The humor in the novel, in everything Dick says and writes, is self-evident (“I stood in the middle of my room doing absolutely nothing except respiring, and, of course, keeping other normal processes going”). Dick writes from the center of some vast despair that is, however, never final; the reverse of cynicism is at work here. No matter how miserable and absurd his characters’ actions and thoughts are, Dick’s attitude toward his characters is always, finally, sympathetic—he loves and understands them, his books affirm a faith and affection for humanity, in spite of all our idiocies. The result is somehow comic. In Confessions particularly, every little hilarious detail of the awful vanity of our minds is mercilessly exposed. It is possible a woman could drive a man to such a state that he would assassinate his own pet theep? You better believe it.

But the humor in no way dilutes the horror. The horror in all of Dick’s novels is that the world around us is cruel and insane, and the more courageously we struggle to remove the blinders from our eyes and see things as they really are, the more we suffer. Awareness is pain; and Dick’s characters are cursed with awareness, like the autistic child in Martian Time-Slip who hears the noise of the universe decaying. In Confessions of a Crap-Artist, the horror is that human beings torture each other, and fail repeatedly to do what is best both for the people around them and for themselves. We are dimly—sometimes even acutely—aware of the interconnectedness of our lives, but we don’t seem to be able to put that awareness to work for us, in fact our efforts to do so only make things worse. The novel is summed up in Jack Isidore’s poignant observation: “In fact, the whole world is full of nuts. It’s enough to get you down.”

Here are Philip K. Dick’s thoughts on Confessions of a Crap Artist, from a letter dated January 19, 1975: