(For example, Paige deliberately sets up 26 bowling pins with a different letter on each and then rolls bowling balls at them; the pattern of remaining pins—he hopes—will spell out words; but all he gets is:
AQW PVC XSLLR
And the like—which, once again, seems to indicate that Zebra does not exist. But Zebra has deliberately caused the pins to form a non-pattern.)
(Also, for example, Paige, with all the funds and laboratory and research facilities of the tyranny available to him, could construct a vast device operating on the principle of randomness, which continually constructs arrangements of letters, in order to see if they eventually form words. I can envision them forming nothing for days, even weeks, and finally this message is arrived at by mere randomness:
THER IS NO ZE
Which Paige construes to mean, “There is no Zebra,” which, he realizes, is a paradox.)
Using huge, expensive computers and a large staff of trained technicians he employs a variety of antique methods of divination: from apantomancy to xylomancy (with the possible exception of sciomancy). The only method which gives him any results is oneiromancy; he keeps dreaming of a great zebra which smiles at him. But this may mean nothing. However, as Paige deliberately employs all these means to no avail, Phil or Nicholas is puzzling over a bowl of alphabet soup which spells out such things as:
WARNING YOU MUST BE CAUTIOUS ALL DAY
The fact of the matter is that Paige with his Zebra hypothesis and Nicholas Brady with his weird experiences between them have both halves of the puzzle. Brady, on his own, without the part which Paige has, cannot account for what has been happening to him all his life; Paige, with his giant computers and highly skilled work-staff, cannot get a manifestation or revelation of Zebra no matter what. It is the reader who, possessing both halves in the twin themes of the novel, can perhaps put it all together. In other words, when Paige approaches Phil Dick with his Zebra plot idea, he is bringing the missing clues into focus for the astute reader. The element of suspense, then, is greatly enhanced in VALIS by introducing this new material.
In essence: what I have written in the rough draft is only one side of the coin . . . the Zebra material will add the other. The novel will open with twin, opposed plot-lines (which I love to do and am good at), but will end with a dovetailed single plot outline. Brady is having the experiences with Zebra but has no theory to explain it; Paige, whom we encounter through Phil Dick, not through Brady, has the theory but can’t get specific experiences. Brady has the concrete examples, Paige the abstract reasoning. In the character Phil Dick, who knows both men, it all comes together, for the edification and amusement of the reader.
This way, Mark, we can get rid of the Christian, theological explanation at the end; we will have just that one phase of Brady’s theorizing; the true explanation is quite different (i.e., a superior but limited life form which has taken refuge here to escape its own enemies, and who helps us, but only in a limited fashion—the best it can do). As VALIS stands now I am forced to fall back onto stereotyped explanations for the assistance, for the satellite, and this is not good, as you pointed out. In fact, it was you who gave me the insight that much more was needed in VALIS by way of explanation.
There will even be a scene in which Paige gets loaded on good hash (or Angel’s Dust) and hallucinates clowns from a circus wearing zebra suits and jeering at him; as the epitome of this ersatz vision, the Chief Clown removes his zebra head and tells Paige that the ultimate manifestation of Zebra is Mortimer Snerd. Paige then has a dope-inspired vision of Mortimer Snerd as Brahman, saying in his Snerd voice:
“Sometimes Mortimer sleeps and sometimes Mortimer dances.”
Which are the two phases of the Brahman’s cycle. In this vision (which I will try to make funny) it is revealed to Paige that Zebra is only a mask which Mortimer Snerd wears to delude mankind, that in reality we are all carved from trees. For a whole week Paige keeps seeing people as pine trees—a parody of my own “android as human” theme. When he tries to ball his chick he suffers the annoying delusion that her sexual organ is a knothole in a felled tree on its way down Kalamath [sic, Klamath] River in Oregon. Instead of an orgasm he hallucinates a huge buzzsaw.
Thus I offset Brady’s genuine visions with Paige’s phony (and absurd) ones.
