Room to Dream

April 9, 2018
The avant-garde director of The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet and cocreator of Twin Peaks remembers a life as surreal as his movies in this exuberant biography/memoir. In chapters that alternate between Lynch’s first-person narrative and biographical accounts written by McKenna (Talk to Her), the book presents an illuminating look into Lynch’s life, drawing heavily on McKenna’s interviews with actors, ex-wives, and friends that paint an admiring portrait of a charismatic man given to intuitive improvisations, like sticking the script supervisor into a blue-wigged speaking role in Mulholland Drive. Interspersed chapters contain Lynch’s own memories that explore his creative process from its roots in strange visual imagery to his long-shot quests for financing (“ ‘It’s about a man who’s three and a half feet tall, with a red pompadour, who runs on sixty-cycle alternating-current electricity’” went one unsuccessful pitch). Lynch is a great raconteur, and at the book’s heart are his anecdotes, featuring colorful grotesques like the hunch-backed con-man who borrowed his phone to make fraudulent fund-raising calls, and dark intrusions of sexuality into wholesome landscapes (as a boy in idyllic Boise, Idaho, he recalls, he once saw a naked, bleeding woman silently wandering the night-time streets). The result is an entertainingly offbeat show-biz saga and a fine evocation of Lynch’s unique voice and sensibility. Photos.

April 15, 2018
It takes a tag-team effort to tell this ambitious life of the enigmatic filmmaker and artist.Lynch (Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, 2006) has always been an outsider when it comes to his films, art, and photography, so it comes as no surprise that this dual biography/autobiography is "strange," as the authors describe it. Journalist and friend McKenna (The Ferus Gallery: A Place to Begin, 2009, etc.) pens an insightful, well-researched, conventional biography in chapters drawing mostly on interviews. Lynch's chapters follow hers, responding like "a person having a conversation with his own biography." Inevitably, there is repetition, and it's not uncommon for McKenna to tell a story one way and Lynch to tell it differently. Lynch comes across as an amiable, chatty fellow who wears his brilliance lightly. He writes lovingly of his "dreamy," itinerant, middle-class childhood where the roots for his films were first planted. He enthusiastically describes how he felt after receiving an American Film Institute grant that would allow him to make his first feature film, Eraserhead. McKenna writes that "John Waters encouraged his fans" to see it, and Stanley Kubrick "loved" it. It also got Mel Brooks' attention, and he asked Lynch to direct The Elephant Man for his production company. Lynch describes making the film as a "baptism of fire." It was "a beautiful story and a beautiful experience and it's timeless." Next came Dune, which "brought him to his knees," McKenna writes--but it also "helped clarify precisely who he is as a filmmaker." It was a "good thing," Lynch responds, "to have a humiliating major failure." In the end, Lynch sums it all up: "It's impossible to really tell the story of somebody's life, and the most we can hope to convey here is a very abstract 'Rosebud.' "Although an awkward read, the book abounds in great stories and terrific movie trivia that will sate Lynch fans for years to come.

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Starred review from July 30, 2018
Filmmaker Lynch and coauthor McKenna both contribute their voices to this wonderfully entertaining audiobook about Lynch’s life and his creative influences. The chapters alternate between first-person accounts from Lynch and more traditional biographical accounts written and read by McKenna. McKenna’s reading style is clear and unembellished. She reads her portion of the book, which paints Lynch as a visionary artist whose creative genius is guided by a mix of intuition and impulsiveness, in a detached journalistic manner. Lynch hems and haws, often riffing on topics discussed in McKenna’s chapters. His sections of the book are unpredictable yet strangely alluring as he moves breathlessly from one topic to the next. An anecdote about a meeting with comedian George Burns, for example, suddenly transforms into a discussion of the revival of Lynch’s hit show Twin Peaks. In another section, he muses on the talents of actor Richard Farnsworth and then veers off into the adverse effects of genetically modified corn. While Lynch’s sections no doubt steal the show, his entertaining style works in part because McKenna’s sections give the book direction. A Random House hardcover.

Starred review from June 1, 2018
As 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. After each of her expository chapters, Lynch revisits the same time period, sharing his divergent memories and thoughts, thus creating an in-the-round view of his bucolic Idaho childhood, early and continued devotion to painting, and the mysterious occurrence that led him to movies. Multiple voices tell the mind-whirling stories behind Lynch's radically enigmatic, disquieting, covertly spiritual films, including crucial support from Mel Brooks for The Elephant Man (1980) and Dino De Laurentiis for Dune (1984) and Blue Velvet (1986), as well as the genesis of the different incarnations of Twin Peaks. Readers gain diverse perspectives on Lynch's sunny charisma, dark sensibility, receptivity to serendipity, painstaking craftsmanship, numerous relationships with women, deep rapport with actors, musical and photographic works, and long commitment to Transcendental Meditation. McKenna observes, the overarching theme in everything he's done is the issue of the dualities we live with and our efforts to reconcile them. An incandescently detailed and complexly enlightening chronicle of a fervent, uncompromising life devoted to pure creativity. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 1, 2018

Alternating between chapters of straightforward autobiography and memoiristic musings by filmmaker (Eraserhead) Lynch, this fascinating book provides endless insights into his active mind and into the creative process itself. We learn much more about Lynch's life here than if we'd been reading his biography or memoirs. He often fills in, or provides different takes on, the biographical sections, and vice versa, which adds to the fullness of the account. Many readers might be surprised to learn that Lynch has devoted at least as much creative time to works outside of film and television--painting, photography, music. It is also heartening to learn that Lynch is basically a nice guy, someone who treats everyone with respect and is tremendously grateful. These seem to be uncommon traits in most artists, especially those with similar accomplishments. VERDICT An excellent and unusual portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist. Essential for Lynch's fans but just as valuable to anyone interested in filmmaking, contemporary art, or the creative process in general.[For more on Lynch's eclectic background, see the recent documentary The Art Life (LJ Fast Scans, 11/15/17)--Ed.] [See Prepub Alert, 8/28/17.]--Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018

This unique peek into the imagination of one-of-a-kind filmmaker Lynch works as both memoir and biography. Lynch's personal reflections are offset by telescoped biographical sections from critic/journalist McKenna, who's been interviewing him since 1977 and also spoke with Lynch's family, friends, and colleagues. Lynch's last book, Catching the Big Fish, has sold 100,000 copies.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.