Literary notes:
Ted Gioia recommends seven novels by Philip K. Dick. It’s a good list, though I would have included Martian Timeslip and added a collection of his short stories.
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JMSmith seeks to enlarge your vocabulary:
“Unctuously rectitudinous” means “too damn nice.” It means what Sam Francis meant when he called the ineffectual gentlemen of American conservatism “beautiful losers.”
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Question and answer with Clayton Barnett:
Q. If you could have lunch with any deceased writer who would it be, what would you eat and what would you talk about?
A. I would invite Descartes, Locke, Voltaire, and Kant. I would be late as I am calling in a tactical nuclear strike on these morons who pulled the so-called Enlightenment out of their nether-regions.
It’s interesting to read the first sentence of his reviews of books I’ve read. I thought “The World Jones Made” was better than most of those except “A Scanner Darkly” and “Flow My Tears . . .”. His review of “The Three Stigmata . . .” is particularly poorly done. “Clans of the Alphane Moon” is another that needs more fans, and as you point out: you should read his short stories, cos that’s where the good stuff is.
A buddy of mine loaned me the “Exegesis of PKD” some while back, and while it had a few fascinating moments, as someone who has read a _lot_ of PKD in my life, it was mostly redundant.