PHILIP K. DICK. METZ, SEPT. 77, INTERVIEW

1. Situation d'écrivain en France et comparaison avec les USA 
[Position as a writer in France and comparison with the United States]

     The positions which writers as myself hold in America are... those positions are very lowly. Science Fiction is considered to be something for adolescents, for just high school kids and for disturbed people in general reading in America. And the publishers will buy a novel which must meet rigid moral standards, the standards which librarians have, which has to do with sex and violence and so forth. So we are limited in our writing to books which have no sex, no violence and no deep ideas. Just something of an adventure kind of nature, what we call space-opera, which is just westerns set in the future. And this is a strong pressure on us. The field Science Fiction is just a genre there, ranked at the level of nurse romance publications, we are considered at the bottom rung.
     Now it's not as bad today as it was a few years ago, because recently the academic community has discovered us, and there are scholarly articles being written in America about Science Fiction, and also Science Fiction novels are being used in courses at university and high schools and colleges, er... in fact one of my novels is used even in a course in the modern novel, not just as a Science Fiction novel, but as an exemple of a modern novel. But that's rare. And the general attitude is still highly prejudicial in America. Now I started out as a pulp writer, doing stories for pulp magazines and I never imagined myself to have any importance so I was not dismayed by this attitude, I just took it for granted. I had been a clerk in a store and I was used to having people yell at me and tell me what to do, and so to find myself a writer and be yeld at and told what to do did not surprise me.
     But then I discovered that in Europe, especially in France, Science Fiction was taken seriously, and a Science Fiction writer was not regarded as something on the level of a janitor, and my delight was enormous, and my amazement was enormous, and my agent was quite pleased, and I began to meet people from France who would come over and visit me. A gentleman who is doing its dissertation on a novel of mine came to visit me. And I was simply amazed, I could not imagine anyone taking Science Fiction seriously. Now as far as my own work went, I've written what I consider to be serious novels, but they never received any great popularity in America. The largest number of sales of any novel of mine was Solar Lottery, which sold something over 300,000 copies. Er, Man in the High Castle, which I won the Hugo award ?? for, sold almost — well by now it sold over 300,000 copies. But by and large, the average american Science Fiction novel sells about 40 to 50,000 copies, which in a country (of) the size of the United States is a very small portion of the reading public.
     Now there are exceptions, of course, like the Andromeda Strain, which become bestsellers. These always are highly promoted by the publisher. And usually involved very simplistic ideas. Such as a disease from outer space. Ideas that are cake, they no longer really (are) interestic ideas, they are something that H.G. WELLS either wrote about or could have written about. And I would say that the greatest stimulus to me as a serious writer has been the french reaction to my writing, which began somewhere between 1964 and 1968 — it was in 1964 that editions OPTA first approached me and stated that they want to publish all of my work, ?? what they said, and, er, from their correspondance I could tell that they had a quite different attitude toward my writing and toward Science Fiction in general. So I was stimulated to do a much more serious type of novel, just knowing they eventually would receive a more serious audience. But in America it was common, for instance I remember when I purchased my first published story, er, somebody said to me : "Do you read that kind of stuff ?" and I said : Man I not only read it, I write it " and people would say to me : "why don't you write something serious ? why do you write Science Fiction ? write something serious !" by that they meant important. Now I realized I did as well as I could, I wrote the most profound, the most imaginative novel I could, and just flooded it out into the world and hoped that eventually it received an audience. But there is a considerable difference between the french interest in Science Fiction and the american interest. And I appreciate french interest enormously. In fact it would be impossible for me to have continued my career without the help that the french public has given to me — well financially and spiritually.
 
