ROOM TO DREAM by David Lynch & Kristine McKenna (Canongate Books, 2018)
This is book for those who love David Lynch and his unique art life. If this part memoir-part biography is to be believed, this includes approximately 99% of the population.
In all the interviews with friends, family, ex-wives and actors practically no-one has a bad word to say about him and the level of critical analysis is about as deep as an article in Hello magazine. I’m a huge admirer of Lynch’s work but even I wearied the constant fawning tone adopted by journalist Kristine McKenna.
The book’s structure provides that a chapter of biographical details by McKenna is followed by one by Lynch who corrects any errors and adds his own memories. The introduction states: “What you’re reading here is basically a person having a conversation with his own biography”.
In principle this seems like a good plan. What we know of Lynch is that he plays his cards very close to his chest. He gives relatively few interviews and never explains his strange visions. The most you’ll get out of him is that his ideas come from dreams, chance encounters or overheard snippets of conversation. Continue reading
“When you have no-one, no-one can hurt you”. The bleak lyrics by Will Oldham from ‘You Will Miss Me When I Burn’ by Palace Brothers are hardly life affirming. Olivia Laing takes a more positive line from Dennis Wilson’s ‘Thoughts of You’ in which the Beach Boy sings how “Loneliness is a very special place”.
I have no idea how this little gem of a book got to be stocked at the shop of Bologna’s Museum of Modern Art but I’m grateful for some employee’s initiative and vision.
I suspect most will, like me, come to this illuminating book through the publicity surrounding Marina Abramović’s recent works of performance art like The Artist Is Present at MoMa New York (March 14 – May 31, 2010) and ‘512 Days’ at Serpentine Gallery, London in 2014 or through the numerous fascinating video interviews and talks to be found on You Tube.
As with his previous book – The Story Of Film (the tie-in with the brilliant Channel 4 series) , Mark Cousins acts as an articulate and able guide in the same way that E.H. Gombrich did for 
