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The "Dick was a bad prose writer" meme is fairly undeserved, in my opinion. He was, if anything, quite inconsistent in that regard, and also capable of fantasti
by lobster_johnson 9y ago
The "Dick was a bad prose writer" meme is fairly undeserved, in my opinion. He was, if anything, quite inconsistent in that regard, and also capable of fantastically good, searing prose at times.
The almost theatrically pulpy Ubik, for example, contains something of his finest writing (unlike much of what he wrote, it nails a certain unnerving combination of slapstick drollness and outright creepiness). Sure, some of his prose is a bit creaky, exposing his pulp roots, but not consistently so.
His writing matured once he slowed down in the late 1960s, and Flow My Tears and A Scanner Darkly both contain some damn fine writing. His essays, lectures, letters and the Exegesis also showed him to be a very good writer.
- empath75 9y agoThe dedication for A Scanner Darkly is probably the only thing anyone needs to read to understand drug use and abuse. It’s beautiful and heart breaking.
- madaxe_again 9y agoThat’s fair - and I’ll grant that he has moments of sheer style that I find myself quoting decades later. That said, I don’t think saying his writing is awful is necessarily derogatory - if anything, he just didn’t let good prose get in the way of a good story or a good idea - and frankly, his style actually enhances his literature - it’s almost part of the narrative. He’s my favourite author by a country mile, and my several excursions into writing (a novel, two novellas, dozens of short stories, all unpublished as I don’t think they’re even worth pulp) may have inherited his approach ever so slightly, by which I mean they quite definitely have. The Exegesis is pretty much my Bible.