However marginalized as a “pulp” or “genre” writer, Dick wrote novels that have from the beginning evoked a passionate response from readers, exciting their imaginations, provoking their fears, and inspiring a devoted fandom. Now, The Library of America, “our quasi-official canon of American literature” according to the New York Times, has published Dick in its landmark series alongside the likes of Melville, Twain, and Faulkner. The nonprofit publisher specializing in American literature has, by adding Dick to its roster of classic American writers, made a compelling case for a more inclusive conception of great American literature.
And readers have responded. Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s, published just last summer, has already sold 24,000 copies, making it the Library of America’s fastest selling title in its 26-year history. Edited by the acclaimed novelist Jonathan Lethem, Four Novels of the 1960s is the beginning of a multi-volume, multi-year plan to bring Dick’s writing to a new readership, presenting his work in The Library of America’s durable Smyth-sewn bindings on acid-free paper in a easy-to-hold size. It gathers four of Dick’s great early works: The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?-the book that inspired the movie Blade Runner–and Ubik. The genius of Dick’s vision, Lethem believes, lies in his ability to “turn the materials of American pulp-style science fiction into a vocabulary for a remarkably personal vision of paranoia and dislocation.”
This summer, Lethem and The Library of America will team up again for a second Philip K. Dick collection, Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s, bringing together five more classics: Martian Time-Slip; Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb; Now Wait for Last Year; Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; and A Scanner Darkly, the basis for the 2006 film. According to Brian McCarthy, marketing director at The Library of America, there have been more than 10,000 advance orders for the follow-up collection, another record for the publisher.
A practical reason for the success of these volumes, McCarthy believes, is value. The deluxe keepsake hardcover Four Novels of the 1960s costs $35; the four novels it contains, if purchased separately in paperback, cost $53. Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s will retail at $40; the same five paperbacks would cost $62.
“The most outre science fiction writer of the 20th century has finally entered the canon,” Wired Magazine pronounced on the publication of Four Novels of the 1960s. Philip K. Dick is where he belongs at last.
Author: Winston Burton
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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