Room to Dream

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.

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.