The Owl in Daylight

The Owl in Daylight is a novel which Philip K. Dick was writing at the time of his death in 1982. He had already been paid an advance for the book by the publisher and was working against a deadline. After his death, the Philip K. Dick estate approached other writers about the possibility of someone completing the novel based on his notes, but this proved to be impossible as he had never formally outlined the story. Dick viewed the novel as his Finnegans Wake. The idea was inspired partly by an entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on Beethoven that referred to him as the most creative genius of all time, partly by traditional views of what constitutes the human heaven (visions of lights), and finally by the Faust story.

However, Andrew M. Butler's alternative plot summaries seem to suggest that he might have become fascinated by Dante's Divine Comedy as a form of theophany. In his final completed work, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, his narrator, Angel Archer, shows similar appreciation for Dante's masterpiece, which suggests that this argument may have some merit.

Nearly all that is known about one interpretation of the projected plot came from a discussion that Dick had with his journalist friend Gwen Lee on January 10, 1982, which Lee transcribed and later published.

By contrast, Andrew M. Butler cites multiple sources for his own contentions about the possible plot, which are cited below. They include references within Greg Rickman's The Last Testament (1985), Lawrence Sutin's In Pursuit of VALIS (1991), and the interview collection What if Our World is Their Heaven? (2006), cited above.

Both are shown to be correct in The Selected Letters of Philip K Dick Volume 6: 1980 -1982, where one can read Dick's own description of the story and what he wanted to do with it. The plot was to express what he believed was an evolutionary step in humanity, using an interpretation of Joachim de Fiore, where he believed that one age of humanity used the left side of the brain, another the right, and the future would combine the two leading to a greater understanding of what is real. Moreover, the use of Dante was to demonstrate how hell, purgatory and heaven can all be experiences of life, showing how the world is experienced according to the left, right and whole of the brain.

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