A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

My main purpose in reading this book was to understand the film. I think it helped - just going over everything again was useful, and of course the book has a lot more detail about the small things. But that doesn't change that fact that it's a very weird story with a lot of things that don't make sense and a lot of others that seem unnecessary to the plot.

It tells the story of an undercover police officer, Bob Arctor, who mixes with drug addicts in the hope of busting the main suppliers of an evil drug named Substance D. Reporting anonymously to his superiors under the alias "Fred", Bob's life takes a turn for the surreal when he's ordered to begin close surveillance on himself. This oddness is compounded by Bob's own deteriorating mental state under the influence of the Substance D he must take during his investigations, and before long he entirely forgets who he is - that Bob and Fred are the same person. Ultimately we discover that Bob's superiors have been using him in an even more underhand way than he ever suspected, while he was still capable of suspecting anything.

The things that the book did not explain include: was Barris, Bob's flatmate who was apparently responsible for so much dangerous sabotage of Bob's possessions, really evil or was he just trying to protect Bob and the others from each other? Did any of the sabotage incidents really occur or were they products of Bob's fried imagination? Why is there so much pseudomathematical mumbo-jumbo from the police psychologists about the way the two halves of Bob's brain interact after the brain damage has set in? Why did Bob's withdrawal and impairment set in so quickly after he was advised to enter rehab?

I think I can conclude that I didn't enjoy this book much, but I am glad that I read it. It was worth it, just for a single explanation of one very odd scene from the film. Bob wants to hug his girlfriend Donna, and she refuses by saying "I do a lot of coke and I have to be careful with that". Huh? Why should a coke habit make it dangerous for her to be touched? We find out in the book, where the full refusal goes:

I don't like people to grope my body... I have to watch out for that because I do so much coke. Someday I have it planned I'm going over the Canadian border with four pounds of coke in it, in my snatch. I'll say I'm a Catholic and a virgin... you can see why I have to protect my snatch.

Crazy, but in some way a lot more logical. Just like the rest of the book really.