Philip K. Dick has three particular talents that have allowed him to not only “put down” his visions but to bring them to life: his ability to create believable, sympathetic characters; his sense of horror; and his sense of humor.

Confessions of a Crap Artist is the story of four people who live in and perceive very different universes but whose lives get hopelessly tangled together through the usual combination of destiny, accident, and their own deliberate actions (stress on the latter—the novel is at its most acute in the scenes where each character assesses his own situation and then deliberately acts in such a manner as to dig himself deeper into the pit). Jack Isidore, the “crap artist” of the title, is a simple-minded lost soul, fascinated by bits of information and incapable of distinguishing fact from fantasy—seeing the world through his eyes is a bizarre, unforgettable experience. He is not an idiot in the tradition of Faulkner’s and Dostoievski’s famous idiots; his idiocy is close enough to our normalcy to scare us.

Fay Hume, Jack’s sister, is an intelligent, attractive, hopelessly selfish woman, married to a beer-drinking, inarticulate regular guy named Charley Hume who owns a small factory in Marin County. They live in an absurdly non-functional modern house in Point Reyes, a rural outpost several hours north of San Francisco, with two daughters and some livestock and an incredible electric bill. Charley’s purpose in Fay’s life seems to have been to build her this dream house; that done, he withers in her eyes and she turns her attention to a young married man named Nathan Anteil. Nathan is a true intellectual, a law student; he spots Fay for what the is immediately, but is drawn to her anyway. Why? He doesn’t know; perhaps even the author doesn’t know; he only knows that it’s true, this is the way people are.