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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780679740667
ISBN number: 067974066X
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 240
Printing Date: June 29, 1993
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: June 29, 1993
Sale Popularity Level: 59006
Studio: Vintage
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>On October 11 the television star Jason Taverner is so famous that 30 million viewers eagerly watch his prime-time show. On October 12 Jason Taverner is not a has-been but a never-was -- a man who has lost not only his audience but all proof of his existence. And in the claustrophobic betrayal state of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, loss of proof is synonyms with loss of life.
Taverner races to solve the riddle of his disappearance', immerses us in a horribly plausible Philip K. Dick United States in which everyone -- from a waiflike forger of identity cards to a surgically altered pleasure -- informs on everyone else, a world in which omniscient police have something to hide. His bleakly beautiful novel bores into the deepest bedrock self and plants a stick of dynamite at its center.
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Rated by buyers 
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Ive read many of Philip K. Dick's novels and I dont think I was ever more puzzled by an ending as I was in this novel. It is a superb novel right from the beginning but there is an encounter between Felix and a grey man at a gas station near the end of the book that came quite out of nowhere. Maybe I missed some connection along the way (very easy to do in a Dick novel) but if anyone reads this I would love to hear any interpretation.
Rated by buyers -
Philip K. Dick led American science fiction in innovation and daring. This novel has Jason Taverner world famous one day and a nonperson the subsequent day, ie, someone who never even existed. It's a twisted tale as Taverner tries to put it together. It ends a little too easily pat, almost to a cop out, but man, leading up to it is Dick at his crazy best.
Rated by buyers -
Whether or not Philip K. Dick was involved in the drug scene, "Flow My Tears.." advances paranoid hebephrenia to new levels. And, this is before The Weasel totally abrogated the Fourth Amendment for our personal protection. The theory behind the title is as puzzling as to why my science fiction professor referred to the author as "Phil." Yes, indeed, I had a science fiction professor. Imagine that! Of course, the moral "Don't come to the attention of the authorities" is painfully clear and to be remembered at all times, particularily in this novel of dystopia. This title and my favorite "Dr. Bloodmoney, or how we got along after the bomb" is collected in "Philip K. Dick: Five Novels from the 60s and 70s," now available on Amazon. PKD readers will also be interested in the four volume "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick."
Rated by buyers -
The plot will have you guessing throughout, but always guessing wrong. The reader always guesses consistent with his own prejudiced conception of reality; he's over-matched by the mind-blowing stuff Dick throws at him. Seasoned readers of Dick are perhaps an exception. If you're new to Dick, I suggest re-reading the book a second time, especially if you have to fully "get it" it to be satisfied.
Dick probes the profound mystery of personal identity and its particularly effective because it's set against the backdrop of a neo-Stasi, dystopian America. In this world, existence means a dossier, an ID card, a micro-transmitters, etc. It's inconceivable that existence remains undocumented. Nevertheless, as Jason Taverner proves, it is possible -- somehow! We ought to take note of the implications of this type of society considering the Real ID Act of 2005 will soon require us all to carry National ID cards.
The finale of the story is very provocative and satisfying. I adored all the female characters in the book -- they were all so colorful.
Altogether, and satisfying and trippy read!
Rated by buyers -
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said was published in 1974, the same year Philip K. Dick had his famous "revelation" that led to his extremely different later works such as VALIS. Presumably this book was completed before that revelation -- thus it stands as perhaps the last of what might be considered his "middle period." (If we call the early period the apprentice work in short fiction and the flood of uneven novels mostly for Ace, and start the "middle period" maybe with his Hugo winner, The Man in the High Castle (1962).) It seems to me quite characteristic of that body of work, though to my mind it ranks below the peak of his oeuvre.
The plot and setting are something of a mess, though I think this is partly by design. Jason Taverner is a successful pop singer (more in the Frank Sinatra mode than in any plausible 70s mode), and also the host of a very successful TV variety show. He lives in the US in 1988, in a future where almost all grey people have either been killed or sterilized. There are flying cars, but otherwise the milieu is somewhat seedy and not too different from our real 1974. He believes himself to be a "six," one of a group of genetically enhanced individuals.
Then one day Jason Taverner is erased from existence. His records do not appear anywhere in the government's exhaustive databases. As such, he is vulnerable for arrest and assignment to a forced labor camp. His agent has never heard of him, and neither has his sometime mistress and costar and fellow "six", Heather Hart. He stumbles through a couple of difficult days, mostly marked by encounters with differently needy women: Kathy Nelson, who forges papers for him; Ruth Rae, another former mistress who doesn't remember him but is happy to take him in again; Mary Anne Dominic, a talented potter who helps him out of another fix; and perhaps most importantly Alys Buckman, the drug-addict sister of Police General Felix Buckman, with whom she carries on an incestuous relationship. Taverner is constantly under purview of the police, especially Buckman (the title "policeman")... confusingly arrested and released repeatedly, even as his identity is eventually restored.
As I said, the plot doesn't really make much sense. And the setting is absurd if one attempts to see it as a plausible 1988: certainly it makes no sense today, but it was also impossible from the point of view of 1974. One almost wonders if the original notion for the novel was conceived in the 50s. (Especially given that Taverner is much more an early 50s pop star than a 70s or 80s pop star.) But I actually think that Dick had no interest whatsoever in displaying a plausible future. He just wanted a vehicle for his wild speculations. Which turn out to be rather interesting: Taverner's situation, his loss of identity is given a philosophically intriguing explanation. And the main characters -- Taverner and Buckman -- are well depicted though neither is very sympathetic.
The novel is well worth reading, for reasons that are hard to explain. For all that it's an implausible mess, it is weirdly intriguing. Dick's ideas are always absorbing. That said, the ideas here are not as thought-provoking as in his best novels, the characters not as interesting, the plot not terribly strong. And of course Dick was never anything special as a stylist. In all ways, I must rank this novel as Dick at less than his best. But still somehow he held my interest.
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