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Mar. 31st, 2007 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bending_sickleThe Dice Man: Summary
"The rules are all around you. The rules that stop you seducing your neighbour downstairs, that stop you hitting your boss, that stop you leaving your family and leaving the country. The rules that stop you living.
The dice don't do rules; the dice do life.
Luke Rhinehart is a psychiatrist, a husband and a father, his life locked down by routine and order - until he picks up the dice. The dice govern his every decision and each throw takes him further into a world of rish, discovery and freedom. As the cult of the dice grows around him the old order fades: chance becomes religion, the dice his god.
If you haven't lived the life of the dice, you haven't lived at all. So let the dice decide. And roll with it."
Excerpts from LRhinehart's The Dice Man (1971):
"In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made my Chance and without him was not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men."
"Life is islands of ecstacy in an ocean of ennui and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen. At best we wander from one much-worn sandbar to the next, soon familiar with each grain of sand we see."
"Now the desire to kill oneself and to assassinate, poison, obliterate or rape others is generlaly considered in the psychiatric profession as 'unhealthy'. Bad. Evil. More accurately, sin. When you have the desire to kill youself, you are supposed to see and 'accept it', but <>not, for Christ's sake, to kill youself. If you desire to have carnal knowledge of a helpless teeny-bopper, you are supposed to accept your lust, and not lay a finger on even her big toe. If you hate your father, fine - but don't slug the bastard with a bat. Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself."
"The secret, I seemed to learn, was in not caring, in accepting limitations, conflicts and ambiguities of life with joy and satistafaction, in effortless drifting with the flow of the universe. So life was meaningless? Who cares. So my ambitions are trivial? Pursue them anyway. Life seems boring? Yawn."
"'The blind bastards [his voice was quiet and serene and remote] will panic and kill, panic and kill, trying to control the uncontrolable, trying to kill what can only live.'
'We will panic and kill.'
'And I'll,' he interrupted himself with a chuckle, 'I'll try to save the whole fucking world. - '
'Yes.'
'I'm Divine, you know,' he said.
'Yes,' I said, believing it.
'I've come to wake the world to evil, to goose mankind to good.'
'We'll hate you - '
'To slash the mash-poatoe minds until their sin is seen.'
'We'll be blind - '
'Try to make the blind see, the lame walk, the dead live again.' He laughed.
'And we'll try to make the seeing blind, the walking lame, the living dead.' I smiled.
'I'll be the insane Saviour of the wolrd, and you'll kill me.'
'Whatever you want will be done.' I eased out a slow motion bubbling of mirth.
'I'll be...' He was chuckling too, in slow motion. 'I'll be...the Saviour...of the world...and do nothing, and you...'ll kill...me.'
'And I'll - ' Goddam it, it was funny! How beautiful it was: '...I'll kill you.'"
"'God can do all things,' I went on. 'No purpose of His can ever be thwarted. Never.'
'Yes,' she replied.
'We must despise ourselves and lose ourselves if we are to be saved.'
'Yes.'
'God sees the tiniest sparrow fall.'
'Yes.'
'The tiniest die tumble upon the table.'
'Yes.'
'You will always know what option you have given to the Die.'
'Yes.'
'Terry, the reason you must have faith in the Die is simple.'
'Yes.'
'The Die is God.'"
"As the normal, healthy, neurotic reader knows, one of the chief delights of life is daydreaming."
"'Your free will has made a mess of things,' I told Linda after explaining at length my dice theory. 'Give the Die a try.'
'You sound like a TV commercial,' she said."
"Dear Dr. Rhinehart
I discovered my sixteen-year-old daughter on our living room couch with the postman this afternoon, and she referred me to you. What the hell is this all about?
Sincerely Yours,
John Rush"
"'Diceshit! I just want to know a you that's soft and predictable. How am I supposed to enjoy being with you if I feel you can go 'poof' any minute from some random fall of a die?'
I sighed and lowered myself back onto my elbows.
