That energy suits his work in a lot of ways, though not universally, and can be monotonous sometimes.
Also I just felt I should weigh in because of my username.
Perhaps there could be something similar in San Rafel.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Frisson/comments/1hbexo/text_philli...
I think he also suffers from being a funny writer, funny writers from PG Wodhouse to Terry Pratchett are often underrated and for me that’s where Dick’s later work really falls down.
Post his breakdown his novels take a much darker edge (i found Valis in particular unbearably bleak), the humour is largely gone and more fundamentally the layered realities now have a single source of truth which in my opinion weakens them considerably compared to the open ended questioning of the mid period.
not a linear improvement perhaps but there’s growth and change in his output over time
For example, in the same 4-year time period as masterpieces like Martian Time-Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, we got forgettable (and in some cases quite terrible) books like The Ganymede Takeover, The Game-Players of Titan, The Penultimate Truth, The Simulacra, and of course the universally maligned The Crack in Space.
The sad truth is that Dick was fueling his writing habit with drugs (particularly amphetamines) during this time period. He wrote six novels in one 12-month period during 1963-1964. It's a marvel that even the clunkers are fairly readable things, though they're often throwbacks to his earlier pre-1960s work. Another sad truth is that Dick's output was also drive by the need for money (by 1964 he had three ex-wives).
The odd one out from this period is Galactic Pot-Healer, which Dick claimed to have no memory of having written (too many amphetamines), and which he practically disowned. But it's one of his best, a colourful Vonnegutian mix of tragedy and comedy.