I just finished reading Philip K. Dick's The Main in the High Castle. The copy I read, with worn, tattered, bent pages, practically reeks with historicity. How many people checked this copy out of the library, took it on trips, and read it before I? This edition is dated 1992 -- barely more than a decade old, yet it looks aged and ragged. I relish the irony.

My mind, left in a daze. After the final chapter, I still don't think I quite comprehend the full meaning of the conclusion. It is the most abstract work of Dick's I have read so far, at least in regard to the underlying message.

I can't help but think of the last pinball table scene from Waking Life in which Linklater relates the story about Philip K. Dick's revelation that we are all in fact living only a few decades after the death of Christ, and all time that has passed since then is merely an illusion of the devil to try to make us forget God. Could this novel have been inspired by that epiphany?

Nazi Germany won the war. Japan invaded the west coast. All very nutty. But after building up the elaborate setting of alternate history, with a small multitude of characters whose lives intertwine, Dick essentially (not directly) throwns the whole thing back in our face and says, "What of it?"

I'm still not sure what to make of it, but I think I love this book. Something of mundane genius.