Begin Your Journey With Luomo Dei Giochi A Premio Narrated By Philip K. Dick Offered As Electronic Format

think the makers of The Truman Show may have copied the idea of a person's life as a staged TV series from this book, Dick had so many ingenious ideas during his career as a writer, The idea for this book might be the best one that Dick ever had, But it is not his best book, It is not as funny as A Scanner Darkly or Valis both of which came later, And the social commentary is not as incisive or trenchant, like in his later work, But there are instances in the book which give us an idea of what is to come, This is one of the earliest of Dick's novels that I have read,

The book is about Ragle Gumm, an unemployed middle aged man who lives with his sister, her husband and their small kid, Ragle is a local celebrity in his small American town on account of the fact that he keeps winning a newspaper contest that requires extraordinary skills in mathematics.
When he is not working hard at the contest, he is swilling beer and lusting for his neighbors wife, But Ragle senses that something is not right with his existence, Small clues lead him to question the very nature of his reality and what he believes to be true, Ragle could be at the centre of a sinister plot by the government to hide the truth about space travel and its benefits from the citizens,

Through Ragle Gumm, Dick is trying to say that even the most talented among us can be fooled into leading a mundane existence by the government or some higher authority.
The government lays down the rules and it tries to keep us engrossed and captivated by playing on our basest instincts like the male sexual drive in the novel, Ragle Gumm wants to marry and settle down with the beautiful but dumb Junie, his neighbors wife.


Dick uses small snippets of conversation to build character, And also to foreground the important themes of the novel,

For example look at this exchange between two supermarket employees:

"Aren't you a Democrat" he asked, "From the South"

"Not any more, Not since I moved up here, This is a Republican state, so I'm a Republican, "

He offers us scenes from small town American life to underscore the absurdity of our mundane existence, But ultimately, Time Out of Joint is a novel that emphasizes the marvel of space travel or migration and travel as one of man's most primitive instinct.


According to Dick:

"It had nothing to do with minerals, resources, scientific measurement, Nor even exploration and profit, Those were excuses. The actual reason lay outside their conscious minds, If he were required to, he could not formulate the need, even as he experienced it fully, No once could. An instinct, the most primitive drive, as well as the most noble and complex, It was both at once, "

A very entertaining and intriguing novel, This is my third of Dicks sixs novels, The other two were The Cosmic Puppets and The World Jones Made,

On the surface, Time Out of Joint reminds me of The Cosmic Puppets, Both are linear narratives, both are set in thes, and most importantly, both pose questions about the nature of reality, playing with the idea that things are not what they appear to be.
The novels differ primarily in how they resolve their mysteries, This is where Time Out of Joint misses its mark, Some of the most intriguing ideas from the early part of the book just drop out of sight at the end,

What I most enjoyed in the book was the philosophical speculation about the nature of reality and the meaning of words, When Ragle initiates a conversation with his brotherinlaw about philosophy, he cites George Berkeley the Idealist philosopher who proposed that nothing actually exists except as ideas in the mind of God.
“How do we know that piano exists” says Ragle and Vic replies “Im sorry, but as far as Im concerned, thats just a bunch of words”.


Vics dismissal of Berkeleys metaphysics as “just a bunch of words” inspires further speculation by Ragle,

“Central problem in philosophy, Relation of word to object, . . what is a word Arbitrary sign, But we live in words, Our reality, among words not things, No such thing as a thing anyhow a gestalt in the mind, Thingness sense of substance. An illusion. Word is more real than the object it represents, Word doesnt represent reality. Word is reality. For us, anyhow. Maybe God gets to objects, Not us, though”.

But there are theological undertones as well,

“In the beginning, he reflected, was the word”,

Later Ragle repeats the words of St, John.

“Under everything else, Ragle said, The word. Maybe its the word of God, The logos. In the beginning was the Word”,

The religious theme in this book is not pronounced like it is in The Cosmic Puppets, In fact, it doesnt seem particularly relevant to the story at all, but it is clearly something that infuses Dicks writing even when it is not essential to the story.
Junie calls Ragle a “sacred spirit”, Towards the end of the book, after Ragle discovers the truth, after the veil of illusion is lifted, he says: “Im the savior of this planet”.
But Ragle is not really Messianic like Jones is in The World Jones Made,

The philosophical foundation of Time Out of Joint is the Platonic distinction between the true nature of reality and the illusion that we usually mistake for reality.
Once Ragle sets out to discover the truth, it is Immanuel Kant that he cites, Kants philosophy distinguishes between the world of our perceptions and the world as it truly is, “The Ding an sich, as Kant said”,

All this escalation of philosophical intensity leads to big expectations, but when the truth comes out, its anticlimactic, Its a good enough idea in and of itself, but it only barely ties in with the philosophical speculation that precedes it, The slips of paper, for example, make little sense other than to heighten the mystery, They suggest something metaphysical that just isnt there, Also, a practical matter wouldnt it have been easier to just build a softdrink stand than to brainwash people into seeing one

But this novel has its strengths as well and the greatest strength is the character of Ragle Gumm.
In the setting ofs suburbia, Ragle lives with his sister and brotherinlaw, making his living by participating in a daily newspaper contest which he always wins due to his remarkable ability to perceive patterns and solve puzzles, an ability akin to the precognition featured in other Dick novels.
As the mystery gradually unfolds, Ragle questions his sanity,

