In Milton Lumky Territory
First trade edition, 1985
In Milton Lumky Territory is a mainstream novel by Philip K. Dick, written in 1958 and set among the warehouse districts and small towns of the Pacific Northwest. Unpublished during his lifetime, it appeared posthumously in 1985 from Dragon Press in a total edition of 1,000 copies. This is one of 950 trade copies,.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, black cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Pleasantville, NY: Dragon Press, 1985. Wintz & Hyde MS4.2. ISBN: 0911499091. #10508.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, black cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Pleasantville, NY: Dragon Press, 1985. Wintz & Hyde MS4.2. ISBN: 0911499091. #10508.
Fine in fine dust jacket.
Additional Details
In Milton Lumky Territory was written in 1958 and is set in the same period, in small Idaho towns and the warehouse districts of the Pacific Northwest. Bruce Stevens is a buyer for a warehouse chain, traveling through territory he knows well but no longer feels at home in. On a business trip through Montario, Idaho, he stops to visit a former girlfriend and instead meets Susan Faine, an older woman who manages a typewriter shop and feels unaccountably familiar. Gradually, it is revealed that she was his fifth-grade teacher.
Bruce and Susan marry quickly, and into their lives drifts Milton Lumky himself, a charming traveling salesman with a fondness for Susan and a genial willingness to do Bruce favors. When Lumky tips Bruce off about a warehouse full of surplus Japanese typewriters available cheaply, Bruce invests their combined capital without telling Susan, only to discover the machines have Spanish keyboards and are useless in the American market. The blunder is both financial and personal, revealing something about Bruce that cannot be easily explained away.
The novel is quiet, small-scale, and unusually intimate for Dick. Its concerns are domestic rather than metaphysical, The instability of male identity, the difficulty of marrying someone you have already idealized, the gap between what a man thinks he is and what he demonstrates himself to be under pressure. Dick includes an Author's Foreword that describes the book as "a very funny book, and a good one," a bit of self-advocacy from a writer who knew his mainstream work would always live in the shadow of his science fiction.
Like his other mainstream novels, In Milton Lumky Territory was rejected by publishers during Dick's lifetime. It was first published posthumously by Dragon Press in 1985 in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, three years after his death.
Bruce and Susan marry quickly, and into their lives drifts Milton Lumky himself, a charming traveling salesman with a fondness for Susan and a genial willingness to do Bruce favors. When Lumky tips Bruce off about a warehouse full of surplus Japanese typewriters available cheaply, Bruce invests their combined capital without telling Susan, only to discover the machines have Spanish keyboards and are useless in the American market. The blunder is both financial and personal, revealing something about Bruce that cannot be easily explained away.
The novel is quiet, small-scale, and unusually intimate for Dick. Its concerns are domestic rather than metaphysical, The instability of male identity, the difficulty of marrying someone you have already idealized, the gap between what a man thinks he is and what he demonstrates himself to be under pressure. Dick includes an Author's Foreword that describes the book as "a very funny book, and a good one," a bit of self-advocacy from a writer who knew his mainstream work would always live in the shadow of his science fiction.
Like his other mainstream novels, In Milton Lumky Territory was rejected by publishers during Dick's lifetime. It was first published posthumously by Dragon Press in 1985 in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, three years after his death.
Related items
