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Comment by sctb | Hacker News Reader

I'm amazed by how bright-eyed the prose style is here compared to Dick's later works, not to mention the gimmick! There's nothing like a few decades of literary failure to stamp out the pesky flame of exuberance and enable some really great writing.

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He’s a fascinating author to read the corpus of, in chronological order. You can see the man, quite clearly, and how he goes from chipper 50’s pulp writer to new wave prophet of banal doom, step by reality-shattering step. Some of his earlier work like “Beyond Lies the Wub” hints at what would later come, with the theme of existential query and horror.

The man had a truly brilliant mind. His final works, up to and including his death, are the most concinnous possible conclusion to the arc of a life he could have executed. He lived his art.

"There's nothing like a few decades of {X} failure to stamp out the pesky flame of exuberance and enable some really great {Y}" would seem to hold for many, many (X,Y) pairs.

Where X is not necessarily distinct from Y, just for added emphasis :)

Can X = Y = "exuberance"

That and his addiction to amphetamines adds a heavy amount of paranoia to his later work

A Scanner Darkly builds on his personal experience with addiction and addicts in recovery.

And his late paranoia wasn't only present in his work:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468452

I wondered if I saw the influence of PG Wodehouse on the writing.

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