What is most striking to me while reading VALIS, is how PKD manages to keep a decent into madness centered around a basic plotline found in so many other texts: a man's decent into madness; Oedipus Rex, The Metamorphosis, and Sarrasine, all depict the destruction of a man. However, these stories are written without the modern and post-modern stylings of metafiction, grand narratives, and most importantly PKD's ridiculously devotion to mind-shattering detail and, presumably, personal experiences. Of course, the reader's ability to identify with the characters and setting is essential, and here PKD has the upper-hand over Kafka and Balzac. SoCal and detox centers are much more real to me than castrated singers and prophecies containing shepherds.

Anyhow, PKD uses the boring tropes and elements of a story, which usually bore me, as a lifeline in the ocean of chaos. When reading most novels and the build-up to climax begins, I roll my eyes, and wait like so many audiences in a Micheal Bay flick, for the explosions to begin. In VALIS, I would be lost without knowing that this, right here, where Fat is arguing with Thomas, his non-self from a different place in space-time, is the middle of the novel, and the tragedy that the narrator has forewarned is about to occur. Thank god for pacing.