"Fat's account: God had fired a beam of…" — Philip K. Dick (#c443)

Card #c443IR // #c443Verbatim excerpt

Fat's account: God had fired a beam of pink light directly at him, at his head, his eyes, and with the beam came knowledge he never had, down to the medical specifics of his son's undiagnosed birth defect. The narrator's account, in the same chapter: I deem it a symptom of Fat's breakdown. Then the laser-prank scene: two teenagers aim a homemade pink laser at them in a parking lot, the narrator asks Fat That color pink? and Fat says nothing.

— Source: VALIS (Philip K. Dick)

[Use when]

An extraordinary experience comes with its own built-in skeptic, and the believer outruns him.

[Why it matters]

The book runs two investigations side by side without resolving them. Investigation one: what would have to be true about reality for this experience to mean what Fat thinks it means? Investigation two: what would have to be true about Fat's mind for the experience to feel exactly as convincing as it does? The text itself supplies the debunker: The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony, they shoot for the baroque, written by the same hand that wrote the revelation. The narrator debunks Fat in real time, and Fat keeps going anyway. That simultaneity is the whole book.

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