Forrest’s Reviews > The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch > Status Update

"Should I tell you how it [God] tried to help me, in its own way? And yet - how fettered it was, too, by the forces of fate, which seem to transcend all that live, including it as much as ourselves."

Palmer Eldritch is seemingly God in his own realm and everyone on Chew-Z is a part of that realm. How do you fight omnipotence and why does Eldritch keep playing these games? There's a kafkaesque element here that I haven't recognized before in PKD. It might have always been there, but I missed it.

Emotionally devastating. I can't think of how to characterize that last section, Mayerson's first experience with Chew-Z, any other way. I feel hollowed out inside after reading that. Ugh.

I'm glad we finally have a firmly-established (anti-?) hero in Barney Mayerson. But is Palmer Eldritch really the villain? I'm not yet convinced. There's too much to dislike about all of the characters to decide who the real villains are.

As jolting as PKD can be, conceptually, his prose reads very quickly. It slips by fast!

PKD's Mars is very different from Bradbury's Mars.

Neither Leo nor I know exactly whose head he is in now. I'm surprised no one has tried to turn this into a movie. Inception meets The Twilight Zone.

Initiate PKD Mind-Screw . . .

What a great mockery of 1950s America this is turning out to be. I could see it really bothering many people back in the early '60s, a societal cynicism injection.

Okay, none of the people in this book are likeable. Fine, I can deal with unlikable people. Even they have good points. I'm curious to see what goodness, if any, rises to the top above so much cynicism and opportunism. The novel is a damning examination of capitalism, so far.