Followed, of course, by Dick at the Gray Lady

[lsanderson]

A Prince of Pulp, Legit at Last
By CHARLES McGRATH

ALL his life the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick yearned for what he called the mainstream. He wanted to be a serious literary writer, not a sci-fi hack whose audience consisted, he once said, of “trolls and wackos.” But Mr. Dick, who popped as many as 1,000 amphetamine pills a week, was also more than a little paranoid. In the early ’70s, when he had finally achieved some standing among academic critics and literary theorists — most notably the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem — he narced on them all, writing a letter to the F.B.I. in which he claimed they were K.G.B. agents trying to take over American science fiction.

...

The books aren’t just trippy, though. The best of them are visionary or surreal in a way that American literature, so rooted in reality and observation, seldom is. Critics have often compared Mr. Dick to Borges, Kafka, Calvino. To come up with an American analogue you have to think of someone like Emerson, but nobody would ever dream of looking to him for movie ideas. Emerson was all brain, no pulp. More

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

he narced on them all, writing a letter to the F.B.I. in which he claimed they were K.G.B. agents trying to take over American science fiction.

But one can only hope he was such a space cadet at that point that the F.B.I. just gave him a "Junior G-Man" pin, patted him on the head and sent him on his way.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

...isn't Charles McGrath also a North Dakota poet? bother. I'm thinking of Thomas McGrath. (I used to play with his kid, Tomasito McGrath; our dads both taught at NDSU.)

Si...

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

I kinda knew Thomas McGrath back in the day...