I read a 2nd Philip K Dick novel, Mary and the Giant. surprise, it aint scifi at all. it's a mainstreamer, writ when he was in his 20s, published posthumously. I read a while afore grokking that nothing science fictiony would occur. that expectation perhaps added an aura of mystery or boding to the book. Mary is a young woman living in a small California town, anxious to expand her world. hm, sounds familiar. yet Dick plays it small, as opposed to, say, the movie Picnic. she's a good character, anxious and intense, giddy and desperate. and a little wacky. somehow, oddly, I'm reminded of the novels of Barbara Pym. Pym's novels (that I've read) have featured single women (in one, that single woman even refers to herself as a spinster) of a certain age. the conflict, I guess you would say, is between an urge to marry and a need to maintain their identity. what I like about Pym is the plainness of the plot, little pyrotechnics. and the case for integrity. which Mary makes in her novel. Mary is more charged--her father's abusive, her finance is a dud--but things don't sink to the plangent novelisms of 2nd rate absurdity and surrealism. I might be unclear what I like, because I sound like a newspaper review. put it this way: I hate stupid ass novels, just as I hate emotionally searng Hollywood movies: such malarkey. I'm thinking about Dick as someone who cranked out a lot of work, and am interested in how that procedure resonates. I look at Henry James the same way (not that I want to compare James and Dick), the sense of oeuvre, and how it continues with each work. it's a matter of integrity, tho I don't mean with a capital I. it's all part of some elemental push. I'm just making a stab, here. will seek out more PKD work.