And this wasn't a form of self criticism: Nicola Barker was clearly a fan of Philip K. Dick. And those three paragraphs don't talk about robots or time travel or hallucinogenic drugs or ESP or any of Dick's usual obsessions. The scent of PKD was all in the somehow likeable schlubbiness of the main characters, their haplessness, a haplessness brought low by the usual challenges of everyday life; brought lower by their bad habits, cowardice or other character flaws; and brough lowest of all by the unrelenting storm of absurdity they have to navigate. This we see in the opening paragraphs of Wide Open, and it is this tension--the schlub vs. the seemingly endless slings and arrows of a cruel-humored universe--that truly characterizes PKD's work.
A quick Google search later, I am reading about Barker's favorite Dick novel: one of the early, non-SF ones (Puttering About in a Small Land). Read more here
