Free The Search for Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick Page A

together for the next five years. “I could have sued him if I were a litigious type of person
.
    A friend called me from Los Angeles in 1976 and said, “Phil sure got even with you by writing that novel.” She didn’t know that it had been written during our blissful honeymoon. A young fan of Phil’s said to me
, “Confessions of a Crap Artist
should have been a warning to you.” But it wasn’t like our everyday life at all. Some readers have taken this novel literally. Several Philip K. Dick fans have been surprised to learn that I was already a widow when I met Phil. Two Philip K. Dick scholars from Switzerland came to Point Reyes to visit me and talk about Phil. One of them was struck dumb as he sat in the living room staring at me. Finally he told me he was fascinated by meeting “the real Fay Hume.” “Thanks a lot,” I said. It turned out that he actually liked Fay Hume!
    Perhaps if back then I could have understood the dark side of Phil’s nature, that underlying mistrust and fear, things might have turned out differently, but I had no idea that anything was wrong, surrounded as I was in everyday life with this man’s love. He had as great a talent for loving as he did for writing. I believed completely in the self that he presented to me and still do. In those days I thought his novels were fiction.
    Phil’s agent submitted the
Confessions
manuscript to Knopf. Alfred Knopf personally wrote to Phil saying he was interested in publishing the novel if Phil would rewrite the last third to make the female character more sympathetic. He compared Phil’s writing to that of Salinger, Roth, and Mailer, the three top novelists of that time. We were both thrilled—but Phil said, “I
can’t
rewrite this novel. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I’m not
able
to.” This is a big clue to Phil’s writing. At the time I was disappointed that Phil wouldn’t or couldn’t take advantage of this fantastic opportunity, but it was his novel, his career, his decision. Of course Knopf didn’t buy the novel.
    Phil went to work on a new novel and again wove it around his everyday life. We had read about Leakey finding the skull of Nutcracker Man in Tanganyika. We got into a great discussion about Neanderthal Man, Peking Man, and the Piltdown Hoax, a discussion that turned into a friendly argument that lasted weeks. I brought home various books from the library to prove my point. (Phil never went to the library.) The gist of the argument: was Neanderthal Man a vegetarian or a meat eater? Phil contended that he was a vegetarian. He said “The way Neanderthal Man’s teeth were formed proves it. Those were teeth formed to crack and grind seeds and grains, not tear meat.”
    I was quite sure Phil was wrong. “What about all those weapons for killing animals? What about those animal bones in their caves?” I said. Phil was sure he was right anyway. He told me crossly, “Be quiet, or I’ll unplug you.” I laughed so hard I almost fell off the couch.
    The next day I found a book at the library that stated definitively that Neanderthal Man was a meat eater and brought it home and read it out loud to Phil. He was furious. He denigrated the authority of the writer. Then he started on his new novel,
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike
, about a modern-day throwback to Neanderthal Man. In the novel Neanderthal Man was a vegetarian. He continued to make this point in later novels: the Neanderthal-like “chuppers” in
The Simulacra
.
    We had a number of arguments like this one, competing with each other to be the authority on some subject or the other. I thought of these arguments as a friendly competition, a game like the ones I had played with my much older brothers. Phil didn’t seem to mind when I won. He was proud that I was well read, and he liked to argue, discuss, and theorize with and against me. He made his points and won his share of these discussions.
    Phil finished
The Man Whose Teeth Were