 

2. Votre popularite en France vient-elle de notre culture ? (le Romantisme, etc...)
[Does your popularity in France come from our culture ? (Romanticism, etc)]

     First of all there is a major flaw in America which does not appear to exist in France, and that is the american people are basically anti-intellectual, they've no interest in novels of ideas, and Science Fiction is essentially the field of ideas.
     And the anti-intellectualism of America — of Americans — prohibit their interest in imaginative ideas and intellectual concepts. But there is another facet as regard my particular work, say compared to other Science Fiction writers : I grew up in Berkeley, and my education was not limited in all to reading other Science Fiction novels preceding my own, such as Van Vogt or Heinlein — or you know, people that kind, Padgett, so on, Bradbury. What I read — because it's a university city — was Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, Proust, and the russian novelists influenced by the French, people like Tourgueniev. I've even read japanese novels, modern japanese novels, novelists who were influenced by the french realistic writers. And I think one reason that I've been popular in France is because the slice of life realistic novel that I write is essentially based on the 19th century french realistic novels. For instance, If I were to name my favorite novels I would name Madame Bovary, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, those would be my two favorite novels — or Turgenev's Fathers And Sons.
     And in a sense, I was learning about the novel not from english prose models but from french prose models. So it makes sense, perhaps, that my writings would be well received in France. A novel of mine, such as The Simulacra, for example, which contains maybe 15 to 16 major characters, is definitely derived from such french writers as Balzac. I think this applies more to me than to other American Science Fiction authors — in fact I think there is a great flaw in american science fiction writers — and their readers — that they're insulated from the great litterature of the world : russian novels, french novels, english novels and the great americ novels. Er, in other words, it's a close look : an american science fiction writer is usually someone who has been a science fiction fan and has read only science fiction novels. So when he goes to write science fiction, he bases it solely on prior science fiction. But because I was fortunate enough to live in Berkeley, which is probably as much an intellectual center as you'd find  anywhere in the world, I was not limited as my other friends who write science fiction are.

3. Avez-vous été beaucoup sollicité depuis votre arrivée en France ? 
[Have you been much requested since you came in France ?]

     Oh yes of course I did. Well I don't want to make it sound as a ... [laugh]. Well, well, I'd been told by my agent and by friends, by French friends, that I would probably encounter publishers and editors that had brought up my books. I'm quite aware of how many books of mine are in print in France, in how many editions, because I receive, you know, reports — detailed reports- from my agent, and, er, I knew, you know, that er, in France especially, I say in contrast Italy or Germany or England, there would be a greater interest in my writings by people in the business, people in the industry — rather than merely fan readers.

4. Votre définition — votre goût — de la vie — dans le siècle (aux USA)  
[Your definition — your taste — about life — in the century (in the United States)]

