These Dreams of You

A thread to discuss and link information about Steve Erickson's just-released novel, These Dreams of You.

From the Europa Challenge, Josh Reviews These Dreams of You.

recent promo from Black Clock 15.

I just downloaded it (though I can't seem to get LT to add it to my library) on my nook. I'll be back when I've read it.

Oh good a potential Erickson convert!

I can't believe you started a new group and failed to notify me of its existence. I am miffed, hurt, and otherwise peeved. Undoubtedly I will recover, but I suspect it will take many years of therapy. Furthermore, what's this join to post thing. I wanted to watch and post.

Excellent! Another potential Erickson convert! I don't recollect alerting anybody of this group's existence. People, undoubtedly drawn by the mysterious magnetism of Steve Erickson's magnificent and for far too long cult-like, relatively unknown oeuvre, just started showing up, like you. Just the other day, in fact, if you check out the "Writers on Steve Erickson" thread, you'll see an impassioned plea from an Europa Editions representative that arrived here out of the blue, challenging us to put aside our preconceptions about this long misunderstood writer and approach his work with the rigor and imagination it deserves. Thank the Black Clock he found us. Thank the Black Clock you found us too.

I'd probably recommend Tours of the Black Clock as an excellent starting point.

Hmmm ... I started reading These Dreams of You last night. It's on Kindle so there's the instant gratification factor. I am sure that Zan the narrator will have some comment to make about the instant gratification factor at some point in this book. He is not a happy man and he has reason.

By the way Tours of the Black Clock while available somewhere on Kindle is not available to US customers. I've tried several different methods for trying to fake Amazon to sell me the British version of Kindle books not available here. Nothing doing.

Of the books I've read, it's probably the most "accessible" otherwise.

I'm impressed, Jesse, because I found myself getting lost in that one the first time through. But "lost", I mean, in all the best possible meanings of the word, like being lost in surreal art or the most wonderful dream or some bookstore labyrinth, if there is such a thing.

I'm really itching to get reading These Dreams of You. Should arrive soon.

The author friend (errr, acquaintance) that recommended Erickson to me also suggested this author recently.

I just bought it yesterday and hope to read it soon! I'm so intrigued by all the conversations.

almost 300 pages in, caught up in the story, only now beginning to recognize author that's been described in this group

Thea, I'm curious to know what descriptors of Erickson here in the group you're recognizing deep into your read. And what maybe have we missed completely about him?

Here's a Bookworm interview from just a month ago, Steve Erickson discussing on KCRW, These Dreams of You.

12> Thanks, Jesse. Touchstoning Vanessa Veselka and Zazen for future reference. Do tell about your author friend/acquaintance, and how you discovered Steve Erickson, if you like.

I was friends/acquaintances with Craig Clevenger (or his brother, more, but we bumped into each other occasionally) and once asked him to recommend me an author. Erickson was the recommendation.

So, Erickson's list of favorite authors (as per his FB page)...

Jorge Luis Borges

William Faulkner

Emily Bronte

Henry Miller

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Baudelaire

Franz Kafka

James M. Cain

Theodore Sturgeon

Jim Thompson

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Kafka

Philip K. Dick

Pablo Neruda

Paul Bowles

Thomas Pynchon

Carson McCullers

Jean Toomer

Ack, wasn't the thread I thought I was posting in.

Well, since I'm mis-posting, I may as well continue.

Erickson has also liked Kit Rachlis.

How cool! Being that I'm not on FB, it never occurred to me to check his page. Post away wherever. Who cares.

I see Philip K. Dick, Pynchon, Borges, and Neruda all over the place in his fiction. Never suspected Emily Bronte! I've read one of Jim Thompson's, The Transgressors: unforgettable!

OK, I downloaded this thing, but it better be good, or I'm going to start telling recycled stories about goat enemas. Maybe a Norman Mailer story or two as well. With allusions to the Mahabharata.

