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Time Out of Joint
Ditulis oleh Philip K. Dick
Narasi oleh Jeff Cummings
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Ragle Gumm has a unique job: every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn't consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town in 1959. At least, that's what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he's never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand." When Ragle skips town to try to find the cause of these bizarre occurrences, his discovery could make him question everything he has ever known.
Tindakan Buku
Mulai MendengarkanInformasi Buku
Time Out of Joint
Ditulis oleh Philip K. Dick
Narasi oleh Jeff Cummings
Deskripsi
Ragle Gumm has a unique job: every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn't consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town in 1959. At least, that's what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he's never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand." When Ragle skips town to try to find the cause of these bizarre occurrences, his discovery could make him question everything he has ever known.
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This was a bit of a letdown for me. It started up strong, the premise was solid, but then it seemed to get lost on its own momentum and ultimately the conclusion, to me, was a letdown. The afterword in the edition that I read explain much of the manuscript's process and Philip K. Dick's process in writing this particular title, and his others, which illuminates how he wrote and the background surrounding the book. That was almost more interesting than the book itself, which seems to veer off course until it ultimately crashes.
2 stars.
2 stars.
It is always fascinating to see how a writer from the 1950's imagines the future, and it's weird to read such a story from the perspective of 2016. There is a beautiful portrait of the carefree suburban '50s USA. (the place the conservatives always want to take us back to). But hovering over this utopia is a sense of unease and disquiet which is masterfully drawn out by the writer. The story, about a world that is not what it seems, is a favourite theme of PK Dick, and it has inspired many similar films and books since. This one is the original, and it's a true classic.
One of Philip K. Dick's better and more surreal stories. Think 'Truman Show' and you'll get the idea. Imagination died off in the cop out ending though.
Hallucinations. Yes, he thought. Insane. Infantile and lunatic. What am I doing, sitting here? Daydreams, at best. Fantasies about rocket ships shooting by overhead, armies and conspiracies. Paranoia.A paranoiac psychosis. Imagining that I'm the center of a vast effort by millions of men and women, involving billions of dollars and infinite work . . . a universe revolving around me. Every molecule acting with me in mind. An outward radiation of importance . . . to the stars. Ragle Gumm the object of the whole cosmic process, from the inception to final entropy. All matter and spirit, in order to wheel about me.Many of Philip K. Dick's books concern paranoia about the nature of reality, and in "Time Out of Joint", both Ragle Gumm and his brother-in-law Vic, start to have grave concerns about their lives. Ragle becomes paranoid because that everyone seems to know who he is, due to his fame as the long-term winner of a newspaper contest called Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next? and when he starts to hallucinate that objects disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with the name of the object written on them, he fears that he is insane, since the paper strips seem too be real and he keeps a collection of them in a box. Vic starts to wonder when he has a strange experience with a bathroom light cord that doesn't exist and later has an odd experience on a bus when self-hypnosis lets him see the truth behind the illusion. Thin support struts, the skeleton of the bus. Metal girders, an empty hollow box. No other seats. Only a strip, a length of planking, on which upright featureless shapes like scarecrows had been propped.My first clue that this not our world's 1950s America came with the discussion about radio stations all going off the air once television came in, but there may have been earlier clues that Americans or people who remember the 1950s would catch. That reminds me of a big plot hole; at the end Ragle suggests that the significance of Sammy's crystal set was overlooked because the person who should have seen it as a threat was distracted by playing poker and didn't remember that radios were not allowed. But I looked back at that scene and the crystal set wasn't just present in the room, as Sammy put it on the table next to the poker strips and the adults were all involved in a conversation about what Sammy might be able to pick up on it since no radio stations were still broadcasting.All in all, it was a more straightforward story than the author's more famous later works, and I felt that the ending was too simple and fell, but I enjoyed working out what was really going on, as the story progressed and my original thoughts about alternate histories and time travel were proved wrong.
Not my favorite PKD book, but the final chapter saves the day. I read the Carroll & Graf version from 1984, and there was a very good essay at the end of the book by Lou Stathis. He gave a brief synopsis of PKD's life, and some background on the time in his career that he wrote TOOJ.