Paige kills himself, and as he lies dying he receives a final vision: Edgar Bergan [sic, Bergen] is gazing down at him from heaven and there is a whole host of Mortimer Snerds, all of whom are singing. At Bergan’s right hand sits Charley McCarthy. Charley’s wooden mouth moves and he says,
“Welcome to the next world. You will become one with your maker.”
Paige has been metamorphosed into a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Anyhow, Mark, I do feel that it would be better to use the Zebra material in VALIS since, as I say, I feel it is the other half of the coin, the theoretical analog to Brady’s experiences (for which I wasn’t able to come up with a completely satisfactory explanation; the satellite is fine but not fine enough, so to say). I asked Sydny for permission to at least try superimposing Zebra onto VALIS, and she said to talk with you, which I am herewith doing. If I start reconstructing the novel and it doesn’t work, well, then I will finish VALIS more or less as it stands. But this superimpositionary method is how I wrote some of my best novels, and as the author not only of them but of the rough draft of VALIS, I feel it would work here.
Please let me know.
With warm personal regards to both you and Jodie,
Phil Dick
March 6, 1977
[TO MARK HURST]
Dear Mark,
I am now working until five A.M. on the VALIS/Zebra Project, rather than just until three. A lot of what I’m doing consists of scientific or quasi-scientific research, and into the most varied areas. Mark, this Zebra concept leads to fascinating speculative possibilities, which I hadn’t been able to see originally. For instance, I’ve been reading about Hegel’s idea of an “Absolute Spirit” at work in human history which evolves us upward through a dialectic process toward greater and greater human freedom—this is exactly what VALIS does, is it not? Only I’ve set VALIS up in the sky, not on the ground, so to speak. As Zebra, VALIS so to speak superimposes itself downward onto mankind, as if arriving from above—like a vast invisible ship descending. Although as I conceive it, Zebra/VALIS was minute at the start, and only now is becoming planet-size and truly capable of significantly affecting historic events. It’s as if VALIS has been trying to affect these events in the past, but its efforts were not that successful until the Ferris Fremont situation (i.e., VALIS is literally growing, like any organism which is viable & healthy). Then, too, there is Spinoza’s fascinating heretical “atheistic” idea that the world is somehow the literal, physical body of God (which can’t be “god” in any sense that we normally understand it, but rather the ancient Greek idea of the universe is a living body or creature or organism). This view (panpsychism) believes that everything without exception is alive; it’s just a question of degree. We’re inside a huge living creature, they thought . . . and can you see how this fits with my conception of Zebra? We’re not aware of it because (1) it is everywhere; and (2) it has to some extent always been there . . . and then I add, in contrast to the Greeks, that there is a not-organism, a not-Zebra, into which Zebra has inserted itself in such a way as to look like a further extension of the not-Zebra which came before Zebra. From a strictly paranoid standpoint—that which the Government thinkers would have—Zebra is an ETI taking over the world. In a sense this is true; Zebra certainly is taking it over— literally, as if consuming it, as if devouring it and replacing it with itself. The Government thinkers compare this to cancer—alien cells replacing “natural” cells, although what they can’t see is that these invading “cells” are benign. From their standpoint, however, Zebra is not benign—and here again they are right. I want to have the Government view clearly delineated as being subjectively correct: an alien, hostile entity is slowly a
nd invisibly spreading throughout the world, and it is getting ready to do in the “legitimate” (sic) authorities and take complete control. Well, Zebra is not God; Zebra (VALIS) is not all-powerful. What it can do is make a decisive intrusion into the historical process, but it is not the historical process as such, any more than when I turn on a light switch I am the switch, the wires, the electricity and the bulb; all I do is so to speak intervene. But to the paranoid Government thinkers, Zebra is everywhere. And since Zebra can’t be seen, well, who knows . . . perhaps he is; he could be (or it could be). Houston Paige is forever watchful, in true paranoid style. When the ice cubes from his drink creep across the counter and slide to the floor and crawl under the refrigerator—imagine his reaction:
