Confessions of a Crap Artist: Library Edition

from DinadansFriend

A surrealistic novel of family conflict, set in California's Marin County, in the 1950's. It has a Steinbeck quality, and many of Dick's science fiction memes are demonstrated by the narrator, who watches the destruction of his sister's nuclear family. It is not so much fun as "Androids". Apparen...

from CliffBurns

Phil always pined for mainstream acceptance and CRAP ARTIST is one of his more successful attempts at veering away from the tropes (and traps) of SF. An entertaining and well-executed novel...

from melydia

Jack Isidore is a "crap artist" who collects crackpot theories and lives his life as though a scientific observer instead of an active player. Fay and Charley (Jack's sister and brother-in-law) decide he is not capable of supporting himself in normal society, so take him in to live with them in t...

from nmele

I had not read this Dick novel previously, and found myself experiencing cognitive dissonance since much of it takes place in rural Marin county, a real place, and much of that action is surreal without being science fictional: no Mars, no radioactive dust, no androids, and yet somehow this is of...

from greeniezona

I forgot when I packed this for my trip that this is Dick's one non-sf novel. While it drags a bit in places, it ends up being a cutting send-up of the upper-middle-class in Northern California in the 50s. Everyone in this book is terrible -- but mostly in interesting ways. I spent most of the bo...