If you have never a read PKD "Time Out of Joint" is a great place to start. The recurrent theme of finding yourself in a false reality is presented, but in a less abstruse manner than in some other PKD works. At the end of the novel it is made clear what is real and what is artifical - a bright line that is none too clear in some of PKD's more well known novels. One of the most original and entertaining passages is where the main characters ostensibly from 1959 encounter teenagers from 1998- enjoy nectie-fellows!
Good suspenseful buildup in first half is disappointingly lost as plot unfolds, still a great imaginative plot though.
I enjoyed this more than DADES. I found the final chapter particularly moving. Dick has the ability to convey through his prose a feeling of uneasiness and surreality equal to the best authors of magical realism.
This is my first Phillip K Dick novel. He is most famous for works such as Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and most famously Do Androids Dream of electric Sheep aka Bladerunner. This is an early novel written in the 1950s. This was an excellent introduction. We are introduced to Ragle Gumm and his very mundane suburban existence. He is a serial competition winner who lives in an ordinary house with his sister and her normal family. Things however are not all that they seem. Is this world real or simply a faade? What is going on underneath and why does the man who wins a newspaper competition, apparently become the most important in the world. Or is this just paranoia? The sense of mystery is gripping and I finished it in a day. Things indeed are not all they seem and a chase for escape and reason begins. This is in many ways a forerunner of other books and films based on this theme e.g. Truman Show. It was a great read and I will be trying some of the others. The only slight criticism is that the ending is all a bit sudden. It comes almost as if it is grafted on to explain the mystery. But it takes nothing away from an excellent read.
I would recommend this to anyone -- the "science" of the science fiction isn't so in your face; in fact, when you start reading it you'll say "this is sci-fi?" The writing is very good, the characterization is excellent and the story itself is wonderful.basic plotIf you read the afterward in this book, you'll see that this is one of PK Dick's early attempts to break away from the grind of writing according to what the public wants in a sci-fi novel and branching out into his own turf, with moves away from the traditional sci-fi fare of the 1950s. I really had trouble believing that this was written in the late 1950s -- time hasn't hurt or dated this novel. Ragle Gumm, his sister Margo, her husband Vic and her son Sammy all live together in a house in what could best be described as stereotypical suburbia. Vic is a grocer, but Ragle doesn't work -- instead he fills his days by solving an ongoing newspaper contest. Everyone knows Ragle because of his continuous winning streak. Life is pretty much picture perfect in this town. But the author right away alludes to some strange contradictions: there are no radios anywhere in the town; Uncle Tom's Cabin is featured in the Book of the Month Club, Margo is envious watching a friend drive her Tucker automobile, Marilyn Monroe is featured in a magazine but nobody's heard of her. While on an outing one day, Ragle goes to the soft-drink stand, puts his money on the counter and watches while his money disappears into the wood, then where the soft-drink stand was, he sees only a slip of paper that says "soft-drink stand." He thinks he's going crazy and takes the slip of paper, adding it to several others he has collected and stored in a metal box he carries around. It's not only Ragle, either. Vic notices some odd occurrences; together the two decide to investigate what's going on.I have to say that I thought the outcome was a little bit of a letdown - but it was so well written and such an amazing story that I can overlook it. The book looks at such themes as what does it mean to be sane/insane, paranoia, what really constitutes reality and what is only a signifier, etc. I highly recommend this one and now am ready to plow through the rest of my books by Philip K. Dick.
One of Philip K. Dick's better and more surreal stories. Think 'Truman Show' and you'll get the idea. Imagination died off in the cop out ending though.
Sadly this doesn't live up to the intriging premise. The whole "objects become labels" plot goes nowhere and it isn't even consistent with the book ending. Disappointing as hell.
At first I got the feeling i have read too much Dick already, the themes here were far too familiar: suburbia life with increasing strange occurrences which makes one suspect the reality of it all. Yeah, what else is new.However, Dick does do the breaking of reality well and manages to draw it all together in the end (well, almost all), perhaps a bit too neatly in a quick mass of exposition. Nice little book, and no doubt this was a radical move back in 1959, but Dick went on to do better.