'Were I a healthy, normal neurotic human lover, my love might evaporate any moment in just as haphazard a fashion.'
'But then I would see it coming; I could run out on you first.' She smiled.
I sat up abruptly.
'Everything may evaporate at any instant. Everything!' I said with surprising vehemence. 'You, me, the most rocklike personality since Calvin Coolidge: death, destruction, depair may strike. To live your life assuming otherwise isinsanity.'"
"'I consult the Die at dawn every day about whether I should consult it about everything during the day, about only the big things or not consult it at all under any circumstances. Today, for example, it told me not to consult it about anything.'
'So even your dicelessness is filled with the Die?'
[...]
'Most things people do aren't natural the first time they do them. That's what learning is all about. That's what the dicelife is all about. [...] If we always limited ourselves to what was natural to us, we'd be midget dwarfs compared to our potential. We must always be incorporating new areas of human action which we can make natural.'"
"We hope that a student come to have two profound insights while staying at the motel. First, he suddenly realizes that perhaps he's at a 'normal' motel, that no other dicepeople are there. He laughs and laughs. Secondly, he realizes that all other humans are leading chance-dictated multiple lives even though they don't know it and are always trying to fight it. He laugs and laughs. Joyfully he wanders back out onto the highway rubbing his dice together, barely aware that he has left the illusion of a totally random environment."
"Of course, continuity is sometimes tenuous, content thin. Digressions proliferate like weapons in a peace-loving country. I may have to rewrite the thing seven or eight times. But words are written. To a writer this is fulfillment. Creativity or crap, it counts."
"Even if my dice-determined flow is exceptionally good I may brood that it nevertheless isn't what I should have written that particular day. But we must come to realize that every word is perfect, including those we scratch out."
"I've obviously got several thousand pages of life to report, just counting my life since D-Day, but the best I can do, my friends, is random bits and pieces."
"Not my will, Die, but Thy will be done."
Also by L. Rhinehart: Matari, Long Voyage Back, Adventures of Whim, The Search of the Dice Man, The Book of the Die
* The Book of the Die in The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
"The rules are all around you. The rules that stop you seducing your neighbour downstairs, that stop you hitting your boss, that stop you leaving your family and leaving the country. The rules that stop you living.
The dice don't do rules; the dice do life.
Luke Rhinehart is a psychiatrist, a husband and a father, his life locked down by routine and order - until he picks up the dice. The dice govern his every decision and each throw takes him further into a world of rish, discovery and freedom. As the cult of the dice grows around him the old order fades: chance becomes religion, the dice his god.
If you haven't lived the life of the dice, you haven't lived at all. So let the dice decide. And roll with it."
Excerpts from LRhinehart's The Dice Man (1971):
"In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made my Chance and without him was not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men."
"Life is islands of ecstacy in an ocean of ennui and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen. At best we wander from one much-worn sandbar to the next, soon familiar with each grain of sand we see."
"Now the desire to kill oneself and to assassinate, poison, obliterate or rape others is generlaly considered in the psychiatric profession as 'unhealthy'. Bad. Evil. More accurately, sin. When you have the desire to kill youself, you are supposed to see and 'accept it', but <>not, for Christ's sake, to kill youself. If you desire to have carnal knowledge of a helpless teeny-bopper, you are supposed to accept your lust, and not lay a finger on even her big toe. If you hate your father, fine - but don't slug the bastard with a bat. Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself."
"The secret, I seemed to learn, was in not caring, in accepting limitations, conflicts and ambiguities of life with joy and satistafaction, in effortless drifting with the flow of the universe. So life was meaningless? Who cares. So my ambitions are trivial? Pursue them anyway. Life seems boring? Yawn."
"'The blind bastards [his voice was quiet and serene and remote] will panic and kill, panic and kill, trying to control the uncontrolable, trying to kill what can only live.'
'We will panic and kill.'
'And I'll,' he interrupted himself with a chuckle, 'I'll try to save the whole fucking world. - '
'Yes.'
'I'm Divine, you know,' he said.
