Author: Tasha Robinson / Source: NPR.org
Early in his memoir Room to Dream, filmmaker and artist David Lynch seems to question the entire purpose of memoirs. Talking to Jack Nance, star of Lynch’s deliriously baffling debut film Eraserhead, Lynch says there’s no way to convey the essence of life moments.
“You can tell all the stories you want,” he says, “but you still haven’t gotten what the experience was like across. It’s like telling somebody a dream. It doesn’t give them the dream.”So why write a memoir at all? Throughout his career, Lynch has faced constant questions about his celebrated but often divisive, occasionally impenetrable projects, from the groundbreaking TV show Twin Peaks to movies like Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Dr. He’s always been reluctant to unpack his nightmarish symbolism, or let inquisitive fans past the surface level of his life.
Still, 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 and his co-author, journalist Kristine McKenna, alternate chapters in the book, with McKenna first presenting a traditional, heavily sourced report on an era in Lynch’s life, and Lynch discussing the same years from a more personal point of view. They describe the results as “basically a person having a conversation with his own biography.”
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. McKenna’s approach is inconsistent: The earliest chapters attempt to analyze the formative influences of growing up in Boise, Idaho in the 1950s, while the middle chapters gush over Lynch’s work. By the end, she’s adopted a level, factual approach. But her access and research are impressive, with well-chosen quotes from figures as diverse as Mel Brooks, Sting, and Isabella Rossellini.Lynch, meanwhile, largely sticks to…
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