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THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE

FIRST EDITIONS

1984		Ziesing, hb, 0-x, Jun 1984, 223pp, $15.95 (Dell Harris) 0-9612970-0-X {Locus: $19.50}
1986		Paladin, tp, 08563-7, Aug 1986, 256pp, L2.95 (Neil Breedon) 0-586-08563-7

HISTORY

       Encouraging news for PKD came from Harcourt, Brace Publishers in December 1959. Even though they’d rejected everything the Agency had sent them they sent Dick $500 as half payment for a new novel he was to write. Harcourt, Brace also wanted Dick to go to New York to work with their editor there, but Dick’s agoraphobia precluded him from making the trip. Instead he worked through the mail with Harcourt. Brace editor, Eleanor Dimoff. And this is where the important correspondence between the two concerning PKD’s straight novels began.

    Dimoff constructively criticized five of Dick’s novels and offered suggestions about how PKD should build his next novel.

    This next novel was THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE.

    The genesis of THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE was an argument PKD had with wife Anne about whether Neanderthal Man was a vegetarian or a meat eater. Anne rounded up the facts and presented them to Phil who became furious and vowed to write a novel refuting the facts.

    This he did and, surprisingly enough despite the bad science, wrote one of his better novels – also one of his bitterest.

    THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE is a story of small town hatred and revenge. Due to a misunderstanding between Walt Dombrosio, a craftsman, and Leo Runcible, a real estate agent, a nasty feud is begun. Dombrosio makes a fool of Runcible by manufacturing and then planting fake fossil evidence showing that Neanderthal man was, indeed, a vegetarian. Runcible falls for it hook, line and sinker and is eventually humiliated. The setting is in the area of Phil and Anne’s home town of Pt. Reyes Station, California.

    Evidently PKD had not taken Eleanor Dimoff’s criticism to heart. For some reason he just couldn’t write what other people wanted him to. When TEETH reached Harcourt, Brace in June it didn’t take Dimoff long to reject it with comments:

    At some point, the relationships between Phil's couples become so crystallized into a nasty, inhuman quarreling (or such a dead end) that somehow the characters become interesting only in a clinical way.

    Dick, later in life, saw TEETH as "a fusion of Nathaniel West and F. Scott Fitzgerald" and he likened Leo Runcible to Gatsby. The character of Leo Runcible was actually based on a man Phil and Anne knew in Point Reyes Station: a civic-minded man who, at great cost to himself, organized the clean-up of the water supply in Point Reyes Station.

    THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE was PKD’s second favorite of his straight novels and the first published after his death. Mark Ziesing Publishers producing a trade paperback edition and a limited hardback edition in June 1984. The novel is not nearly as grim as it sounds and rates ô ô ô ô

OTHER EDITIONS             For Cover Pix Click Here:

• Ziesing, tp, 0-9612970-5-0, 1984, 223pp, $9.95 (Dell Harris) {Locus: Feb ’86}

FOREIGN EDITIONS

		Linkenheim, ?, Edition Phantasia 1985, 288pp, DM 78 (?) {tr. into German by Joachim Korber as DER MANN, DESSEN ZAHNE ALLE EXAKT GLEICH WAREN} ISBN: 3-924959-00-5
		Collection Bibliotheque de L'Insolite, Terrain-vague/Losfeld, ?, ?, 1989, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French by Jean-Paul Gratias as L'HOMME DONT LES DENTS ETAIENT TOUTES EXACTEMENT SEMBLABLES} ISBN: 2-85-208-107-5
		Fanucci, pb, Avantpop 5, 1999, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Italian as L'UOMO DAI DENTI TUTTI UGUALI}
		Arcanes, Ed. Joelle Losfeld, ?, ?, Apr 2000, ?, ? (?) {tr. into French by Jean-Paul Gratias as L'HOMME DONT TOUTES LES DENTS ETAIENT EXACTEMENT SEMBLABLES} ISBN: 2-84412-029-6
		Rebis - Poznan, pb, ?, 2000, ?, ? (?) {tr. into Polish by Tomasz Hornowski as CZLOWIEK O JEDNAKOWYCH ZEBACH}

NOTES

TTHC 359: Eleanor Dimoff to SMLA, July 14 1960. 

COLLECTOR'S NOTES