'Yes,' I said, believing it.
'I've come to wake the world to evil, to goose mankind to good.'
'We'll hate you - '
'To slash the mash-poatoe minds until their sin is seen.'
'We'll be blind - '
'Try to make the blind see, the lame walk, the dead live again.' He laughed.
'And we'll try to make the seeing blind, the walking lame, the living dead.' I smiled.
'I'll be the insane Saviour of the wolrd, and you'll kill me.'
'Whatever you want will be done.' I eased out a slow motion bubbling of mirth.
'I'll be...' He was chuckling too, in slow motion. 'I'll be...the Saviour...of the world...and do nothing, and you...'ll kill...me.'
'And I'll - ' Goddam it, it was funny! How beautiful it was: '...I'll kill you.'"
"'God can do all things,' I went on. 'No purpose of His can ever be thwarted. Never.'
'Yes,' she replied.
'We must despise ourselves and lose ourselves if we are to be saved.'
'Yes.'
'God sees the tiniest sparrow fall.'
'Yes.'
'The tiniest die tumble upon the table.'
'Yes.'
'You will always know what option you have given to the Die.'
'Yes.'
'Terry, the reason you must have faith in the Die is simple.'
'Yes.'
'The Die is God.'"
"As the normal, healthy, neurotic reader knows, one of the chief delights of life is daydreaming."
"'Your free will has made a mess of things,' I told Linda after explaining at length my dice theory. 'Give the Die a try.'
'You sound like a TV commercial,' she said."
"Dear Dr. Rhinehart
I discovered my sixteen-year-old daughter on our living room couch with the postman this afternoon, and she referred me to you. What the hell is this all about?
Sincerely Yours,
John Rush"
"'Diceshit! I just want to know a you that's soft and predictable. How am I supposed to enjoy being with you if I feel you can go 'poof' any minute from some random fall of a die?'
I sighed and lowered myself back onto my elbows.
'Were I a healthy, normal neurotic human lover, my love might evaporate any moment in just as haphazard a fashion.'
'But then I would see it coming; I could run out on you first.' She smiled.
I sat up abruptly.
'Everything may evaporate at any instant. Everything!' I said with surprising vehemence. 'You, me, the most rocklike personality since Calvin Coolidge: death, destruction, depair may strike. To live your life assuming otherwise isinsanity.'"
"'I consult the Die at dawn every day about whether I should consult it about everything during the day, about only the big things or not consult it at all under any circumstances. Today, for example, it told me not to consult it about anything.'
'So even your dicelessness is filled with the Die?'
[...]
'Most things people do aren't natural the first time they do them. That's what learning is all about. That's what the dicelife is all about. [...] If we always limited ourselves to what was natural to us, we'd be midget dwarfs compared to our potential. We must always be incorporating new areas of human action which we can make natural.'"
"We hope that a student come to have two profound insights while staying at the motel. First, he suddenly realizes that perhaps he's at a 'normal' motel, that no other dicepeople are there. He laughs and laughs. Secondly, he realizes that all other humans are leading chance-dictated multiple lives even though they don't know it and are always trying to fight it. He laugs and laughs. Joyfully he wanders back out onto the highway rubbing his dice together, barely aware that he has left the illusion of a totally random environment."
"Of course, continuity is sometimes tenuous, content thin. Digressions proliferate like weapons in a peace-loving country. I may have to rewrite the thing seven or eight times. But words are written. To a writer this is fulfillment. Creativity or crap, it counts."
"Even if my dice-determined flow is exceptionally good I may brood that it nevertheless isn't what I should have written that particular day. But we must come to realize that every word is perfect, including those we scratch out."
"I've obviously got several thousand pages of life to report, just counting my life since D-Day, but the best I can do, my friends, is random bits and pieces."
"Not my will, Die, but Thy will be done."
Also by L. Rhinehart: Matari, Long Voyage Back, Adventures of Whim, The Search of the Dice Man, The Book of the Die
* The Book of the Die in The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
