Humpty Dumpty in Oakland in Philip K Dick

Aug 24, 2011 Byron 'Giggsy' Paul rated it really liked it

Shelves: phildickian, dirty-realism

my first non-science fiction PKD read and I'm fairly impressed. This is a tragicomedy that follows the pathetic business lives and personal relationships (largely with their always critical wives who own some pathetic themselves).

I was at once reminded of Arthur Miller's Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman and enjoyed how the wishful thinking of the characters would bring their absurd fantasies into their own reality ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Jul 11, 2012 Jack Stovold rated it really liked it

My Philip K. Dick Project

Entry #20 - Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (Written Oct. 1960, published posthumously Oct, 1986)

Well, here it is, the last of Dick’s mainstream novels, and another never published in Dick’s lifetime. This is an odd one, especially coming after the one-two punch of Confessions of a Crap Artist and The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. This book is widely thought to be a reworking of the Dick’s first draft of A Time For George Stavros, which Dick could never get his liter My Philip K. Dick Project

Entry #20 - Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (Written Oct. 1960, published posthumously Oct, 1986)

Well, here it is, the last of Dick’s mainstream novels, and another never published in Dick’s lifetime. This is an odd one, especially coming after the one-two punch of Confessions of a Crap Artist and The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. This book is widely thought to be a reworking of the Dick’s first draft of A Time For George Stavros, which Dick could never get his literary agency to accept and which is unfortunately now lost. Whatever the reason, this is a strange little book, a sort of casually dark and yet leisurely story.
The book follows only two protagonists, Jim Fergesson (no relation to Jim Fergesson, Stuart Hadley’s boss in Voices From The Street), an elderly auto mechanic with a heart problem, and Al Miller, who has a small used car lot he sublets from Jim next to his garage. When Jim’s doctor tells him he can’t do any heavy lifting as a mechanic anymore, he decides to sell his garage, which leaves Al in trouble.
Jim’s a simple old man, not wanting to hurt Al (who sometimes helps in the garage), but not being particularly fond of him either. He’s looking out for number one, and he feels he deserves it after his years one, so when his customer Chris Harman, a well-to-do record executive with his fingers in all sorts of pies, offers him a chance to overlook a staff of mechanics in his own garage in a new development near San Francisco, Jim jumps at it, perhaps a bit too eagerly.
All of these events cause Al’s latent feelings of inadequacy and incompetence to come rising to the surface, as he faces the danger of losing the very little that he’s managed to carve out for himself, scamming people on old junkers. He’s pathetic, and he knows it, but now he has to face up to that situation, and he doesn’t know how. His first tack is to try and discredit Harmon, and then to blackmail Harmon, after discovering he made his money selling illegal “dirty” records. Finally, he tries to get a job in Harman’s organization, based sheerly on pure bluster.
None of these three are particularly upstanding people, but perhaps Jim comes off the best. He’s a little cold and aloof (and doesn’t do business with “coloreds”), but in the end it’s not his responsibility to take care of Al Miller, contrary to what Al and his wife seem to think. Al himself is a loser stuck by his own insecurities and paranoia. Perhaps his most realistic trait is his failure to act and his fear of change, even good change. It’s endearably human. Dick’s best trick in this story is never to straight out reveal whether Harman’s organization is on the level or not (unless I’m missing something). They’re shady, sure, and there are some rumors, but in the end, we can’t be absolutely sure whether or not it really is just all in Al’s head. He either saved Jim or he doomed him, and like Al we are left unsure.
The little flourishes that flesh out this book are what I enjoy, from the obnoxiously florid and foreign speech of Jim’s Greek wife, Lydia, to Jim’s macabre and disturbing fantasies of his own death in the mechanic’s garage. Jim’s struggles with his heart while he’s driving and trying to make business deals make for some harrowing passages.
In the final analysis, this is not one of the stronger of Dick’s mainstream novels. It lacks the verisimilitude of the previous two. It feels like more of a transition from his early straight stories to his late ones. That being said, there’s a lot going for this book, and it’s quite a bit shorter than his other straight novels. I’m going to miss the different side of Dick we see in these books. In the early 60s, Dick’s heart was broken when all of his “straight” novels like this one were left in a box on his doorstep by his literary agency after years of shopping them around. That, combined with the success and acclaim heaped upon his next novel, The Man In The High Castle (looking forward to that, stay tuned!), changed the direction of Dick’s career, and he largely abandoned his hopes of mainstream literary success.

Stray thoughts: The second appearance of Jim Fergesson (in name, only) since all the way back from Entry #2!

My edition: Paladin Books, paperback, 1988

Up next: "The Man In The High Castle"! - The book that changed PKD's career!

July 12, 2012
...more

Like · see review

Oct 02, 2007 R. marked it as to-read

Philip K. Dick writes about used car salesmen. (on order, because i'm in a mood.) ...more

Like · see review

Jul 09, 2020 Paul rated it liked it

Solid non-SF work from Dick. The mood of the book is very downbeat for the most part, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Like · see review

Jun 24, 2008 Themistocles rated it really liked it

Shelves: lit, p-k-dick

A great read for PKD fans. It does look and read like an early novel, but most ingredients for his later works are here - the no-good hero, the wife, the hunting world conspiring against him, the bitter-sweet ending... It's actually very interesting to see how Dick was experimenting with his ideas (even the same characters) during his early works. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2007 Stephen rated it really liked it

Amazing book I must say. Feels like one of Dick's SF efforts from the early 60s, more so than Puttering or Mary. Only this one takes us to an early stage of California's out of control growth. Chris Harmon has his place as another one of PKD's enigmatic characters. ...more

Like · see review