Early 1981
Dick again brings up his 10 volume meta-novel. If you’ve come here to find out what books are included I don’t think he ever spells it out in the Exegesis. I can make a good guess as to some (or most) of them, but Dick’s mind works in mysterious ways.
He outlines what we should takeaway from the meta-novel:
- Each of us lives in a unique individual world
- The world is not what it purports to be
- This world is created by the plasmate aka Valis
- We have some control over our individual worlds because they derive from us somehow
He claims everything he has written from “Roog” and “Beyond Lies the Wub” to now makes up “one vast artistic vision,” one that has become humanized as it has progressed and which he can’t be separated from.
He did not intend VALIS to be a story that explains God and the universe, but rather it’s a story about his suffering and his own personal vision. It wasn’t designed to explain the world. It’s a work of art that illuminates his struggle, and he makes it clear that it is not objective truth.
This is followed by notes on the characteristics of Bishop Tim Archer and Edgar Barefoot for his work-in-progress novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.