Jonathan Lethem at The Paris Review:
Dick’s use of the name New Israel in Martian Time-Slip is pretty stock. Dick traveled beyond North America only once, to a conference in Metz, France, where he delivered a legendary speech titled “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others”—baffling his French fans by opening an early window into the mystical, visionary search that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his life. Then he went home to Orange County, California. His impression of Israel may essentially be derived from Leon Uris’s Exodus, or from some other heroic fifties representation; he principally employs the Israelis in Martian Time-Slip as an anonymous and implacable counterpoint to the abject ineptitude of the U.S. colonists—to highlight the haplessness of their attempts to farm and irrigate the harsh Martian desertscape. As in the excerpt above, the Israelis present a mirror for shame. This matches, of course, a typical midcentury U.S. liberal’s reaction formation, after the discovery of the German and Polish death camps: the Jew as shame trigger, with the survivors idealized for their resilience and strength.
More here.
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