Thursday, May 20, 2004
Ken Campbell on TV last night, about Philip K. Dick's VALIS:
"I'd be very careful [who I recommended VALIS to], I don't think it's a responsible thing to do at all... If you are likely to have a psychotic episode you're much more likely to have one if you involve yourself with VALIS... What is it about? It's about about, it's about aboutness, it's about how nothing is about what it seems to be about and the structure of the book is roundabout but then it goes shooting off... This is a damaging book, you take this book home and it's like taking home unexploded ordnance, some kind of cluster bomb... You think 'it's 6.99 I'll have that' but you don't just buy that, then you have to pay twenty quid for the Nag Hammadi Gospels because you can't have understood a third of [VALIS] without having read the Gnostic Gospels and where's that going to lead you?.. That the creation of the world was by God's lowest angels and that these, not being skillfull, arranged matters as we see them... 'Is the universe irrational? Is it irrational because an irrational mind governs it? Yes it is. The universe is irrational, the mind governing it is irrational.' No point getting in to this unless you're going to involve yourself... It barbs into the soul. I warn against it."
God bless Ken Campbell. If only this had been in the BBC's Big Read and Ken had had half an hour to make the case for it. Forget Hutton, Ken's testimonial for VALIS would have broken the BBC. If you haven't read it yet, why not?
(On a sidenote: Mariella Frostrup was putting the case for the other book in this show, Brave New World. If I somehow knew nothing of Huxley or his book, then I would probably decide never to read it based on her consistent denouncing of the science-fiction genre, "I don't normally read science fiction but... Brave New World isn't sci-fi", "like I said earlier I'm not normally an aficionado of science-fiction and [based on the behaviour of Ken Campbell] I'm quite relieved that I'm not". Oh piss off and live in a hole with Margaret Atwood where you can sneer at the common people and their low-brow tastes while you find some higher justification for anything you find you actually like in human endeavor. Run back to Newsnight Review where you have no purpose but to damn everyone else for the sheer bloody hard work of creating.)
"I'd be very careful [who I recommended VALIS to], I don't think it's a responsible thing to do at all... If you are likely to have a psychotic episode you're much more likely to have one if you involve yourself with VALIS... What is it about? It's about about, it's about aboutness, it's about how nothing is about what it seems to be about and the structure of the book is roundabout but then it goes shooting off... This is a damaging book, you take this book home and it's like taking home unexploded ordnance, some kind of cluster bomb... You think 'it's 6.99 I'll have that' but you don't just buy that, then you have to pay twenty quid for the Nag Hammadi Gospels because you can't have understood a third of [VALIS] without having read the Gnostic Gospels and where's that going to lead you?.. That the creation of the world was by God's lowest angels and that these, not being skillfull, arranged matters as we see them... 'Is the universe irrational? Is it irrational because an irrational mind governs it? Yes it is. The universe is irrational, the mind governing it is irrational.' No point getting in to this unless you're going to involve yourself... It barbs into the soul. I warn against it."
God bless Ken Campbell. If only this had been in the BBC's Big Read and Ken had had half an hour to make the case for it. Forget Hutton, Ken's testimonial for VALIS would have broken the BBC. If you haven't read it yet, why not?
(On a sidenote: Mariella Frostrup was putting the case for the other book in this show, Brave New World. If I somehow knew nothing of Huxley or his book, then I would probably decide never to read it based on her consistent denouncing of the science-fiction genre, "I don't normally read science fiction but... Brave New World isn't sci-fi", "like I said earlier I'm not normally an aficionado of science-fiction and [based on the behaviour of Ken Campbell] I'm quite relieved that I'm not". Oh piss off and live in a hole with Margaret Atwood where you can sneer at the common people and their low-brow tastes while you find some higher justification for anything you find you actually like in human endeavor. Run back to Newsnight Review where you have no purpose but to damn everyone else for the sheer bloody hard work of creating.)
