How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He had been able to procure, miraculously, an almost mint copy of Volume One, Number One of Tip Top Comics. Dating from the 'thirties, it was a choice piece of Americana; one of the first funny books, a prize collectors searched for constantly. (2.48)
One nice thing about time is that it takes cheap things, like a comic book, and makes them into collector's items. Maybe this is Philip K. Dick, science fiction author, telling us that his work will one day be considered valuable. But maybe it's also a comment on how anything labeled as "Americana" can be sold here.
Quote #2
"But that's the task of art," Lotze said. "To advance the spirituality of man, over the sensual. Your abstract art represented a period of spiritual decadence, of spiritual chaos, due to the disintegration of society, the old plutocracy. The Jewish and capitalist millionaires, the international set that supported the decadent art. Those times are over; art has to-go on—it can't stay still." (3.96)
Lotze's feelings here are pretty standard Nazi thought about art: blah blah, modernism bad, Jews bad. (The Nazis banned a lot of art. Weirdly, they put on an art show with all that banned art. It was, of course, very popular.) So here's Lotze explaining to us how art has to fit into his politics to be any good.
Quote #3
"It's in fiction form," she said. "Naturally, it's got a lot of fictional parts; I mean, it's got to be entertaining or people wouldn't read it. It has a human-interest theme; there's these two young people, the boy is in the American Army. The girl—well, anyhow, President Tugwell is really smart. He understands what the Japs are going to do." Anxiously, she said, "It's all right to talk about this; the Japs have let it be circulated in the Pacific. I read that a lot of them are reading it. It's popular in the Home Islands. It's stirred up a lot of talk." (5.62)
We'd love to read more about Rita, though her main "role" here is as information source. First, she notes that the book isn't just about the alternate history, but needs a human-interest theme (that is, a love story) to get people to read it. (Is that how Dick does it?) Second, she notes that the Japanese didn't ban the Grasshopper book, like the Nazis did, showing that these different governments have different approaches.