| From The Divine Invasion
One of my favorite Dick novels, The Divine Invasion is the second book in the VALIS trilogy, works which explore Dick's remarkable ideas about God, the Qabalah, and Gnostic Christianity. In the excerpt below, Herb Asher, more than a little crazy, and solitary in his dome on a distant planet, has a discussion with an alien called an "autochthon." (Note that Cathy Berberian is a real singer, and is Luciano Berio's wife. She recorded many of Berio's Joyce inspired compositions. Music is always very important in Dick's work.) The excerpt is taken from the 1991 Vintage paperback edition, pages 13-15.
 Into the stereo microphones Asher said distinctly, " 'O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear all about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now. You'll die when you hear. Well, you know, when the old cheb went futt and did what you know. Yes, I know, go on. Wash quit and don't be dabbling. Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talktapes. And don't butt me -- hike! -- when you bend. Or whatever --'"
"What is this?" the autochthon said, listening to the translation in his own tongue.
Grinning, Herb Asher said, "A famous Terran Book. 'Look, look, the dusk is growing. My branches lofty are tyaking root. And my cold cher's gone ashley. Fieluhr? Filou! What age is at? It salon is late. 'Tis endless now senne--'"
"The man is mad," the autochthon said, and turned toward the hatch to leave.
"It's Finnegans Wake," Herb Asher said. "I hope the translating computer got it for you. 'Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, filedmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Tom Malone? Can't hear--'"
The autochthon had left, convinced of Hern Asher's insanity. Asher watched him through the port; the autochthon strode awayfrom the dome in indignation.
Again pressing the switch of the external bullhorn, Herb Asher yelled after the retreating figure, "You think James Joyce was crazy, is that what you think? Okay; then explain to me how come he mentions 'talktapes' which which means audio tapes in a book he wrote starting in 1922 and which he completed in 1939, before there were tape recorders! You call that crazy? He also has them sitting around a TV set -- in a book that started four years after World War I. I think Joyce was a--"
The autochthon had disappeared over a ridge. Asher released the switch on the external bullhorn.
It's impossible that James Joyce could have mentioned "talktapes" in his writing, Asher thought. Someday I'm going to get my artricle published; I'm going to prove that Finnegans Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn't exist until centuries after James Joyce's era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I'll be famous forever.
What must it have been like, he wondered, to actually hera Cathy Berberian read from Ulysses? If only she had recorded the whole book. But, he realized, we have Linda Fox.
His tape recorder was still on, still recording. Aloud, Herb Asher said, "I shall say the hundred-letter thinder word." The needles of the VU meters swung obediently. "Here I go," Asher said, and took a deep breath. "This is the hundred-letter thunder word from Finnegans Wake. I forget how it goes." He went to the bookshelf and got down the cassette of Finnegans Wake. "I shall not recite it from memory," he said, inserting the cassette and rolling it to the first page of text. "It is the longest word in the English language," he said. "It is the sound made when the primordial schism occurred in the cosmos, when part of the damaged cosmos fell into darkness and evil. Originally we had the Garden of Eden, as Joyce points out. Joyce--"
His radio sputtered on. The foodman was contacting him, telling him to prepare to receive a shipment.
". . . awake?" the radio said. Hopefully.
Contact with another human. Herb Asher shrank involuntarily. Oh Christ, he thought. He trembled. No, he thought.
Please no.
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