Rashmi bookmarks “A Scanner Darkly”

"Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair."

I started 2014 with a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick and had mentioned in my blog that this could be the year I declare him to be among my top favourite writers of all time. Yes, with this semi-autobiographical story by PKD I have reached that point.

A Scanner Darkly is the story of Robert Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Living in his scramble suit as "Fred", out to catch high-level dealers of Substance D, this is the story of the slow and surreal breakdown of a human into the two co-existing yet conflicting hemispheres of the brain. Under the influence of the very drug he set out to catch users and dealers of, he undergoes increasing confusion about reality. His progressive meltdown and the final stages of identity shift made for absolutely fascinating reading. When the surveillance cameras are set up and we see Bob/Fred's degeneration as his consciousness weaves in reality and out films - those sections were absolutely brilliant.

From the comedy of trying to figure out where all the 10 gears on a 10-speed bike are, to the tragedy of the addict whose mother kept injecting him with heroin as a baby so he wouldn't cry and she could sleep ... from the horror of the teenage girl whose brother introduced drugs into her system so he could rape her, to the sadness of Fred thinking of Hendrix and Joplin and how they ended up, while ‘All is Loneliness’ plays in the background ... the final recognition of everyone as "a lump of flesh grinding along, eating, drinking, sleeping, working, crapping", makes this is a heartbreaking fantasy film that keeps rolling not just in the characters' but also the readers' heads. From Bob to Fred to Bruce, this is the story of - as PKD mentions in his Author's Note - "some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did." And one is left wondering if Fred hoped in vain that - unlike himself who could see only darkness when he looked into himself - the scanners at least would see clearly and not darkly, or all would be lost with no knowledge gained.