But the Exegesis is also replete with passages that confirm Dick's standing as a subtle thinker and an astonishing guide to hidden possibilities of existence. A previous collection, In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis (Underwood/Miller, 1991), edited by the present writer, has won critical praise for Dick as a philosophical and spiritual thinker. Robert Anton Wilson (coauthor of the popular Illuminatus trilogy) wrote: "Dick explains 'mystic' states better than any visionary writer of the past." In Gnosis, reviewer John Shirley declared: "Deluded or spiritually liberated, Dick was a genius, and that genius shines through every page of this book." Further unpublished selections of the Exegesis appear in this volume -- including a full-length essay, titled (in the parodic pulp style that Dick employed with masterly effect in his fictional works) "The Ultra Hidden (Cryptic) Doctrine: The Secret Meaning of the Great Systems of Theosophy of the World, Openly Revealed for the First Time."

As is exemplified by this flamboyant title, there is something in the nature of Dick's raptly pell-mell style that may well put off those readers who think they know what "serious" writing must look and sound like. Of course, it was just such fixed canons of "serious" discourse that Dick devoted himself to dismantling -- or, in the more fashionable postmodern jargon that has come into prominence since his death, "deconstructing" -- in many of the essays included in this book.

Dick is, as a matter both of style and of content, an uncategorizable thinker. One can dub him a "philosopher," and indeed he warrants the title in its original Greek meaning as one who loved wisdom and truly believed in the value of uninhibited questioning -- a rarity in this day and age, in which the word "metaphysical" has become a synonym for "pointless." But Dick has none of the systematic rigor and impersonality of tone that mark modern-day philosophical analysis for most readers.