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Has any of you read/skimmed the Exegesis? Is it any good?

Trasmatta 4y ago
I don't know if it's the type of thing that can be classified as "good" or "bad". It's a stream of consciousness from a brilliant man suffering from immense personal pain and some form of undiagnosed mental illness, that I'm sure he never intended anyone to read. It's bizarre and fascinating, especially if you've read VALIS. It shows how his internal world was becoming molded with his own books, his life becoming one of his own stories, struggling with the flimsy nature of reality. It's so long that it feels kind of futile to read it end to end, but I jump to a random page sometimes and read for awhile. There's a lot of repetition, but is fascinating.
pmoriarty 4y ago
No. It's awful... unless you like disconnected ramblings.
jimmygrapes 4y ago
It took me several years and as many attempts to get into it and commit, but once I committed and got past the (awful) forward, I went front to back over the course of a month or two. As sibling comment says, it's very repetitive, but it's also iterative; PKD is trying to make sense of a lot of things at once, over and over again with slight tweaks. Each time he gets closer and closer to essentially rewriting Christian Gnosticism (imo) from the ground up. It honestly changed my life. There were times when I would have dreams and thoughts along similar lines and then end up reading them in the pages that night. It is worth a read if you're in a dark place, because it might give you the same sense of "I'm not alone" that it did to me. Certainly ain't for everyone, but the reward is great.
armitron 4y ago
If you've had mystical experiences and trying to make sense of them, PKD's Exegesis is required reading. If you haven't had any experiences of this sort, then it'll probably come across as disconnected ramblings indicative of serious mental illness. After spending decades reading everything I could on the subject of mystical experiences, from Crowley (the English libertine) to Timothy Leary and Mckenna, the only other writers I'd put on the same "absolutely essential reading" list as PKD, worthy of intense study, are Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner. That a pulp scifi author made this list is, to me, supremely fascinating.

I don't know if it's the type of thing that can be classified as "good" or "bad". It's a stream of consciousness from a brilliant man suffering from immense personal pain and some form of undiagnosed mental illness, that I'm sure he never intended anyone to read. It's bizarre and fascinating, especially if you've read VALIS. It shows how his internal world was becoming molded with his own books, his life becoming one of his own stories, struggling with the flimsy nature of reality. It's so long that it feels kind of futile to read it end to end, but I jump to a random page sometimes and read for awhile. There's a lot of repetition, but is fascinating.

pmoriarty 4y ago

No. It's awful... unless you like disconnected ramblings.

jimmygrapes 4y ago

It took me several years and as many attempts to get into it and commit, but once I committed and got past the (awful) forward, I went front to back over the course of a month or two. As sibling comment says, it's very repetitive, but it's also iterative; PKD is trying to make sense of a lot of things at once, over and over again with slight tweaks. Each time he gets closer and closer to essentially rewriting Christian Gnosticism (imo) from the ground up. It honestly changed my life. There were times when I would have dreams and thoughts along similar lines and then end up reading them in the pages that night. It is worth a read if you're in a dark place, because it might give you the same sense of "I'm not alone" that it did to me. Certainly ain't for everyone, but the reward is great.

armitron 4y ago

If you've had mystical experiences and trying to make sense of them, PKD's Exegesis is required reading. If you haven't had any experiences of this sort, then it'll probably come across as disconnected ramblings indicative of serious mental illness. After spending decades reading everything I could on the subject of mystical experiences, from Crowley (the English libertine) to Timothy Leary and Mckenna, the only other writers I'd put on the same "absolutely essential reading" list as PKD, worthy of intense study, are Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner. That a pulp scifi author made this list is, to me, supremely fascinating.