D. Scott Apel: Favorite books and Philip K. Dick recommendations

By D. Scott Apel
Special  guest blogger

My all-time favorite quote comes from Voltaire: “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” I mention this partially because I spent many, many hours in discussion and debate with other writers and editors at Apple’s iTunes, where we dissected specific words to determine how people understand them and whether we were being misleading when using these words in various promotions. “Best,” for instance, was a verboten term. Who decides what is “best,” and what qualifies a piece of content to be promoted as “best”? Anyone who disagreed with our choices could potentially be offended. But no one had an objection to labeling a movie “great,” since that word is so nebulous as to be meaningless—but it clearly indicates that “we like it.”

 The point is that “favorite” is one of those vague words that could be interpreted in many ways. Does it mean pleasure reading? Great Literature? One’s list of Desert Island Books? Guilty pleasures? I published over 200 film-related articles, many of a “roundup” nature (“The Ten Best Film Noir Classics”) and I always began these pieces with “the ground rules” if only to avoid being accused of leaving out someone else’s choice of “best.” So, before I list my choices, here are my parameters: These are all works of fiction, in English (or translated into English). They are not necessarily Great Literature (although some absolutely qualify), but are the titles that had the most profound and longest-lasting influence on my approach to writing. Each in its way revealed how the boundaries of literature can be expanded and illustrated what language and literature are capable of.

 In no particular order, the most influential works of fiction in my life include:

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Labyrinths by Jorges Luis Borges
The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Oedipus in Disneyland by Hercules Malloy
Any of Donald E. Westlake’s comic caper novels (The Hot Rock; Drowned Hopes; etc.)

 I could also add any novel by Jules Verne and Philip K. Dick’s VALIS (since I’m in it).

 And although they might seem out of place, I would be remiss if I did not include MAD magazine (from 1952-1970) and The National Lampoon (1970-’75) – although not novels, these humor magazines were print publications and were primarily responsible for my subversive attitude and approach to writing humor. Add to that the recordings of The Firesign Theater and Spike Jones, and you’ve got some insight into my sense of humor.

 Non-fiction has informed my psychological development as much as those works of fiction have influenced my writing. The Top Ten Non-Fiction books in my personal pantheon include:

Collected Works by Carl Jung
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Roget’s Thesaurus
The Path to Enlightenment by the Dalai Lama
Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard
Mirror of Venus by Wingate Paine
The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley

Sadly, these lists cover only print literature. There are so many more deep influences among movies (Forbidden Planet; Last Year at Marienbad; the Marx Brothers; Fellini), television (The Prisoner), and music (Bach, Beethoven’s symphonies, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, and the Moody Blues are just the tip of that iceberg).

Favorite works by Philip K. Dick

My friend Will Jacobs (also a writer) is also a big PKD fan, and he said something that has stuck with me for like five decades now: "The first Phil Dick book a person reads is always their favorite." My interpretation is that the first PKD novel one reads is so impactful, unique, and different than anything else one has read before that it makes a huge and long-lasting first impression.

My Top 5 Favorite PKD novels would be:

Eye in the Sky (the first Phil Dick book I ever read -- perhaps proving Will's point!)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
VALIS (and not just because I'm in it, but that don't hurt)
UBIK
We Can Build You

...but this is not to say that many others don't have many redeeming qualities. I still quote a paragraph from Clans of the Alphane Moon regularly, for instance.

You will notice that many of Phil's best-known works are not on my list, including The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Nothing against either of them, just not among my personal favorites.

Note: Scott was Philip K. Dick's friend and did a well-regarded book about Dick. This has been added to the "D. Scott Apel Resources" section on the right side of this page.