'I like to remember things my own way . . . not necessarily the way they happened. That would be the perfect epigraph for this book...the result...cubist portrait of the artist, body and mind on separate tracks. This technique ensures that Room to Dream offers countless new stories, even for Lynch fanatics. Room to Dream pulls off a neat trick in drawing back a curtain and revealing relatively little...showing us to a room that provides refuge from the angry world outside, where he finds the safety that’s necessary to create. With the right attitude and approach...Lynch...suggests other artists may also find a room to dream.
What makes this book endearing is its chatty, calm...anti-Hollywood attitude…and matter-of-fact defiance of reality that won’t alarm your dog or save mankind. This is a living book by two authors who deserve to be read as partners. Part of the charm of Room to Dream is how the two parts of the book nod to one another ... I can believe that the casual and yarning text by Lynch himself was read into a tape recorder but I don’t think his expansive eloquence would have existed without his faith in Kristine McKenna.
You could read these passages and decide that David was a pain in the neck, a weird mix of pretension, calculation and insufferable.
What makes Room to Dream different from your average celebrity tell-all — aside from the idiosyncratic figure at its center — is the book’s form. It is composed as a diptych: one half biography, one half memoir ... The book doesn’t give us one focused view of Lynch, but a double vision, as though two similar but not quite exact portraits of the man have been projected onto one another ... the blending of biography and memoir into a kind of biographical duet turns the whole project on its head, makes it different, stranger, more alive ... Sometimes these tales move the plot of his life forward, and sometimes they feel random, tangential, maybe even unnecessary ... there is value, joy, and beauty in staying with Lynch and his cohorts for these 500-plus pages, no matter where they take you or how long they seem to stare into space making a decision.
The pacing is slow and discursive, as are Lynch’s films, but text doesn’t function as a film (like The Art Life) does, with its inclusion of visuals, sound, the molten quality of facial expressions. This is the primary reason Room To Dream is far more dull than I’d anticipated, or rather is only as stimulating as reading about Lynch ever is—which is actually still pretty stimulating ... In spite of its dryness, Room to Dream is valuable as a historical record, not only because it collects so much in a single manuscript but because McKenna’s shrewd and constant acknowledgement of the people who’ve surrounded and supported Lynch for decades chisels those names into the same record.
[T]he Lynch of Room to Dream lives a bit like a medieval peasant, in a realm of signs and portents, a cosmos whose ultimate design he cannot grasp but devoutly trusts. A good portion of the latter half of the book makes clear that this inexplicable universe includes the business of Hollywood, as he relates the often tricky deals required to get his films made ... Room to Dream runs on the ebullience of Lynch’s creative process: his gee-willikers enthusiasm, his quirks, his often cryptic yet effective direction of actors ('It needs a little more wind,' he once told MacLachlan, the star of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks), his openness to improvisation and luck, his do-it-yourself spirit ... But it lacks both the soul-searching of a great memoir and the interpretive perspective of a great biography, two pretty crucial elements for a 500-page memoir to lack ... The eternally alluring depth and mystery of Lynch’s work is missing from this narrative of his life. His movies and paintings are art, and can rely on his audience to provide an interpretation. His biography is another matter. What we need from Room to Dream is precisely what we don’t need from his films: for someone to tell us what it all means.
...fans looking for insight into Lynch's methods will certainly find it in the book's accumulation of memories and opinions, drawn from his family, romantic partners, and collaborators ... Lynch rarely acknowledges McKenna's reportage, which can make the doubled timeline repetitive. There's little tension between their perspectives, or collusion in their storytelling. But they certainly cover a lot of ground ... Gradually, they coalesce into a portrait of an artist who's spent his life getting vivid, elaborate visions, then reproducing them in film, TV, paintings, photography, music, woodwork, or even pottery, all without needing to question or analyze them ... The book still feels intimate and honest, as McKenna's interviewees unfailingly describe Lynch's charisma and warmth, and his methodical but instinctive dedication to craft. There are small revelations for fans scattered throughout, about character decisions Lynch made, and projects he turned down ... it's breezy, entertaining, and almost entirely surface-level. It may not give readers the dream, as Lynch puts it, but at least it brings the dream into sharper focus.
