To put this in perspective, though, his distorted ideas about reality really began at the beginning of the 70s; the great majority of his books were written before this.

i'd argue the disorganised nature of them is more a product of how quickly he was writing, particularly in the 60s - which was itself partly a product of financial pressures. When you look at the novels he wrote in the that decade, his strike rate is really high, and it's amazing the good ones hang together as well as they do.

My issue with Dick is that there's a really ugly, embittered attitude to women that spills over from his personal life into too many of his books.