimate, often haunting ... ' Philadelphia Inquirer 'What Dick thinks and feels as man and writer is richly developed in this riveting biography. Mr Carrere's book is mesmerizing. Seldom have I read a biographer who drew me so deeply into his subject's world' New York Sun 'Every whorl of Dick's mind, every delusion, every leap through the looking glass, is chronicled. The effect is powerful ... ' Boston Globe

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0747579717
• ISBN 13: 9780747579717
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334