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PRRB the Dance Most of All by Jack Gilbert the Pacific Rim Review of Books Reviewed by David Day Page  “In the Beginning Was the Word: Samuel R B R the Pacific Rim R P Review of Books Issue Twelve Fall/Winter 2009 Publication Mail Agreement Number 41235032 ISSN 1715-3700 $5.95 An Autumn Harvest of Writers & Books ‘The Holy Curse’ of Poetry: Linda Rogers reviews David Day on Jack Gilbert’s The Year of the Flood The Dance Most of All by Margaret Atwood Jack Gilbert Margaret Atwood Reading China & East Asia: Philip K. Dick by Richard Wirick “Zen Baggage” and & Samuel R. Delaney “Another Kind of Paradise” by Carol Cooper Gwen Point on Robert Priest Ponders John Ralston Saul’s Susan Musgrave “A Fair Country” Plus: Robert Duncan, Satchmo, Lonnie Johnson, Luisa Maria Celis, Cynthia Flood, Ian Tyson, Mike O’Connor, 108 B.C. Poets Contents FEATURES “The Perpetual Life of Philip K. Dick” By Richard Wirick page “Evolving the Organic: Duncan, Levertov, Olson”: The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov. Robert Bertholf & Albert Gelpi, eds. Reviewed by Paul Nelson page “‘The Holy Curse of Poetry: On Jack Gilbert”: PRRB The Dance Most of All by Jack Gilbert The Pacific Rim Review of Books Reviewed by David Day page “In the Beginning Was the Word: Samuel R. Delany on Writing as a Creative Act” Issue Twelve, Fall/Winter 2009 ISSN 1715-3700 By Carol Cooper page “On the Road in the Middle Kingdom”: Zen Baggage by Bill Porter Publication Mail Agreement Number 41235032 Reviewed by Trevor Carolan page “Writing the ‘Life’ in Writing”: Choose: Selected Poems by Michael Rothenberg Reviewed by Jordan Zinovich page “Tellin It Like It Is: On John Ralston Saul”: Published by Ekstasis Editions Canada Ltd. A Fair Country: telling the truth about Canada by John Ralson Saul Publisher/Editor: Richard Olafson Reviewed by Gwen Point page Managing Editor: Carol Ann Sokoloff The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood International Editor: Trevor Carolan Reviewed by Linda Rogers page Music Editor: Joseph Blake What Is Canadian Literature? Medical Editor: Dr. Nicolas Kats By Mike Doyle page Circulation manager: Bernard Gastel Obituary of Light: The Sangan River Meditations by Susan Musgrave Reviewed by Robert Priest page DEPARTMENTS Legal deposit at the National Library of Canada, Summer/Fall . Poem: “Jack’s Chair, Don’s Cat and the Art of Not Writing Poetry” by David Day page PRRB welcomes manuscripts and letters, but we take no responsibility for their safe “Dead Men” by Jeff Olafson page return. If you would like your work back, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Personal Point of View: “Lonnie Johnson” Do not send original artwork. All texts will be edited for clarity and length, and author- By Jim Christy page ship checked; please include all contact information. Culture Matters: “Gutenberg Blues” By Richard Olafson page The PRRB is published three times a year. Back issues are available at .. A one-year Music Books: “Satchmo, Mother India and All the Wild Horses”: subscription is .. Please send a cheque payable to the PRRB. Stachmo: The Wonderful World and Art of Louis Armstrong by Steven Brower Abrams; India: a Cultural Journey; La Primera: The Story of Wild PRRB mailing address for all inquiries: Mustangs by Ian Tyson Box Main Postal Outlet Reviewed by Joseph Blake page Victoria, B.C. Border Crossings: “Boy’s Day” by Cody Poulton page Canada VW S New CDs: Through the Cracks by Russell Wallace Reviewed by Paul Falardeau page email: [email protected] phone & fax: () - REVIEWS “Tokyo Trilogy”: The Darkened Temple by Mari L’Esperance; Even the dog Copyright the Pacific Rim Review of Books for the contributors won’t touch me by Tom Bradley; Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History Opinions expressed in reviews and articles in the Pacific Rim Review of Books are the by Stephen Mansfield Reviewed by Hillel Wright page opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors of the PRRB. Rocksalt: 108 B.C. Poets, ed. by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch Reviewed by Paul Falardeau page Unnecessary talking: the Montesano Stories by Mike O’Connor Reviewed by Trevor Carolan page Revolutions by Joan Shillington This issue of the Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore page Pacific Rim Review of Books Arrows by Luisa Maria Celis; The English Stories by Cynthia Flood Reviewed by Linda Rogers page is dedicated to the memory of The Coast Mountains Trilogy: Mountain Poems, 1957-1971 by Dick Culbert David Bromige (1933-2009). Reviewed by Ron Dart page “Publish or Die!”: Uncorrected Proof by Louisiana Alba Poet, teacher, mentor, and a key Reviewed by Paul Duran page figure in beat and language poetry “Shining a Light on Worlds in Transition”: Another Kind of Paradise: Short Stories from the New Asia-Pacific in both the U.S. and Canada. edited. by Trevor Carolan, Reviewed