It seemed to him that he was either going crazy or else was already crazy, and in the most terrible way. This fear, as a furious onrush of insight, paralyzed him with its intensity, and the near-absolute quality of it—not as emotion or mood—but as a glimpse of reality. And yet, he realized, this was precisely what he was supposed to be looking for, this life-like mobility of the mere inanimate. Was this not how Zebra would give itself away, a lapse of this kind? So, in his head, two utterly opposing theories conflicted, now, one good, the other dreadful: he had seen Zebra, and he was crazy; both views, perhaps—and this was the most threatening insight of all—were correct. To perceive Zebra, he realized, you must be insane. This is what classical schizophrenia is: the paranormal perceptual ability to distinguish as set-ground the real and actual Presence of this great invading and alien being, inserting itself into the normal world; to this process the “sane” man was oblivious—and this was exactly what Zebra wanted. This was how its deception functioned! Sanity, then, in the strict clinical sense, was playing into Zebra’s clutches. Zebra had a vested interest in human sanity—for its advantage. Where Zebra failed was when some so-called “schizophrenic,” jeered at by his human peers, saw around the corner of the world too suddenly or too unexpectedly for Zebra to scuttle off . . . this unfortunate human, then, had glimpsed what indeed truly was. And his reward? Given twice-daily injections of Thorazine and shut away. It could happen to me, Houston said to himself grimly; my reward for uncovering Zebra could be imprisonment in the ultimate dungeon of the modern world: the up-to-date psychiatric hospital. This is what our society has become like: you go to jail for seeing what others can’t see. And you go to jail especially if you raise a warning, a warning of invasion. (etc.)
I’ve run the text somewhat together, Mark, because I am trying to give a general impression of the Government viewpoint, not the strict presentation I’m doing of this, but I think you’ll be able to pick it up as it will be in finished form. Notice how Houston’s brain, by the end of the paragraph, has cleverly weeded out his own insight that he may be crazy; he winds up with a new definition of crazy which is it’s not something you are; it’s something they say you are. But the real irony, of course, is that Zebra does exist and Houston Paige is (as he realizes) NOT crazy. The reader knows this— despite the internal evidence of classic schizophrenic paranoia on Houston’s part—because of the experiences which Nicholas Brady and Phil Dick are also having. If there is group validation, it is not hallucination. Naturally, Houston Paige is highly motivated in this novel to get this consensual validation and he astutely thinks he could get it from a noted s-f writer, if he could get it anywhere.
Of course Houston Paige has a deeper plan vis-à-vis Phil Dick which he is craftily unfolding. If the Zebra Concept gets written up in a work of fiction, and published and widely read, then perhaps the other people who’ve encountered Zebra—and, like Houston, had to suffer the imaginary fear that they’re psychotic—maybe these people will contact Phil Dick and describe how their own secret experiences have been along the lines put forth in Phil’s novel. Because as it stands, Houston must put forth his idea as fact, in a report or article, and he dreads the inevitable consequences: “The author of this article,” they’ll say, “is a paranoid psychotic.”
Houston’s projected titled article stands as:
THE COOPERATION OF DISCRETE OBJECTS: A CLUE TO POSSIBLE HIGH-ORDER MIMICRY
If discrete objects can be observed functioning in a cooperative way, so that distinct results occur which deviate meaningfully from the statistically probable outcome, is it possible or even likely that we have been witnessing high order sentient mimicry? No other hypothesis seems to account for such occurrences, assuming they do exist.
This is how he’d have it appear in, say, Scientific American . He has mingled hopes for fame & immortality—versus being sent off to the hospital forever; it could go both ways—he could be considered psychotic now but—ah! how pleasing this thought!—history will some day show he was right (unconsciously Houston has a martyr complex, and without realizing it is being drawn, through his T.A. inner script, to seek this outcome: hospitalization and stigma now, but historic vindication later on, after Zebra has destroyed half the world . . . and aren’t they all sorry they laughed at Houston Paige now?).
