Confessions of a Crap Artist
First British edition, 1979
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959, published 1975) was Philip K. Dick's only mainstream novel published during his lifetime. This is the first British edition, a paperback original published by Magnum Books.
Softcover. First British Edition. Octavo, printed wrappers. (£1.25). London: Magnum Books, 1979. Levack 5e. Wintz & Hyde MS1.8. ISBN: 0417042906. #11175.
Price sticker fixed to first page inside, small rub to lower front cover, otherwise a near fine, unread copy.
Softcover. First British Edition. Octavo, printed wrappers. (£1.25). London: Magnum Books, 1979. Levack 5e. Wintz & Hyde MS1.8. ISBN: 0417042906. #11175.
Price sticker fixed to first page inside, small rub to lower front cover, otherwise a near fine, unread copy.
Additional Details
Confessions of a Crap Artist was written in 1959 but not published until 1975, making it the only mainstream novel Philip K. Dick saw into print during his lifetime, and the one he considered his best non-science fiction work. It is set in Marin County, California in the 1950s and follows Jack Isidore, the "crap artist" of the title, a man who collects useless facts, believes in hollow earth theories, and cannot reliably distinguish what is real from what he has decided to believe. He moves in with his sister Fay Hume and her husband Charley after losing his footing, and the three form a volatile domestic arrangement that drives most of the novel.
The book cycles through multiple first- and third-person perspectives, each narrator locked inside their own distorted version of events. Fay is the most vivid of them, intelligent, ruthless, and entirely clear-eyed about her own selfishness. Charley is steadier and more sympathetic than he first appears. Jack, for all his eccentricities, is rendered with genuine affection. Dick was unusually attached to this novel, perhaps because its concerns, delusion, perception, the gap between what people believe and what is actually happening, run parallel to the themes of his science fiction by different means.
The introduction to the first edition by Paul Williams remains one of the more useful short accounts of Dick as a writer and is worth reading alongside the novel itself. Originally published by Entwhistle Books in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, split between hardbound and paperback issues.
The book cycles through multiple first- and third-person perspectives, each narrator locked inside their own distorted version of events. Fay is the most vivid of them, intelligent, ruthless, and entirely clear-eyed about her own selfishness. Charley is steadier and more sympathetic than he first appears. Jack, for all his eccentricities, is rendered with genuine affection. Dick was unusually attached to this novel, perhaps because its concerns, delusion, perception, the gap between what people believe and what is actually happening, run parallel to the themes of his science fiction by different means.
The introduction to the first edition by Paul Williams remains one of the more useful short accounts of Dick as a writer and is worth reading alongside the novel itself. Originally published by Entwhistle Books in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, split between hardbound and paperback issues.
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