Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, let
ters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and
imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the na
ture of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the rela
tionship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jacks
on and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the definitive presentation of Dick's brill
iant, and epic, final work.
In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year at
tempt to fathom what he called "2-3-74", a postmodern visionary experience of th
e entire universe "transformed into information". In entries that sometimes ran
to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mys
tery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to
, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary e
xperiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels kn
own as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides
, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with momen
ts in Dick's life and work.
