Chris Rudge, "Doctored Images: Doctors and the Devices in Philip K. Dick's 1960s Novels."
Channel: Cells and Statutes
Date: 2014-09-12

A Seminar Paper delivered at UNSW as a part of the UNSW School of Arts and Media's 'SAM Seminars' programme. 9 September, 2014. 

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I make the following clarifications, although there are probably quite a few more to make. 

I note that The Exegesis was 'nicknamed' as such by Dick. My point about its name is that it was never formally titled in this way.

In terms of The Exegesis' having been stored in Dick's garage, it seems the "Exegesis" was, as I suggest, found in a Sonoma garage that would have been Dick's. This is the storage place to which I assume most if not all of his possessions were moved after his death. However, I'm unsure if this was Dick's home's garage, or a space arranged by his family or estate after his death. The introduction to The Exegesis suggests it was the latter since The Exegesis, as the editors write, was actually stored in Dick's "apartment" during its composition. Of course, the papers were thereafter organised by Paul Williams into their ninety-one folders, and they in fact lied in Williams' -- not Dick's -- garage in Glen-Ellen for for some "several years" after that. See Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis, ed. Lethem and Jackson, et. al. (NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), xv.

When I say that 'The Exegesis' is 9,000 pages in length, I am aware that most commentators quote about 8,000 pages. Alex Broudy, however, one of the work's primary transcribers (who worked from Penn State University at the time), says the count is near-9,000. And I have heard others, who have worked with the original papers say about 9,000 too.

At one point I speak of 1963 as the 'year of Anne and Phil's marriage,' where I should have said that this was the last full year of their marriage. As Anne notes in her memoir, Phil filed for divorce in March 1964. (See Anne R. Dick, The Search for Philip K. Dick, eBook.)

Finally, I think it's safe to assume that Dick was using Semoxydrine (methamphetamine hydrochloride) while in "the hovel." A number of biographies refer to his consistent use of this drug during his 1960-65 years (see Sutin's Divine Invasions, and Lethem's chronology at the rear of the Library of America editions). Further, in a number of letters, Dick refers to his long-term (7-9 year) prescription to that drug throughout these years. See, for instance, Dick's letter to Terry and Carol Carr, dated October 1964, repr. in Sutin, Divine Invasions (NY: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 119.