>22 A_musing: Hmmm ... I wondered when you would show up. This list is pretty much what I would have expected. Emily Bronte is the outlier in a way. Carson McCullers is makes sense in terms of These Dreams of You. More later. Breakfast has arrived.

>15 absurdeist: Eh, don't mind me. I'll finish tonight and be back later.

or I'm going to start telling recycled stories about goat enemas.

It's terrible.

Now deliver.

22> Glory be to the Black Clock! Yet another potential convert. I'd much prefer those goat enemas you mention than a certain dubious handling of goats!

Mailer, eh? Steve Erickson was part of a panel that included ... Gore Vidal!? ... who paid tribute to the curmudgeon upon his passing: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc071211norman_mailer_tribut

Five Brief Thoughts on Steve Erickson's These Dreams of You. Not reading the reviews of TDOY just yet, compiling them for later.

I recently had to give a goat a hand job, but I promise not to talk about it on this forum. I will leave all goat stories to A_musing.

I'm hoping to avoid goat stories here. Perhaps, Jesse, you can search "enema" or "hand job" in LT and see if you can find them.

So far I'm sort of "meh" on the book, but I take it from Rique's five thoughts that there are some surprises coming. I've only just begun.

Did the goat at least have the courtesy to thank you, Urania?

A picture of Erickson reading from These Dreams of You at Tosca in San Francisco.

I like how so many of his author shots capture the mood and ambiance of his work. The one above especially.

No kindle for me. Still waiting the old school way for the book to arrive in the mail.

You're right. Check out his picture on Wikipedia. He looks so surreal and ghostly.

Interesting to note: James Franco has acquired the feature rights to Zeroville.

This is a big book (idea wise). I am still marshaling my thoughts about it.

Me, too. I have some thoughts, but I've been waiting for some others to read it and weigh in. Shall we wait for 'freeque? Anyone else?

My book finally arrived yesterday! Woo hoo!! Thea, you're welcome to wait or not wait, whatever works for you. I've read just enough to see right off the bat this is a very different style of book for Erickson. At least it's beginning is very different than previous beginnings. It feels and reads very contemporary so far -- "homies," "gangsta," et cetera -- which is atypical of his novels, at least the ones preceeding Zeroville. (Zeroville, btw, should be arriving at your doorstep anyday now, U., shipped out on Monday.)

I've not yet encountered that mystical aura or ambiance I so love about his writing and that characterizes so much of his earlier work (don't know if I will or necessarily will be disappointed if I don't), but I'm really really early in the book right now, 40 pages, so it's probably way too early to comment yea or nay much about anything. Though I will say Erickson's ideas (God, I love them!) are what have so captured my imagination and spurned me on to read his complete work from start to finish. I'm not surprised at all to hear you both mention how big he is on ideas.

Well, not the nocturnal side of reality, but I am a major fan of Carson McCullers, who is on Erickson's list. Her novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter would be on a must-read list if I believed in lists, which I don't.

What exactly did the poster of post #28 mean by "sort of meh"? What book is he reading? There's Steve Erickson and there's Steven Erickson. We're discussing the former and not the latter, Sam. Meh. Meh You! Now that I'm deeper into the book, I'm tempted to go find my three editions of Mehby Dick and give the classic trio a collected sum of 1.5 stars. I just may do it in spiteful retaliation to your callous meh-eval of this so far remarkable book.

I wonder if any new readers to Erickson were uncomfortable with the tsunami references early on? Gotta admit, I was made a little uncomfortable by it, but then again, it was a precocious twelve year old's perspective being reported, and tsunamis and encroaching seas are nothing new in Erickson's fiction anyway. Even the title of his '99 novel, The Sea Came in at Midnight, shows his preoccupation with inundations. In Our Ecstatic Days, a mysterious lake appears out of nowhere overnight from unknown sources and makes Sunset Blvd. lake shore property. First floor apartment dwellers find themselves knee deep in water that can't be pumped out. Canoes rather than cars become the primary mode of transportation around town. I'd be very curious to find out if Erickson, whom I've previously suspected of some precognitive abilities, had already written the tsunami stuff prior to Japan's disaster, or if he edited it in after the fact for greater dramatic impact, melding the real into his fiction.