     My relationship with United States has always been a very bad one. Er. It has always seemed to me that I was about to be arrested by the American police, for some obscure reason. Perhaps that's because of reading Kafka's The Trial, that book influenced me very much, you know, where someone is arrested for a crime and he's never told what crime he has committed. And in Berkeley, er, we were very radical, and er — there is a Bob Dylan's song, let's see, it says "Whatever it was you were doing, you don't know what it was but the police say you doing it again", something like that. I always had that feeling. And it was a symbol of my sense of alienation from my own country's culture, I mean they didn't read my books and I didn't like them. And I didn't feel any affinity, any relatedness to my neighbors and the population in general. I remember one time my fear of the police was so great that whenever I saw a parked police car and I was driving along, I would ask my wife to stop our car and I would surrender to the police on the spot [laugh] to whatever crime they wanted to accuse me of !
     My fears became greater during the Nixon administration because at that time there really was some basis for people like me to worry. After Nixon was deposed, my fears ran away completely and I have the sense now that the United States is a permissive and tolerant nation. As far as my reputation in United States, I don't expect ever to have any reputation in United States except, er, well, the police once told me that I was a crusader and they had no use for crusaders, but unfortunately they didn't tell me what I was crusading for [laugh], I was afraid to ask what it was I was crusading for and they told me that if I did not get out of the County I will be shot in the back or worse and I... and I really took their advice I left the United States and went to Canada for a while. But I never found out what I was crusading for. It may have had something to do with my writings or it may have had something to do with my lifestyle or combination of both, but I was too afraid of the police to ask what it was I was doing.
     This attitude of mine shows up in my recent novel A Scanner Darkly where a narcotics agent winds up reporting on himself, turning over information on himself to his higher ups. The paranoia of the Nixon period was so great by the government and also by the counter-culture, the Berkeley people. Anybody like me who grew up and was part of the Berkeley's counter-culture became a marked man during the Nixon administration. It is impossible to tell how much of our fears was justified. I mean, there were illegal entries, my house was broken into, my files were blown open, my papers were stolen — we never found out who did it, my attorney said it was the government, there was no doubt that it was the government but what they were looking for I don't know, what they thought I was doing I don't know, I don't even know if it was the government, but there were many such illegal entries and an experience like that tends to make you very paranoid, you know that you are suspected of some crime, like in Kafka's The Trial [laugh], they never told me what it was I have done — they just told me I was a crusader and they don't have any need for crusaders — and the fact that I was an intellectual and a writer only made me more suspicious in their eyes.
     You've got to take into account that in the United States, to be an intellectual, to be a writer is to wear a sign on your back saying "I'm an ennemy of the state". I mean, it is something that is hard to understand I think, there is such an anti-intellectual attitude in America. It's incredible the suspicion that the authorities have of what they used to call eggheads.
[As the interviewers don't seem to understand egghead...]
     Well they used to call intellectuals eggheads - it was a term of derision — and the term originated in Nazi Germany — most people don't know this, I happen to know this because I did a lot of research in the Nazi Germany for my novel Man in the High Castle — the term egghead was used by the Sturm Abteilung — the SA — it refer to the fact that when they beat up people — who were defenseless — their skulls cracked so ????ly against the pavement that the term was invented by the Sturm Abteilung. And that term was carried over to the United States without any knowledge of its origin — however the fact that that is the origin of the term egghead — which is the term used for American intellectuals — that origin tells a great deal about the kind of people who would use such a term.

5. Parano, drogué, etc... Connaissez-vous cette "image" qui vous a précédé ici ?
[Paranoid, drug-addicted, etc... Are you aware of that "picture" which came here before you ?]

     I lost that kind of apprehension abruptly in 1974 where the Nixon administration ceased to exist. I doubt if the paranoia was irrational considering the government that the United States had. Had it been, had my paranoia been irrational, it probably would have persisted after the Nixon government was deposed. But in March of 1974, the government's program of spying on dissident anti-war intellectual, the so-called "COINTELPRO"¹ — was abandoned and in March of 1974 my so-called paranoia disappeared completely. I felt a lifting of the impression, the sense that there  was a watching police agency which was monitoring our activities. I felt that sense lift in March of 1974, and has never returned.
     It was in March of 1974 that the CIA operation Chaos — which was to harass, disrupt and keep surveillance on American dissidents — was officially abandoned. So the kind of paranoia which Michael DEMUTH noted — which was real — was based on the fact that we were harassed, we were under surveillance, we really were, there was no doubt about it whatsoever. I've seen my CIA files, I've seen my FBI files, under the American Freedom of Information Act, I was legally allowed to see both files. The CIA opened my mail, the FBI had a file on me, I've seen both ! I no longer have this sense of a police activity.
     Er, it depends a little on what you mean by paranoia — if you mean a psychotic conviction that you've been persecuted which is not in accordance with reality, I don't think I had that. But boy, I sure thought the cops were watching everything I did, and I was correct. I was tipped off by the criminal underground that my house was being watched, the license plate numbers of every car that stopped in front of my house was taken, and these were not part of my imagination, these were actual events. Anyone who visited me, their license plate numbers  were written down by the people next door. Er, and I was told the house was being watched and that eventually my house would be hit, my files would be opened, my papers would be taken and so it came to pass. Er, as I said in the Rolling Stone article on me, when I came home and found my house consisting of nothing but rubble, ruins, chaos, broken windows, smashed doorknobs, blown opened files, I said "Thank God I'm not crazy" [laugh] I've real ennemies. It's a tremendous relief to discover that somebody really is after me.