A Scanner Darkly

I have just finished Philip K. Dick's 1977 novel, A Scanner Darkly.  This story about the life cycle of a drug addict and an undercover agent has recently been adapted into film, which I look forward to watching.

This novel was a difficult read.  The narration itself flows with the organization of the characters' state of mind, moving between sensible to high to burned out.  It takes determination to weed through the confusion before being rewarded with later clues that make sense of things.  The confusion of the characters is presented with little dramatic irony.  The reader is usually more confused than the characters themselves, regularly being deceived by the paranoid fantasies of the protagonist and his friends.

The best feature of Dick's writing is the gradual way he slips between these states of mind.  It is so gradual and fluid that you don't notice the change until you mimic the state in your own thoughts.  Finally, when you think the story has fallen apart, fizzled into nothingness and confusion, the final page concludes the adventure in the most satisfying way possible.

I am looking forward to the film adaptation quite a bit.  They made it animated for very specific reasons, most notably the "scramble suit" that is used to hide a person's identity that is implored by narcotics agents.  Also, some of the hallucinations presented in the novel would be very difficult to pull off in live-action.  It could also be a stylistic decision, representing the loss of perception of reality.  The visual aspect should just be fine, but I am worried about how they can translate the narration that so well defines the paranoia and loss of identity in the main character without copious amounts of voice-over.  When the release extends to Lincoln I'll find out and let you know.