by Joseph Blake page He will be missed. Together Under One Roof by Lin Jensen Reviewed by Patrick Carolan page “The Cult of Quick Repair”: The Cult of Quick Repair by Dede Crane; Savage Adoration by Gale Zoe Garnett Tiny Bricks in a Men, Women and Reviewed by Linda Rogers page World Without Vehicles: Prose For the Sake of one Bloody Feature Film by Dariush Mehrjui Scales. Works. Brick Books Black Sparrow Reviewed by Javad Rahbar page Press. Tantric Picnic by Hans Plomp; When Autumn Leaves by Amy Foster Reviewed by Linda Rogers page Feature ‘BRAINS, BATS AND IMPLANTED THOUGHTS’: THE PERPETUAL LIFE OF PHILIP K. DICK Richard Wirick ost people know Philip K. Dick for stories that inspired movies such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, films that defined the language of latter M The legacy of World War terminus has diminished in potency; those who day science fiction cinema and its extraordinary advances in special effects. After writing hundreds of stories, numerous novels, essays and screenplays, could not survive the dust had passed into oblivion years ago, and the dust, Dick joined those writers who turned aside from their work and made an eccentric weaker now and confronting the strong survivors, only deranged minds public life their final art, though his work as a serious writer was never that far from and genetic properties. Despite his lead codpiece, the dust —undoubtedly serious readers’ attentions. — filtered in and at him, brought him daily, so long as he failed to emi- He died in , broke, decrepit, most probably mentally ill. He had been man- grate, its little load of befouling filth. So far, medical checkups taken handled by publishers, agents, studios. He loved to quote William Burroughs’ defini- monthly confirmed him as a regular: a man who could reproduce within tion of the paranoid, applicable to himself then as well as to reams of his characters: tolerances set by law. Any month, however, the exam by the San Francisco “He’s the one with all the information.” Police Department doctors could reveal otherwise. Continually, new spe- The premises of many of Dick’s stories entailed problems that I and my fellow cials came into existence, created out of regulars by the omnipresent dust. philosophy students and teachers at Berkeley had wrestled with the decade prior to his The ads ran: “Emigrant or degenerate! The choice is yours!” Very true, Rick death. Two of these questions have occupied the philosophy of mind since at least the thought as he opened the gate to his little pasture and approached his elec- Second World War, and have galvanized the attention of philosophers and neurosci- tric sheep. But I can’t emigrate, he said to himself. Because of my job. entists right in tandem with their hold on the imaginations of filmmaking acolytes throughout the s and s. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The first question served is the sole vibrating note of Blade Runner’s entire nar- rative tension: do robots, computers or zombies [viz. “Replicants”] in any sense “think” or possess something akin to human consciousness? If so, how could that be term for the aspects or characteristics of a thing. tested and what would count as proof or lack of proof for that hypothesis? Lovers of Consciousness cannot be accounted for with most, or perhaps any, descriptions the film will recall Harrison Ford’s final decision to scrap his mission and explore the of it. One can explain what causes the brain processes of a bat as it flies along sending artificial romantic mental states beamed to him by Sean Young. They are compelling out and feeling the return of its radar, but that (in an example given by one philoso- enough to make this writer fall in love with her at the time, and leave it to profes- pher) would not give us the qualitative experience of bat-ness. Our own experience sionals of one or another ilk to distinguish provides material that enables us to imagine the consciousness of a bat: we can, how- from the real thing. ever, limited our experience, think of what it would be like to have fur and webbed The second question, explored more feet, extremely poor vision, to sleep upside down and eat insects. But this would tell in Dick inspirations like the Matrix series us only what it is like for us to behave like a bat, which is not what we want. We wish and “Minority Report,” is more subtle: to know what it is like for a bat to be like a bat. But the limits of human experience even if one grants that we humans have make this almost impossible. consciousness, how do we know it was So the experience of bat consciousness, like the experience of human conscious- not something implanted in our brains ness, is irreducible, unique and incapable of production. Its most important features, like a computer program, complete with a what it would be like to be that way, is exactly what is most accessible about it.
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