From the back cover of the 1979 Magnum edition

It is California in the 1950's and Jack Seville, collector of extraordinary scientific facts, fringe theories and rocks, goes to live with his dominating sister and her hard-working husband Charley, a master of verbal abuse. Jack chromicles their life in a sprawling farmhouse in Marin county with the detachment of a scientist. What emerges is a pciture of california, home of eccentrics and madmen, in the making.

Philip K. Dick is a Hugo award winning novelsit best known for such classics as THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, MARTIAN TIME-SLIP and DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? His most recent novel, A SCANNER DARKLY, has been greeted with enthusiasm by both readers of mainstream fiction and science fiction fans alike. CONFESSION OF A CRAP ARTIST also bridges the gap between science fiction and general fiction. Marked by his wonderful sense of the absurd, it is surreally funny, yet always credible and magnificently readable.

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From the back cover of the 1989 Paladin edition

Jack Isidore was tyre regroover by trade, but his true vocation lay in collecting items of amazing infornation (did you know that that the Saragasso Sea actually exists? that the Japanese are not really human beings?) and observing the behaviour of those around him from a detached, "Scientific" viewpoint.

His sister's husband had described Jack as a crap artist, but when he found himself homeleaa, Fay ley him move into their luxury ranch house in MArin County, California. There Jack was able to play with the children-and bring his analytical turn of mind to bear on Fay's strange marriage to foul-mouthed factory owner Charley Hume.

"A funny, horribly accurate portrait of life in California in the 1950's" -Rolling Stone

" A stunning Novel, one which will please anyone who has enjoyed Dick's sf novels. Like those novels it is at times surreal and at times funny; it is also something of atragedy-Ted White, Amazing

"The fact that what Dick is entertaining us about is reality and madness, time and death, sin and salvatiob -this has escaped most critics." -Ursula K, Le Guin, The New Republic.