...the book’s waters run wide but not necessarily deep. Room to Dream provides contours and edges, brief splashes of insight and teasing tugs on the line. But the man at the centre remains a beautiful mystery ... Room to Dream, then, is at its most illuminating when it focuses on the nuts and bolts of the director’s work; charting his ascent from a gawky art student to 'a brand and an adjective' ... Lynch emerges from these pages as principled, flighty and resolutely incurious about his own inner workings. He’s constantly chasing the next big idea or the next regenerative love affair, reluctant to pause and unpick his decisions, at least for public consumption, away from the meditation mat. The world is a mystery and his films live in darkness. He’s prepared to tell us how they happened but he’s not about to tell us why.
...the book’s waters run wide but not necessarily deep. Room to Dream provides contours and edges, brief splashes of insight and teasing tugs on the line. But the man at the centre remains a beautiful mystery ... Room to Dream, then, is at its most illuminating when it focuses on the nuts and bolts of the director’s work; charting his ascent from a gawky art student to 'a brand and an adjective' ... Lynch emerges from these pages as principled, flighty and resolutely incurious about his own inner workings. He’s constantly chasing the next big idea or the next regenerative love affair, reluctant to pause and unpick his decisions, at least for public consumption, away from the meditation mat. The world is a mystery and his films live in darkness. He’s prepared to tell us how they happened but he’s not about to tell us why.
I expect Room to Dream to be a divisive document for David Lynch diehards. Depending on one's level of interest in all things Lynch, the book might feel like a charming curiosity or a pointless diversion, making it something of a mirror held to the audience ... As a biography, the book sorely lacks contextual background details and scrutiny of its subject, and as a memoir, it provides little in the way of real introspection and self-awareness. Lynch tells his story through moments, and his friends and family tell it through half-remembered impressions, resulting in a flawed and imbalanced record steeped in ambiguities ... Even with all it's fascinating moments, though, it's hard not to regard Room to Dream as a tremendous missed opportunity. The central problem is that the whole concept of an autobiography goes against all of Lynch's defining sensibilities. Lynch has been a vocal and aggressive advocate against explanation or analysis of his work from the start. His interest as an artist resides in feeling and the subliminal, and he believes the process of decoding that many of his fans eagerly engage in robs his films of their essential mystery.
It is Lynch’s own writing, lacking both wit and real insight, a little throwaway, that disappoints. Lamest of all is his reliance on cute anecdotes about celebrities that are meant to charm, but end up sounding banal — and occasionally creepy.
In sum, the book presents a quirky but ultimately lovable—and widely loved—man ... his persona is so endearing, so enamored of life and film, so—indeed—normal, that it’s confounding to think that behind this childlike chirpiness is the mind that gave us the ear and the depraved Frank Booth who severed it ... It is indeed captivating to read both McKenna and Lynch on the origin of his stories. Many like Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and 1990’s Wild at Heart (based on a Barry Gifford novel), do have a basic plot, but their artistic merit is in their accumulation of effects and moments ... Lynch’s prose has all the innocence of the deceptive first part of a Lynch movie ... His writing is sprayed with 'sort ofs' and 'kind ofs' and 'so cools.' The hard work required to get Eraserhead into Cannes 'almost killed me' ... There is, however, a problem with this kind of charm. It’s ultimately a performance, not in the sense that it’s inauthentic, but because it’s the voice of a raconteur; there’s something inevitably impersonal about it. Lynch doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a one-on-one with him, but instead like you’re one among several sitting on barstools around him ... McKenna ends up not being too big a help here. While she understands her subject well, she’s also too close to him ... If we don’t get enough of Lynch’s warts, at least we get to see him and the people around him playing with that clay.
This hybrid form combines memoir and biography ... Clearly this highlights the subjectivity of experience and the inadequacy of life writing, but it could also compromise a biographer’s freedom to speak frankly about her subject. Nevertheless, Room to Dream is a memorable portrait of one of cinema’s great auteurs ... Room to Dream feels a bit like a valedictory festschrift, but it provides a remarkable insight into Lynch’s intense commitment to the 'art life,' from his painting, photography and music to furniture design. As McKenna says: 'To a remarkable degree his life is an exercise in pure creativity.'
…a personification of unconventionality, multimedia visionary David Lynch has combined memoir with biography to forge a strikingly multidimensional portrait of the artist. Coauthor McKenna, a journalist who has known Lynch for decades, presents the facts along with forthright recollections gleaned from extensive interviews with Lynch’s family, ex-wives, friends, and colleagues … incandescently detailed and complexly enlightening chronicle of a fervent, uncompromising life devoted to 'pure creativity'
...insightful, well-researched, conventional biography in chapters drawing mostly on interviews. Although an awkward read, the book abounds in great stories and terrific movie trivia that will sate Lynch fans for years to come.
