A Time for George Stavros
"A Time For George Stavros" is an early non-Science Fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. It was written somewhere around 1955, when Phil was getting his SF published, but still dreamed of being a mainstream writer.
Plot
According to Lawrence Sutin's book, "Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick," (Published 1989) the plot survives only as an index card synopsis from the publisher dated 10/24/56, after the manuscript had already been rejected one time. The reader comments on the rewrite as follows:
"Didn't like this before & still don't. Long, rambling, glum novel about 65 yr old Greek immigrant who has a weakling son, a second son about whom he's indifferent, a wife who doesn't love him (She's being unfaithful to him). Nothing much happens. Guy, selling garage & retiring, tries to buy another garage in new development, has a couple of falls, dies at end. Point is murky but seems to be that world is disintegrating, Stavros supposed to be symbol of vigorous individuality now a lost commodity."
In a letter from 1960, the author himself commented on the titular character in an unexpectedly optomistic fashion:
"Contact with vile persons does not blight or contaminate or doom the really superior; a man can go on and be successful, if he just keps struggling. There is no trick that the wicked can play on the good that will ultimately be successful; the good are protected by God, or at least by their virtue."
Trivia
- Much of the plot for this lost novel was apparently re-treaded and re-used in Phil's later non-SF novel, "Humpty Dumpty In Oakland" (Written 1960, published 1987). As Phil was writing "Humpty" at roughly the same time he wrote the letter above, this might explain his uncharactaristicaly cheery assessment of the character.
