The Dice Man
by Luke Rhinehart
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Book Reviews of The Dice Man
Book Review: Pattern-breaking and the question for "Random"
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a psychology student and have read this book in a rush during the last 6 hours, then slept heavily and dreamed about the mystique entity of random. This book touches central questions to everybody, and in my eyes it is a key to open a gate but not the road itself; nor is the use of the dice. First, pattern-breaking according to the dice is an interesting method to gain a kind of "freedom" of worn-out habits. In a way, the role-pressure many people experience is thus relieved; in that the book reflects theories of Carl Rogers - but it goes further than these in commanding to behave violent or just according to the "random" whims one of which is being selected by the dice. This method lifts more and more suppressed, unconscious motives onto the silver plate of conciousness and decision - thus leading to the disintegration of the beforhand controlled and confined mind by making "impossible" fantasies possible, thus clinging to an aeon-old human fantasy (even if this fantasy is still restricted). But what then is "Random"? Random lies beween certainty and uncertainty, it corrodes behavioral contingeny (as far at THAT exists...) and prediction. Random is THE POSSIBLE. Possibilities abound, the dice destroys the veil of habit before the eye and mercilessly and indifferently chooses. As far as behaviour is concerned, however, this game can only be played to a certain amount because there ARE certainties: death, aging e.g. Therefore, the ULTIMATE liberation lies not in random. Furthermore, the ALTERNATIVES postulated before a dice-throw are not randomized either. And what if I would say that RANDOM might merely be the absence of knowledge, the black hole that we encircle but cannot (yet?) penetrate, that random does not exist at all but the numbers of the dice are destined...? In the end, the content of the book is the desire for freedom presented in a new coat. A romantic key-term - freedom - is seen as the submission to chance, which is merely a changing of the master (still this could be expanded to an infinite regress, because the old self could be seen as beind randomly installed, whereas the random might be part of the self etc.) and not freedom at all. The cracking of the self into thousand mirror-pieces and melting them into a new Being is a flight from personal responsibility, the total submission obviously deeply implanted in humanity. The hardest - existentialistic and nihilistic - questions "Death is absurd, what am I to do?" and "Death terminates ALL" are being answered by placing the existentialistic guilt on the dice, and suddenly - it opresses no more. "Religion is opium to the people". Everybody has supressed things, dreams, wounds and wishes in his subsconcious sea, freedom is in my eyes the capability and the power to live them out with YOU as the master, with your WILL steering. Strong are those who answer the existentialistic question raised in this book by their POWER. Weakness lies within those in need of a master, with the "fear of freedom". To conclude, a great book with many hints (even if it doesn't seem so here, but I appreciate the freshness of the book), suggesting new ways of thought about old human questions. The melting of the construct of "self" is in my eyes the most interesting topic - the creation of a collective mind (not that WITHIN a person, but that BETWEEN persons) would be another step ahead - but here we touch acclaimed mystic ground...Book Review: Lucky Luke aka Don Psychote
Summary: 4 Stars
According to Time Out, this book was one of the most fashionable novels of the early 1970s; and Anthony Burgess, the author of the unsettling "A Clockwork Orange" (1962), graced it with the comment "touching, ingenious and beautifully comic.""The Dice Man" is a dark comedy, violent and hilarious at the same time; an upbeat precursor to the much grimmer "American Psycho" (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis, and the similarly satirical "The Elementary Particles" (1998) by the French author Michel Houellebecq. With a light touch and in mischievously entertaining fashion, the book plays with the fundamentals of the way we understand ourselves: rationality, identity, reality; in sum, all the ways in which we construct coherence from chance, or something from nothing.
Luke Rhinehart, the author (in fact, the real author's pseudonym) and narrator of the book, is the ultimate unreliable narrator. Luke's actions are largely dictated by chance. He writes down alternative actions and then tosses dice to determine which action to take. The result, he claims, is freedom to live different sides of his personality. As an author, for example, he lets the dice decide what he should write in his fictional autobiography with the title "The Dice Man" and what not; and the dice decide when he should lie and when not. Consequently, he announces on page one that he is the author of "the lovely first-rate pornographic novel, Naked Before the World" only to reveal much later in the book that the dice ordered him not to write about this piece of fiction in "The Dice Man." Too bad, dear reader.
The book works not only as a send-up of the psychoanalytic profession and the counter-culture of the late 1960s, it also succeeds at creating its own twisted reality - as attested by all the readers who felt that their view of the world had been profoundly changed by this novel.
It is ironic that "The Dice Man" has a cult following while the book makes fun of the cult of Dice Living created by the fictional Luke Rhinehart. In a sense the cult following includes the real author himself who produced a couple of sequels to this book. The irony should not come as a surprise, though. Authors who are seriously unserious run a high risk of creating ironic side effects. One of the earliest examples is the Daoist philosopher Lao-Tse (born BC 604). He blissfully ignored the irony in his "Dao De Jing," a book that declares in the first sentence "the Dao that can be told is not the real Dao" and then goes on for some 5,000 words to explain what the Dao is.
