The Man in the High Castle, #3

Detail from the Penguin edition. Please buy if you enjoyed this blog.

As they got into their pickup truck with their wicker hamper, Frank thought, God knows how good a salesman Ed is, or I am. Childan can be sold, but it's going to take a presentation, like they say.
     If Juliana were here,  he thought, she could stroll in there and do it without batting an eye; she's pretty, she can talk to anybody on earth, and she's a woman. After all, this is woman's jewellery. She could wear it into the store. Shutting his eyes, he tried to imagine how she would look with one of their bracelets on. Or one of their large silver necklaces. With her black hair and her pale skin, her doleful, probing eyes... wearing a grey jersey sweater, a little bit too tight, the silver resting against her bare flesh, metal rising and falling as she breathed...
     God, she was vivid in his mind, right now. Every piece they made, the strong, thin fingers picked up, examined; tossing her head back, holding the piece high. Juliana sorting, always a witness to what he had done.

   

p131-132, The Man in The High Castle, Philip K. Dick,1962

The Man in the High Castle, #2

'...It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stablised. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis.'

image by kind provision of Terry Thomas' site

     Childan nodded, studied the piece. But Paul had lost him.
     'It does not have wabi,' Paul said, 'nor could it ever have. But-' He touched the pin with his nail. 'Robert, this object has wu.'
     'I believe you are right,' Childan said, trying to recall what wu was; it was not a Japanese word - it was Chinese. Wisdom, he decided. Or comprehension. Anyhow, it was highly good.
     'The hands of the artificer,' Paul said, 'had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece. Possibly he himself knows only that this piece satisfies. It is complete, Robert. By contemplating it we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquility associated not with art but with hoily things. I recall a shrine in Hiroshima wherein a shinbone of a medieval saint could be examined. However, this is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained. By this meditation, conducted by myself at great length since you were last here, I have come to identify the value which this has in opposition to historicity. I am deeply moved, as you may see.'

p170-171, The Man in The High Castle, Philip K. Dick,1962

The Man in The High Castle, #1

'Well I'll tell you,' he said. 'This whole damn historicity business is nonsense... I'll prove it.' Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. 'Look at these. Look the same, don't they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it. Pick them up. Go ahead. One's worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors' market.'
    The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
    'Don't you feel it?' he kidded her. 'The historicity?'
    She said, 'what is "historicity"?'
    'When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of these two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn't. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?' He nudged her. 'You can't. You can't tell which is which. There's no "mystical presence", no "aura" around it.'
    'Gee,' the girl said, awed. 'Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?'  
    'Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. It's in here.' He tapped his head. 'I used to be a collector. In fact, that's how I got into this business. I used to collect stamps.'
    The girl stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. 'My mother and dad used to say we wouldn't have lost the war if he had lived,' she said...

p 65-66, The Man in The High Castle, by Philip K. Dick, 1962