So, Mark, you can see I’m creating a very complex character in Houston Paige, who is working toward goals he himself has no conscious conception of. Phil Dick, though, through whom Houston is seen, gets a clear view of all these fucked up conflicting motivations. For instance, although consciously Houston would like Phil to write up Zebra in a novel, Houston is simultaneously incredibly jealous and hateful toward Phil for “stealing all the glory” of being the first to write about Zebra. In his fantasy world—which Phil glimpses—Houston is motivated to rub out Phil for “stealing” Houston’s ideas.
Well, enough progress report to date for right now, Mark, and back to VALIS itself. But you can see how menacing I am making Houston vis-à-vis Phil, and how really schizophrenic he is . . . although ironically not because he believes in Zebra.
Love,
Phil Dick
Chapter One
from VALIS
Horselover Fat’s nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals. He asked her why she wanted them and she said that she intended to kill herself. She was calling everyone she knew. By now she had fifty of them, but she needed thirty or forty more to be on the safe side.
At once Horselover Fat leaped to the conclusion that this was her way of asking for help. It had been Fat’s delusion for years that he could help people. His psychiatrist once told him that to get well he would have to do two things; get off dope (which he hadn’t done) and to stop trying to help people (he still tried to help people).
As a matter of fact, he had no Nembutals. He had no sleeping pills of any sort. He never did sleeping pills. He did uppers. So giving Gloria sleeping pills by which she could kill herself was beyond his power. Anyhow, he wouldn’t have done it if he could.
“I have ten,” he said. Because if he told her the truth she would hang up.
“Then I’ll drive up to your place,” Gloria said in a rational, calm voice, the same tone in which she had asked for the pills.
He realized then that she was not asking for help. She was trying to die. She was completely crazy. If she were sane she would realize that it was necessary to veil her purpose, because this way she made him guilty of complicity. For him to agree, he would need to want her dead. No motive existed for him—or anyone—to want that. Gloria was gentle and civilized, but she dropped a lot of acid. It was obvious that the acid, since he had last heard from her six months ago, had wrecked her mind.
“What’ve you been doing?” Fat asked.
“I’ve been in Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. I tried suicide and my mother committed me. They discharged me last week.”
“Are you cured?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
That’s when Fat began to go nuts. At the time he didn’t know it, but he had been drawn into an unspeakable psychological game. There was no way out. Gloria Knudson had wrecked him, her friend, along with her own brain. Probably she had wrecked six or sev
en other people, all friends who loved her, along the way, with similar phone conversations. She had undoubtedly destroyed her mother and father as well. Fat heard in her rational tone the harp of nihilism, the twang of the void. He was not dealing with a person; he had a reflex-arc thing at the other end of the phone line.
What he did not know then is that it is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. To listen to Gloria rationally ask to die was to inhale the contagion. It was a Chinese finger trap, where the harder you pull to get out, the tighter the trap gets.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“Modesto. At my parents’ home.”
Since he lived in Marin County, she was several hours’ drive away. Few inducements would have gotten him to make such a drive. This was another serving-up of lunacy: three hours’ drive each way for ten Nembutals. Why not just total the car? Gloria was not even committing her irrational act rationally. Thank you, Tim Leary, Fat thought. You and your promotion of the joy of expanded consciousness through dope.
He did not know his own life was on the line. This was 1971. In 1972 he would be up north in Vancouver, British Columbia, involved in trying to kill himself, alone, poor and scared, in a foreign city. Right now he was spared that knowledge. All he wanted to do was coax Gloria up to Marin County so he could help her. One of God’s greatest mercies is that he keeps us perpetually occluded. In 1976, totally crazy with grief, Horselover Fat would slit his wrist (the Vancouver suicide attempt having failed), take forty-nine tablets of high-grade digitalis, and sit in a closed garage with his car motor running—and fail there, too. Well, the body has powers unknown to the mind, Gloria’s mind had total control over her body; she was rationally insane.