Book Review
Apr. 4th, 2006 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Man Who Japed
by Philip K. Dick
I've become quite a fan of Philip K. Dick. His books never fail to fascinate me, and this was no exception. The Man Who Japed is one of his earlier novels (written in 1956), so it hasn't got quite the polish or the heavy-duty mind bending of his mature books, but it's still a good read. The story is set in a post-nuclear-holocaust future in which a repressive Moral Majority-type government has taken over society. The government constantly monitors the population via small insectoid robots called juveniles, spying out moral offenses ranging from simple swearing to cheating on one's spouse. (I found this uncannily relevant to the present) The protagonist, Allen Purcell, gains a high-level position in the government and uses it to do something unprecedented. The climax of the book involves a rather twisted yet hilarious joke. I think Dick is making some good points about what happens to humor in such an uptight, self-righteous, repressed society, and about the uses to which humor can be put.
by Philip K. Dick
I've become quite a fan of Philip K. Dick. His books never fail to fascinate me, and this was no exception. The Man Who Japed is one of his earlier novels (written in 1956), so it hasn't got quite the polish or the heavy-duty mind bending of his mature books, but it's still a good read. The story is set in a post-nuclear-holocaust future in which a repressive Moral Majority-type government has taken over society. The government constantly monitors the population via small insectoid robots called juveniles, spying out moral offenses ranging from simple swearing to cheating on one's spouse. (I found this uncannily relevant to the present) The protagonist, Allen Purcell, gains a high-level position in the government and uses it to do something unprecedented. The climax of the book involves a rather twisted yet hilarious joke. I think Dick is making some good points about what happens to humor in such an uptight, self-righteous, repressed society, and about the uses to which humor can be put.
