March 2021 Catalogue

16 I m a g i n e d W o r l d s E a r l y M a r c h 2 0 2 1 “Let’s Hear It For The Vague Blur!” 14. DICK, Philip K. A Scanner Darkly. Garden City, 1977. Octavo, original tan paper boards, dust jacket. $1850. Click for more info First edition of Dick’s “suburban phantasmagoria” (New York Times), his finely crafted and frightening vision of drug culture, social conformity, and the struggle to discern reality. The gripping tale of a narcotics agent in hot pursuit of himself, A Scanner Darkly revisits Dick’s life-long fascination with the inability to distinguish the real from the unreal to terrifying effect. Although many of Philip K. Dick’s works in the 1960s employ “a language singularly familiar with the large repertory of mind-states accessible through the use of drugs,” only with this 1977 novel did the author “explore the more negative human implications of drug-taking, though with an almost hallucinated vehemence” (Clute & Nicholls, 329). “An affecting, powerful novel” ( Anatomy of Wonder II-333). A fine copy. “Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.”