Time Out of Joint

About five years ago I went on a Philip K. Dick kick. I read The Man in the High Castle, Ubik, an omnibus of short stories including “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?”, and one of his essays insisting that our current fixed time was AD 70 and the Roman Empire still existed in the shadows. I even read a biography of PKD – I Am Alive and You Are Dead.

My general opinion: a good writer with an easy-going everyman style, but what draws him into first-rate-itude is his fascination on the sometimes deceptive layers of reality and the meanings we place upon it.

Time Out of Joint has been staring balefully at me from the To-Read Shelf for over two years. I gave it the Old College Try six, maybe nine, months ago, but only got three chapters in. This time I decided to make it all the way through, and, surprise, I finished the whole darn thing in three days.

Did I like it? You bet.

The novel starts off pure Americana. It’s the fifties, a dozen years after the end of World War II. Ah, the fifties! When a man could support his family by working in a grocery store! When men and women smoked like immortal gods! When people spoke their minds without fear of repercussion and a man’s word was his bond. When you let a stranger into your home simply because he says his car broke down and he needs to use a phone.

We open with Vic Nielson and his family: his wife Margo, his son Sammy, and his brother-in-law Ragle, a Pacific War vet. They all live in some unnamed city I assumed to be San Francisco. Nosy but affable young neighbors Bill and June Black stop over frequently for dinner, cards or bowling. Vic is the aforementioned grocer; Margo raises Sammy; Bill works for the town water department; Junie tries to keep out of trouble.

Ragle has an odd occupation: he’s involved with some daily newspaper puzzle where you have to “Guess Where The Little Green Man Will Appear.” Though details are sketchy, apparently the newspaper gives cryptic clues which participants have to translate into numbers to discover where on the provided grid the little fella is hiding. He’s so successful at it he’s able to support himself with the winnings and has achieved a modicum of local fame.

But he’s dissatisfied. Something is gnawing at him, some desire to just run away and disappear. Not only that, but there are strange matters afoot. For one, an ice cream stand he’s at one day simply dematerializes. Now, was that a hallucination, or is it meaningful in some way? Later Ragle discovers a phone book with non-existent exchanges for non-existent towns. And not only Ragle – Vic seems to have memories of things that are not there. Kinda like déjà vu, but for physical things, not things you thought you did in a past life. Like the movie Signs, a child’s radio starts picking up strange bits of communication.

The mystery leisurely unwinds, picking up speed exponentially as the novel progresses. Then, suddenly, eighty percent in, it splits wide open, and we’re in a different world of sorts. Not to give too much away, but quite literally no one is who they are – some consciously, some unconsciously.

Perhaps the best way to describe the novel, a way I realized with about twenty pages left, is that it’s kind of a Truman Show meets Gravity’s Rainbow with a Dickian twist. I found the ultimate explanation of everything a little unsatisfying in certain respects (which I can’t say without giving the whole darn thing away), but suffice it to say it hinges on the word lunatic. The mystery aspect of Time Out of Joint was satisfying; it was one of those things where, looking back with hindsight, you suddenly understand everyone’s motivation, so weird behavior is naturally explained away.

While not Dick’s best work, I’d still give it a solid B, maybe a borderline B / B-minus. It’s a quick read, so that negates that “minus” in my mind. And remember, too, that a PKD book automatically gets a half-grade bump, so what we’re really talking about here is giving Time Out of Joint a B-plus.

Now get out there and start doubting your reality!