I'm not sure why the reference to tsunami made you uncomfortable. This is a book about (among other things) fear. As for some precognitive abilities? Given California's seismological location a tsunami is a logical possibility as is the assassination of the current president. Since he was elected (and even during the primaries), this possibility has worried me. In 2004 and 2010 tsunami hit Indonesia. The 2004 tsunami killed 300,000 people.

As Ur notes, given the last two tsunamis, the references certainly didn't feel out of place or out of the realm of possibility. Foreboding? Sure. I think that in structure and themes Erickson's book reminded me a bit of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Just a bit. They share multiple POVs and leap around in time like it was a game and probe our interconnectedness, but that book--with it's ironic detachment, that's so popular these days--left me cold. Erickson's book certainly didn't do that. There were reading moments of transcendence, pain and sentimentality and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about that. Also, Erickson is working on a much larger canvass, I think. Our interconnectedness, yes, but also our reason for being in the universe as we ride the great wave of time and history, little things like that. I've just begun reading Gods without Men by Hari Kunzru and he seems to be writing in the same mold, both in structure and theme, though not style. Must be in the water these days.

Fear? Yeah, lot's of it. And puzzlement born of guilelessness?

"Parenthood is another word for fear management." An interesting take, no?

Edited to clarify my thoughts

I was just mildly worried, being that I've probably become a bit of a biased proponent of all things Steve Erickson of late, that the references could be construed in the least as insensitive and at worst exploitative. Like both of you, I don't think they are. I obviously needn't have been concerned they would be.

On the precog: maybe not the right word in the context of the tsunamis, earthquakes, potential assassination of Obama in These Dreams of You; but keeping in mind the experience of his earlier novels (and I'll grant maybe I'm reading too much in to his fiction) I just sense he's attuned to something most of us aren't. I mentioned in my brief "review" of Days Between Stations, for instance, that I thought it was a "gnostic novel," though could I articulate exactly what the hell I mean in claiming that w/out coming off sounding like some Twilight Zone-channeling kook? I don't know. Maybe not. Regardless, Erickson is very intuitive (much more so than most novelists, I think, who naturally as novelists tend to rate high in that trait already), and maybe that's the right or better word than precog. When Zan confesses he considered himself "a bystander" in the adoption process of Sheba ... it's the accumulation of those little, sometimes too honest, too true, painfully relatable details, that start adding up to a mind that is as psychologically astute and aware of realities I think most writers except The Greats, and certainly most people in general, purposely ignore or miss completely.

I've got a notebook of quotes I keep as I read, and that parenthood one on fear I had written down and underlined. I've nearly pulled the trigger on Jennifer Egan a couple times. I don't like being left cold by a novel; Erickson's novels keep me warm.

I've had company all weekend, so not much time to get much further in the book, though I love the idea of the black girl in Zan's novel being "a transmitter" (like Sheba), a concept that occurs in one variation or another in all of his novels, and could probably be a paper or thread all its own.

I am here, but bookless. I've just put holds on the library books. I don't know how long it will take. - also a Carson McCullers fan. Noted that right away

So maybe we need to have a quarterly reading of a book by one of Erickson's favorite writers. We could start with The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter :-) Let's not do tomes though. I have tombs of tomes at home. Any minute now, I expect those tomes will collapse entombing me within.

Spartan mothers told their sons to come back with their shields or on them.
What would be the book mother's equivalent?

You'd have to appear on the jacket.

Check out U. thinking outside the clock!

McCullers yes or maybe Wuthering Heights at some point. Never read it. In a promo piece from '93 for Arc d'X, Erickson said "...Wuthering Heights is of the most subversive novels ever written, upended the Western world’s frantic efforts to contain people’s passion...."

No tomes. This should be our motto.

