Review: The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick

The Man in the High Castle imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War 2, and divided up the USA between Germany and Japan. The title refers to the within-world author of a banned book that imagines what would have happened if the Allies won.

This premise is overtly political, however I was overall disappointed in its exploration of political topics. Nazi ideology was simplified into genocidal hatred of Jewish people and Black people, and the desire to ever expand their territory. But the ideology of fascism is broader than that, and shifts as the needs of the fascist party do. What would a victorious Nazi party transform into? Moreover, how would American culture adapt to occupation by German and Japanese fascists? (We should remember that US racial segregation laws were the inspiration for Nazi regulations around race, disability, and other methods of categorizing people.) These questions were not explored.

One of the most important pillars of fascism is irrationalism and mysticism, both of which were missing in Philip K. Dick’s imagined Nazism. This absence was rendered starker by mysticism being the philosophical guidance of the protagonists: the American and Japanese characters continually consulted the I Ching to aid in decision-making. In fact, the author himself used the I Ching to determine key plot points. The climax of the book revolves around characters discovering the plurality of worlds, the absence of a singular truth. Our world, the world of the novel and the world of the novel within the novel are all suggested to co-exist. In sum: history is subjective, constructed; truth is what you make of it; Nazism is bad, but irrationality and mysticism are very, very good.

Still, there were a few aspects of the novel that I thought were fun. Several story lines revolve around the art world, where Americans scavenge and counterfeit their own culture and history to satisfy buyers with stereotyped, fetishized views. It was a good exploration of how imperial subjugation shapes one’s relationship with one’s culture, and reminded me a little of A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. However, I preferred Martine's handling of this theme: her fantasy world was distant to our own, which allowed for richer exploration. Dick's novel leans on the shock of, "what if people did to us what we did to other cultures?"

Dick captured wonderfully the awkward tension of social situations where individuals of conflicting political persuasions are confronted by their differences but feel the need to maintain social ease. For example, I enjoyed the scene of the American comprador dining at the house of a curious, possibly radical, Japanese couple. This scene was narrated through the perspective of the American, who misses the subtext to the conversation, and this irony heightened the suspense. The scenes between Juliana and her undercover Nazi lover were also well done; here, suspense was driven by concern for her safety at the hands of a violent man. Maybe it is unsurprising that this facet of the novel was deftly portrayed while its political philosophy remained shallow: Americans have a simplistic understanding of Nazism, but ample experience keeping the peace during family Thanksgiving dinners with political opponents.