eMusic Book Club: A Scanner Darkly
Featured Book
Welcome to the first installment of the eMusic Book Club. Digital technology being what it is at the moment, this particular club won’t feature wine and cheese or gossip, but by all means feel free to partake on your own. So now, if your pinot grigio, and perhaps a creamy Robiola Due Latti, is firmly in hand, I’m pleased to introduce our first selection. A Scanner Darkly is Philip K. Dick’s semi-autobiographical sci-fi classic that details the ravages of drug addiction with unrelenting harshness, unflinching honesty and a scathing sense of humor.
Originally published in 1977, Scanner takes place in a 1994 near-future version of Southern California where widespread use of a destructive, highly addictive drug has devastated the region. Its residents are divided into “straights,” the average upstanding citizens who live in protected enclaves, and “dopers,” who are constantly and aggressively monitored by the police. And then there are people like Bob Arctor who straddle both segments of society…
I’ll leave the rest of the plot summary to a description from the Vintage Books website: “Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D — which Arctor takes in massive doses — gradually splits the user’s brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn’t realize he is narcing on himself.”
Did you follow that? Sounds confusing, but Paul Giamatti’s dynamic narration, along with Philip K. Dick’s prose — remarkably lucid even when his characters are not — make the split personality conceit seem disturbingly plausible. Speaking of Giamatti’s performance, I’m kind of bummed that the audiobook jacket for A Scanner Darkly is a tie-in to Richard Linklater’s 2006 film adaptation. Especially given how cool the original jacket art was. I think that listening to this book is an entirely different way to experience Scanner, and it’s got very little to do with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. Do you agree?
Now that we’ve got a basic grasp on the plot, I want to start by laying out some general themes and questions to contemplate while we’re listening. Nine hours of audiobook is a lot to take in, I know, so we’ll ease into this slowly and get into more chapter-by-chapter specifics on the message boards.
Delusion vs. Reality
Bob Arctor/Fred may be one of the most unreliable narrators ever. It’s hard to tell which aspects of his world are real and which are your run-o-the-mill, drug-induced paranoid delusions. Bob can’t tell who’s screwing with him, and in turn, we can’t tell if he’s screwing with us. It’s as if our paranoia has to increase right along with Bob’s. Where do we draw the line? What are we, as readers (or listeners!), supposed to take in from this messed up world? Should we even bother trying to make a distinction between what’s real and what’s not?
Identity
At a critical moment, Bob wonders, “How many Bob Arctors are there?… Is Fred actually the same as Bob?…Who am I? Which of them is me?” Are drugs solely to blame for Bob’s identity crisis? If he ultimately has two personalities, which is more authentic? What aspects of the way he lives his life define who he is?
The Medium
For this and for future eMusic Book Clubs, I’ll be curious to know how the experience of listening, as opposed to reading, has affected your understanding of the book. I found myself missing a hard copy when it came to the more practical considerations of moderating a book club. I often wished I was able to dog-ear pages or highlight key phrases, and I had to keep going to my computer to look up spellings and the like (the word “cephalochromoscope” isn’t exactly one I could pull out of the ether). On the positive side, Dick’s whacked-out druggie dialogue seems absolutely made to be spoken aloud, not read in silence. I also appreciated how not being able to focus 100% on plot minutiae freed me up to focus on bigger-picture issues.
I’ll leave you to ruminate on these topics, and I’ll post a few more thoughts on the message boards towards the end of the week. I hope to see you all there!
