Episode 90: 'The Owl in Daylight': On Philip K. Dick's Unwritten Masterpiece

Weird Studies has so far devoted just one show to Philip K. Dick, and that was way back in April 2018, with episode 10, "Adrift in the Multiverse." Last fall, as another foray into Dickland began to feel urgent, Phil and JF talked about which of his books they should tackle. The answer that seemed obvious was VALIS, the semi/pseudo-autobiographical masterpiece that constitutes PKD's most explicit attempt to make sense of the theophanic experiences that altererd his life in 1974. But then Phil suggested The Owl in Daylight, a novel on which PKD worked feverishly in the last years of his life but left unwritten. And sure enough, reviewing and analyzing a book that doesn't exist proved to be the best way of getting to the heart of Dick's incomparable oeuvre.

SHOW NOTES

Gwen Lee, What if Our World is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick
The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, volume 6
Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis

Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
Secondary qualities, philosophical concept
Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings
Burt Bacharach, American musician
Philip K. Dick, "The Preserving Machine"
Jorge Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"
The Good Place, American television series
Philip K. Dick, Valis
Weird Studies, Episode 78 on John Keel's 'Mothman Prophesies'
Richard Wagner, Parsifal
Weird Studies, Episode 73 on Carl Jung