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heybender's review
5.0
i fucking loved this book! i usually enjoy reading about a biographical subject's youth and development but quickly get bored and give up with biographies after the subject "makes it", but the format of this book-a biographical chapter written by mckenna and then a response chapter written by lynch-kept my attention throughout.
lynch is a great storyteller and his voice comes thru well in the sections he wrote. i was inspired by his passion for his work, his art and his meditation practice. there are also lots of great musings/bits of wisdom that made me feel optimistic about life. such as:
"everything is possible and sometimes something just appears out of nowhere and makes everything right. that can happen in life. but if you count on that happening, you might be let down."
and
"maharishi had two goals: the enlightenment of individuals, and peace on earth. he put everything needed in place for both to happen. it's now just a question of time. if we humans-or even a few of us-work together on this, we can speed through this transition and the goals will be a living reality. enlightenment for the people and real peace on earth. real peace is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all negativity. everyone wins."
PEACE
lynch is a great storyteller and his voice comes thru well in the sections he wrote. i was inspired by his passion for his work, his art and his meditation practice. there are also lots of great musings/bits of wisdom that made me feel optimistic about life. such as:
"everything is possible and sometimes something just appears out of nowhere and makes everything right. that can happen in life. but if you count on that happening, you might be let down."
and
"maharishi had two goals: the enlightenment of individuals, and peace on earth. he put everything needed in place for both to happen. it's now just a question of time. if we humans-or even a few of us-work together on this, we can speed through this transition and the goals will be a living reality. enlightenment for the people and real peace on earth. real peace is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all negativity. everyone wins."
PEACE
booksonstereo_o's review
2.0
Room to Dream is a amalgamation of a memoir and a biography with neither quite succeeding resulting in a disjointed mess.
sarahgr's review
dark
funny
inspiring
medium-paced
3.0
I adore David Lynch. I watched The Art Life prior to reading this, and was a little bummed to find a few repeated stories but was overall compelled by Lynch's writing matching his voice exactly. This is where, however, I found a slight issue with the biography/memoir hybrid created by Lynch and McKenna.
I do not know what expectations for a David Lynch nonfiction Thing I had (or should've had), but I quickly realized that this was a closely guarded and ultimately unrevealing look into Lynch's personal life. I particularly enjoyed his chapters because I would finally feel as though I was getting somewhere with Lynch as a character to learn about, but they are all, unfortunately (and obviously), from his perspective. I know this is, of course, part of what makes a memoir a memoir, but in conversation with the McKenna chapters I felt his memoir-ish chapters were unsubstantial.
McKenna's very typical biographical approach to her chapters were filled with multi-stated phrases, and most characters interviewed all had such exact and repetitive things to say about Lynch, you would think a more creative presentation of these interviews would be the way to go. As a reader, it felt so incredibly unfulfilling reading the same things over and over again about the production of his films. As each chapter came to a close, I would only feel like a small book on the production of each film/show would've been more informative. Everything was cut for space in this impressively padded book.
I felt there was going to be an issue from introduction on the flow and chemistry between the two halves of the book, and I feel as though I was right after finishing it. Like I said, I love Lynch, and I will continue to love his art, but this was a very shallow biography/memoir in my opinion. He doesn't owe us total access to his life, and I think he just wants his work to speak for itself in telling his story, but if you're a fan I suggest just watching The Art Life and skipping the book.
I do not know what expectations for a David Lynch nonfiction Thing I had (or should've had), but I quickly realized that this was a closely guarded and ultimately unrevealing look into Lynch's personal life. I particularly enjoyed his chapters because I would finally feel as though I was getting somewhere with Lynch as a character to learn about, but they are all, unfortunately (and obviously), from his perspective. I know this is, of course, part of what makes a memoir a memoir, but in conversation with the McKenna chapters I felt his memoir-ish chapters were unsubstantial.
McKenna's very typical biographical approach to her chapters were filled with multi-stated phrases, and most characters interviewed all had such exact and repetitive things to say about Lynch, you would think a more creative presentation of these interviews would be the way to go. As a reader, it felt so incredibly unfulfilling reading the same things over and over again about the production of his films. As each chapter came to a close, I would only feel like a small book on the production of each film/show would've been more informative. Everything was cut for space in this impressively padded book.
I felt there was going to be an issue from introduction on the flow and chemistry between the two halves of the book, and I feel as though I was right after finishing it. Like I said, I love Lynch, and I will continue to love his art, but this was a very shallow biography/memoir in my opinion. He doesn't owe us total access to his life, and I think he just wants his work to speak for itself in telling his story, but if you're a fan I suggest just watching The Art Life and skipping the book.
kfrench1008's review
5.0
A great read. I thought the interspersed chapters were a great way to tell Lynch's story.
susannes_pagesofcrime's review against another edition
3.0
While this book is very interesting when it comes to David Lynch's work and creative processes it is also highly indulgent. It is basically a rave about how everybody loves him, how women are drawn to him and how he's such a good guy!! It could be true but we don't need to be told it over and over again throughout over 500 pages.
yoshimaster's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
An absolute delight, the mix of autobiography and biography works wonders, as we see both davids subjective and intriguing memories and anecdotes, contrasted by the play by play of his career, down to the date.
when_jess_reads's review
4.0
I really enjoyed it. There was some parts that I felt were really dry when they were explaining films and it just felt like we were just explaining like film after film or, like, project after project and there were lots of new characters with new names and I couldn't really follow by putting a visual in my head about what they looked like so I kind of like zoned out and was thinking ‘let’s just power through this part and get to some more interesting aspects’, but as a person I mean he's a pretty incredible human. It seems like he never really had a fear of presenting or sharing his creations and his creative mind and in the book they really attribute that to having such a stable upbringing and really feeling nurtured for his creativity, but something that he has really opened my eyes about is the sense that you don't need to have lots of money to be successful in what you do and how the real achievement comes from just being able to create what you want to create and I really believe that for myself and it's kind of been like, that's always gonna be there that's always available to anyone and so if you live a life where you can just continue to create the ideas as they come into your head and kind of allow that flow to happen quite a beautiful life, you know, that aspect of it is but they do sort of say you know the consequences of being in such a world and giving so much of yourself to art is this, you know, sort of inability in a way to create long lasting intimate relationships and how he sort of says about the neglect of his children or his children mainly. They wrote a lot about how he kind of attracts people, and attracts women, and he is such a kind hearted person with who's really charismatic, and he doesn't really struggle with connecting with people. So, I think it was a really enlightening book, but it's huge. I mean it's like 500 pages. But there's really beautiful photos all through it, black and white of him on set or him as a child. And the way that they also just weaved spirituality in there that was a really big theme of the book and how much meditation and Maharshi had an effect on David and yeah I just think it's a really brilliant biography and style was so interesting I've never read a book before where they've written half of it from like interviews with all of these people who were part of his life as one aspect and then he would read essentially that part and then write his own section reflecting on what he remembered of those situations or people or what other people might have, you know, been describing about him that then he could, sort of defend himself for lack of a better word -that style was super interesting. I really liked it.