McCullers or Wuthering Heights or anyone else/book. It's been years since I've read Wuthering Heights, but I think he was probably on to something.

Wuthering Heights - not my favorite. A sick little novel. Belongs over at Chapel of the Abyss imo, but I'll go along with it if that's the consensus. For These Dreams of You, I would say The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is far more apt.

That's fine by me. I love McCullers.

ooh I'd be down for a McCullers re-read.

Carson works for me. Never read her either. These Dreams of You I notice, is getting very high ratings from those who've rated it here in LT so far ...

I love McCullers. I think I have already read everything she ever published. I love this quote from a review: "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has remarkable power, sweep and certainty . . . Her art suggests a Van Gogh painting peopled with Faulkner figures." - The New York Times Book Review

I didn't remember Bobby Kennedy's trip to South Africa. More here.

>50 Quixada: jodavid,

Nice to meet another McCullers completist. McCullers is one of the few authors of whose work, I have read all.

New Yorker review this week in Briefly Noted section:

Set against the 2008 election of Barack Obama and the concurrent unravelling of the economy, this ruminative novel takes in the slowly disintegrating lives of a bohemian California family. An unemployed professor and former novelist finds himself ineffectually resisting bankruptcy and foreclosure; his wife becomes obsessed with finding their adopted Ethiopian daughter's natural mother, who may be alive and in trouble. As the family travels from Los Angeles to London, Addis Ababa, and Berlin, Erickson deftly weaves a larger tale that reaches back to the nineteen-sixties, and an earlier, equally transformative Presidential candidacy. The characters' bumbling attempts to save themselves and others make them both charming and infuriating, while Erickson's skillful use of metafictional techniques, coincidences, and resonances expands the story into an absorbing meditation on narrative itself.

Hi, Freeque, et al., I want to thank you for all the chatter which brought Erickson up on my horizon--I was able to get the book from the library five minutes before it went on strike (the library), finished it, liked so-so, but I'm curious about some of his more "experimental" stuff, if that's the word.

#53

Yeah, I really hope none of it is autobiographical... not in the incidents at least.

Hi, Lola. Glad to see another potential convert in the mix! Though doesn't sound like Dreams fully swayed you. I hope you do give some of his earlier work a try, though, say Rubicon Beach or The Sea Came in at Midnight, two of my favorites. Jesse's been pushing Tours of the Black Clock, the novel that over the years has probably remained his most critically acclaimed, and arguably the one deemed most definitive of his early innovative style.

I think Lola would probably enjoy RB or ArcD'X more.

No, it was fine, a very engrossing and speedy read, only I didn't expect such straightforward storytelling (with flashbacks jazzing up the structure a bit, but still quite... I don't know, mainstream?) Plus, I must admit I'm not a huge fan of family tales. I was trembling for the kids all the time. Couldn't stand it when he broke the boy's hand. And at one point it looked like they'd lost the mother... horror.

#56

I'll check them out.

I've been surprised how mainstream the book is too, which is totally unlike his previous work. It's hyper-realism compared to the smudged, ambiguous & shifting realities of his older stuff. Though I've not read Zeroville, the novel that preceded this one, so I'm not sure if Dreams is really his first departure into this type of all too true terror.

Well, there was structural shifting at least, and the coincidences weren't very realistic (the chains connecting the fictional and real Zan with Jasmine, Molly, Sheba for instance)--actually, that's probably what I'm wondering about the most--how do you interpret the fact that Zan adopts Jasmine's grandaughter?

And, is race (or "race problems in America", to put it journalistically) at the heart of this book? To me at least (and I'm more of an outsider here than in most other regards), it seemed Zan somehow didn't finish thinking about race. He begins, when he asks himself whether he can write a black character, then that incident when he delivered pizza to the black boys, then being helped twice by a black girl (real and fictional), but, I don't feel like I have a hang on it.

It's also funny that he asks himself whether he can write a black character but not (apparently) whether he can be a parent to a black child.