An Enjoyable Trip Down the Rabbit Hole!

This is a minor novel by Phillip K. Dick (PKD). It's certainly not in the same class as his masterworks such as UBIK or The Man in the High Castle (winner of a Hugo award), but it's still a very enjoyable trip down the rabbit hole. Like many PKD novels, this one takes place on a post-nuclear war Earth. The plot centers around Allen Purcell's mocking rebellion against a suffocating morally correct and politically correct social order and totalitarian state. On the surface, Purcell and his wife Janet are respectable upstanding citizens who run a successful agency that contracts with the totalitarian government to produce propaganda-oriented TV shows. But Allen finds himself subconsciously driven to repeatedly "jape" or mock the existing order, by secretly committing such pranks as defacing and decapitating the statute of General Streiter, the founder of the totalitarian order. It wouldn't be a real PKD novel unless mind altering drugs are ingested and reality shifts out from under the reader once or twice, but overall the plot of this book is relatively coherent and straightforward. There is humor here that withstands the test of time and a righteous cry for freedom that can't be denied. Excellent narration. Recommended.

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If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution

“A term we use in packet assembly. When a theme is harped on too much you get parody. When we make fun of a stale theme we say we’ve japed it.”

In a post-apocalypse world where you are tyrannized by not just your nation (aka the Moral Reclamation, or Morec), but your HOA, it is hard to be creative, to sin, to deviate from the norm. Enter Allen Purcell. His wife is bored to near hysterics. He is different. He is creative. He has a sense of humor. This impulse to speak his mind and periodically, late at night, screw with statues of sacred leaders will either destroy him or make him great. It might just do both.

This is Dick's third novel I believe and it is almost a perfectly constructed PKD novel. The tension is built in. You have him moving up in government at the same time he is secretly taking more and more risks in his own life. PKD builds this natural tension to the last few pages. The book is funny, odd, and for Dick fairly reserved.

It seems like a perfect novel for a revolution. Dick is kicking against conformity, government-sanctioned 'watching', and moral witch hunts. God would Dick ever flip at the current state of our nation. The novel seems to hark back to those revolutionary novellas from the turn of the century like Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Orwell's 1984. It belongs to the whole "man against tyranny" genre, but pushed through the hose of PKD it is funny, dark, and funky. Not his best, but definitely one not to miss.

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Philip K Dick holds up well with time

Philip K Dick's The Man who Japed is a short story about a dystopic future where a puritanical, authoritarian regime dominates society. The tale revolves around one man, Alan, who while playing a significant role in media propaganda supporting the state, also displays a schiizophrenic nature by "japng" or pranking the statue of the historical founder of this society. Historical context is critical for understanding Dick's message as the original story was released in 1956 towards the end of McCarthyism.

Although the tale has an unsophisticated quality, partly due to its short length, Dick nevertheless focuses on the diffusion of societal passivity in the face of government intrusion into the personal lives of its citizens, as well as the extent the ruling hierarchy will go to preserve the fictional narrative for the basis of its legitimacy. Dick also demonstrates various modes of rebellion from the mundane to the complex.

The narration is well done, although females are rendered in either depressed or aging British high society styles. This is one author with a timeless quality due to themes that resonate across the ages.

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Multiple readings

I like this more each time I read or listen to it and the performance is excellent.