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From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:jpa144@cit-vax
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Subject: Philip K. Dick
Message-ID: <1153@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 9-Apr-85 13:04:36 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.1153
Posted: Tue Apr  9 13:04:36 1985
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: jpa144@cit-vax (Jens Peter Alfke)

Someone in #115 (I'm sorry, but I forget who; I still haven't figured out
the UNIX mail command, so I don't have the Digest lying around on my screen)
asked about the soon-to-be rerelease of Philip Dick's _In_Milton_Lumky_
_Territory_.
Quickly dredging out my copy of _Philip_K._Dick:_In_His_Own_Words (Gregg
Rickman; Long Beach CA, Fragments West/the Valentine Press, 1984), a fantastic,
indispensable work for anyone `into' Philip Dick :

	GR: It is my understanding that you quit writing for a year in
	1960-1961 out of frustration that your best works weren't being
	printed -- your mainstream, literary novels, like _Confessions_of_
	_a_Crap_Artist_.  Did you have other mainstream novels you were
	trying to sell?

	PKD: Would you believe 13?  Some as long as 600 pages.  Slave labor.
	. . . Most of those were written around the time I started selling,
	like 1951, '52, '53.  Most of them are really fairly early.

	. . .

	PKD: _In_Milton_Lumky_Territory_ -- that's about a salesman, by and
	large a rehash of Arthur Miller's _Death_of_a_Salesman_, which had
	influenced me enormously ideologically.  The whole thing "attention
	must be paid to this man," that fitted my ideology exactly, that
	was completely how I felt.  There was great dignity in this salesman,
	there was great dignity in his aging and suffering and death. . .

No explicit list of the mainstream novels is given in the book, but I found
references to these:

Confessions of a Crap Artist  [published in 1975]
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike  [published 1984 by Mark Ziesling]
In Milton Lumky Territory  [to be published by Dragon Press]
Puttering About in a Small Land  [published Academy Chicago]
Mary and the Giant  [unpublished]
Gather Yourselves Together  [unpublished]
The Broken Bubble of Thisbe Holt  [unpublished.  "It's just a bad book"-PKD]
Voices From the Street  [unpublished.  This is the 600-page one]
A Time For George Stavros  [unpublished]
Nicholas and the Higs  [unpublished]

I recommend _...In_His_Own_Words very highly to any PKD enthusiast.  It 
contains a short biography, an essay by Rickman which attempts to classify
Dick's novels into four periods, and a long series of interviews (often more
like conversations) with Dick about his feelings, life, and written work.
The publisher is undoubtedly obscure (I picked up the book at a bookstore /
comics shop in Long Beach), but you may be able to persuade a bookstore to
order it.

				--Peter Alfke      (jpa144@cit-vax)