From David Tossman
Reading Marcus Chown’s review of the The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick (Review, 27 May) shifted my reality back to a night in Sydney in about 1968.
I was waiting on the Circular Quay taxi stand when the shabby looking man preceding me in the queue turned to me and said: “You don’t know who I am, do you?” I confirmed his supposition though hoping to halt this conversational ploy before it took wing. “I am Philip K. Dick”, he said.
At the time I was regularly given to reading pulp SF magazines and novels, and the name was familiar to me. I guessed, however, that the chances of any other randomly accosted person being similarly informed were slim.
The man was of middle height and appeared to be of early middle age. He was gaunt, perhaps (memory fades) gap-toothed. He was clearly drunk, drugged or mad. His accent was not readily discernable but didn’t seem American. Neither was it Australian. Whatever he was, he did not fulfil any preconceptions I had of a prolific and successful American writer (of pulp SF or any genre).
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I politely humoured the fantasist, shook his hand, praised his supposed work, resisted the temptation to introduce myself as Isaac Asimov, and was soon pleased to see a cab appear and whisk him away.
I put it down to disconcerting coincidence but certainly this would-be Mr Dick had drawn me rapidly into his delusion. Perhaps he was who he said he was, but I remained sceptical. Some years later I met an American woman who claimed to have known the real Philip K. Dick in California. She seemed certain that he had never left his native shores and that dispelled my lingering doubts about the incident.
Reading your review, however, shifted my reality once more. Since, apparently, Philip K. Dick was unsure of his own reality, perhaps a psychiatrist could tell us whether it is a recognised condition for other people to experience the occasional delusion (or virtual reality) of being Philip K. Dick.