In sum, "The Dice Man" is recommended for readers who are willing to suspend the sense of their own importance for the sake of enjoying a fictional world, and to tolerate an alien system of morality for the time it takes to read this original and amusing satire.
Book Review: Dicy
Summary: 5 Stars
As usual, the dice said I should tell you what I thought about this book. There are several me's, and each one has a different opinion, or at least would like to say some things to you. So I take a pen and a piece of paper and write down the options. If I roll...
1-4) I play around a little, and say this book was terrible, no explanations. There's that little part of me that likes to do a few pranks. 1 star.
5-6) I choose to take a civilized and wannabe-pro approach and use a lot of difficult words describing how intelligent and witty The Dice Man was. 5 stars.
7-17) I say that I really loved this book. I go to the extremities and use a whole lotta superlatives and exclamation marks. It was hilarious at most times, and thought-provoking at all times. The thing about giving your every side a chance to live it's life, to deliberately submit to a sort of a schitzophrenia being a good thing...interesting, most interesting. 5 stars, absolutely!
18-29) I take a very dice man-ish approach and choose to tell you my opinion on this book by describing the selection process. 5 stars.
30-32) I give up and never say an opinion on The Dice Man.
33) I "accidentally" write about a wrong book.
34-35) I write my review always one key stroke to the right. Q is W, W is E, E is R and so on.
36) I write my review in the same manner as described in one part of the The Dice Man.
Then I take two green dice, say a little prayers for the Die and throw them. 21. The Dice have ruled that I should write about my decision-making experience.
Although I'm here violating the laws of all uncertainty, I'd suggest you don't leave whether you read this novel or not to the whims of the dice. It might open up many doors. And change your life.
Or offer a new way of having fun, at least. 1) Read it. 2) Read it. 3) Read it twice. 4) Read it. 5) Read it. 6) Read it.
Book Review: FEEL GUILTY FOR NOT LIKING THIS
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a must read.... all the reviews are good... I should like this book.
But I'm going to be honest here.... I did not like it. For one thing it could have been shortened a great deal without anyone noticing or missing anything. I felt some explicit scenes were inserted simply to liven up a boring narrative. Writing is like painting you need to know when enough is enough to make a masterpiece and this author, apparently, did not receive that memo.
The funny thing is, I was recommended this book by a friend who thought it hilarious that I sometimes make decisions randomly by drawing pieces of paper out of a salad bowl- all with different options written on them. Which eliminates the possibility that I'm just a super rigid freak, right? This also wasn't required reading for school. That brings me to the point- what exactly did I miss? What is that thing that everyone loves so much about this book? In comparison to this Slaugher-house Five really is a masterpiece- if your in the market for new ideas to mull over. This rating thing I guess its all relative to what else you've just read.
**If you disagree with my review plz refrain from voting on it... this is my opinion which is subject to change at any given moment.... place a persuasive argument inducing that change, intstead. :)
EDIT: I just realized something, a few days after reading this book. This book is a look at alternative to suicide. Main character contemplates physical suicide. At the last minute comes across a different method of suicide that will allow him to commit his suicide and still live.... he lets the die govern and commits social suicide. So basically, this book may be a statement on "if your miserable why not seek change instead of death." Thought I'd share that with you all.
Book Review: The "Invisible" Dice Man?
Summary: 5 Stars
We have two mysteries going on which may each be the solution for each other. (1) Readers/fans of "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart suspect its author is psuedononymous and wonder what else he's written. (2) Ditto with "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" by H.F. Keating. I suspect both were written by one author. Their similarities: 1) first person POV linear narrative 2) educated, middleaged, white male protagonist 3) contemporary US setting 4) unique satirical viewpoint w/similar bureaucratic & pop culture targets 5) arresting fantasy/SF premise sets up story 6) similar sense of humor 7) VERY similar writing styles, even down to some specific phraseology 8) perhaps most obviously, both books share themes of hiding your real identity...either concealing the body behind a transparency effect, or concealing the personality behind pseudo-identities.A third book that may have been written by this same fellow, and which corresponds to some of the items on the above list, is a comic thriller (now out of print) called "Dunn's Conundrum" by "Stan Lee" (not the comics publisher). Its premise: an NSA type agency hides minicameras all over the USA. Theme: private vs. public personalities.
We know Rhinehart is a psuedonym; early editions of "Dice Man" acknowledged the real author as George Cockcroft. He played the game of openly "hiding" this identity behind the unconcealed Rhinehart psuedonym, thus making L.R. not only his protagonist but his alter ego. As for "Invisible Man," despite M. Halski's assertions that HF Saint is a real name/person, I think this clever author would find it equally (and similarly)irresistable to hide HIS real identity...again, just like his protagonist does.