“I must be crazy, he said to himself,

Im the man whos supposed to have fought in a war, Im fortysix years old, supposedly an adult,

Yes, he thought, And Im a man who lies around the house scrounging a living by filling out Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next Puzzles in a newspaper contest.
While other adults have jobs, wives, homes of their own,

Im a retardedpsychotic, 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 Im 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. 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”,

Considering Dicks own struggle with mental illness, this is a theme in his work that interests me, But theres more than insanity going on here, Ragle may suspect that he is hallucinating, that he is paranoid, but he also questions his life choices, He questions his status as an adult, While other men work, he drinks beer, does puzzles, and canoodles with the neighbors wife, He describes his occupation as “scrounging a living, ” He calls himself “infantile, ”

I wonder if this aspect of Ragles selfcriticism is based on Dick himself, Either way, Ragle is a character that appealed to me right from the start, Perhaps its because of his selfdoubt, Perhaps its because he feels like he isnt living an adult life, even though hes doing the best that he can, Perhaps its because he sees himself as infantile and insane even as he imagines himself to be the center of the universe, His delusions of grandeur coexist with his inferiority complex, But whatever the reason, I felt a connection with him, Deludente, il collegamento col gioco a premi regge ma non è affatto performante, Ho avuto come limpressione che si menasse il can per laia per molte, troppe, pagine, Allinizio ero molto curioso di scoprire il mistero celato dietro questa bizzarra vicenda, ed il nesso con ciò che ne sarebbe venuto, Poi invece la cosa ha preso ad annoiarmi sin quasi ad indispettirmi, Sia il risvolto insoddisfacente che

il modo “un po così” come ci si è arrivati hanno completamente annichilito lottimo incipit iniziale, Bocciato! Non provarci, signor Dick

“Possiamo mettere insieme tutto quello che sappiamo, si rese conto, ma non ci dirà nulla, tranne che qualcosa non va.
E questo lo sapevamo fin dal principio, Gli indizi che stiamo raccogliendo non ci danno una soluzione ci mostrano soltanto la portata di questa incongruenza”,

Prigionieri del passato, minacciati costantemente dal futuro: così sono condizionati a vivere i personaggi di questo profetico testo di Philip K, Dick, maestro del genere fantascientifico, Un eterno presente che è in realtà una retrotopia, come definita da Zygmunt Bauman, quella del ritorno al grembo materno, in quell'America culla della libertà, sulla quale Dick proiettava la paura del comunismo, la manipolazione capitalistica e il provincialismo della vita matrimoniale e borghese.
Mai come in questi giorni, i temi di Time out of joint risultano strumenti versatili per descrivere la realtà sociale e culturale, l'indebolimento e la crisi del senso storico, il contrapporsi fratello contro fratello in un perpetuo meccanismo di seduzione e repulsione, dove ad averla vinta è sempre e solo la violenza, l'inconsistenza esistenziale, il ritorno nostalgico, il perpetrarsi dell'ingiustizia etica e soggettiva, la corsa al profitto.
Ragle Gumm si muove per gradi verso conoscenza e consapevolezza, con il suo stile di interrogarsi e agire tra paranoico e oggettivo, un Hamlet che cerca continuamente un posto che non ricorda, un interruttore che non esiste, tra falsità temporali e contraddizioni fusionali.
Dick ci mostra come egli torni in sé, da una posizione che sporge assolutamente fuori dal reale: "Perché io sono il centro dell'universo, Si comportano come se lo fossi, Si sono presi il disturbo di costruire intorno a me un mondo fittizio, per tenermi tranquillo”, Così la strategia di guerra psichica utilizzata nello scontro civile solimondistilunatici comporta l'invenzione di un passato che è simulacro, in quanto ricostruito sulle fondamenta di un futuro solo ipotetico la realtà artificiale produce quindi uno pseudomondo difficile da abitare autenticamente, dove si mescolano dati, scenari, soggettività e bisogni.
Lo studioso nella prefazione definisce questo racconto un ”testo mutante” e in esso si coglie che l'alter ego dell'autore è più un fool che un eroe tragico, poiché ha la chiave per capire l'inganno, ma è troppo alienato da potersene liberare senza regredire completamente.
Di fatto, l'uomo dickiano e robinsoniano continua a desiderare di tornare indietro e la sua avventura metafisica non lascia spazio per esperire ciò che sta oltre il disegno, la speranza di una quiete che ondeggia, la trasformazione inedita di un nemico di pietra in un'ombra vuota.
Infine, la filosofia visionaria di Dick può competere per illusione con tutte le impareggiabili “cose in cielo e in terra” shakespeariane, in una teoria dei mondi possibili che fluttua oscillando alle origini del fantastico.
L'etimologia greca della parola paranoia rinvia all'idea dei confini della mente, alle sue aperture e frontiere e a volte attraversandoli, a volte uscendone, accade di incontrare le orme della verità nella creazione.


“Non riesco a capire, Tutto quello che so quello che vedo e quello che mi accade, Penso che stiamo vivendo in un mondo diverso da quello che vediamo, e penso di aver saputo esattamente, per breve tempo, qual è quell'altro mondo, Ma poi l'ho perduto. Da quella notte. Il futuro, forse”. .