Items related to A World Of My Own: A Dream Diary
Drawing on his private world of dreams, the author of The Power and the Glory provides readers with an inner glimpse at the fantasy life that he considered integral to his creative expression. 10,000 first printing. National ad/promo.
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From Kirkus Reviews:
Though not in a league with those of Coleridge or Joyce, Greene's dreams compose an alternate autobiography of his private self in matter-of-factly unreal vignettes. Culled from the thick journals of his dreams that Greene (The Last Word, 1991, etc.) obsessively kept in his vigorous old age, and posthumously published in accordance with his expressed wish, this slim volume catalogs his adventures and escapades in what he called ``My Own World,'' as opposed the shared reality of ``The Common World.'' In these dreams, his encounters with the famous- -Khrushchev, Edward Heath, Queen Elizabeth--often seem dull and ordinary; his travels possess only recycled verisimilitude compared to the Haiti, Vietnam, and Cuba we see in his novels; and his literary reveries betray an innocent craving for approval from the likes of Cocteau, D.H. Lawrence, and Sartre. The most curious and intriguing dreams magnify Greene's fantastic side and combine it with an uncharacteristically carefree humor. Those in which he is a criminal or a spy (in one, assigned to assassinate Goebbels with poisoned second-hand cigarette smoke) seem to parody his own semi-parodic thrillers. Some of the more surreal literary vignettes--a trip on a South American riverboat with Henry James; a guerrilla campaign with Evelyn Waugh against W.H. Auden--are hilarious pulp belles lettres. Larger issues of religion and imagination, however, are less amplified here than in his waking corpus and are typically reduced to altercations with sloppy priests or comments about the neurotic drudgery of producing books. The few brief examples of dream-inspiration and theophany are unsatisfactorily developed and give no real clue to his creative process or religious life. A uniquely candid self-portrait, but Greene's inner world only adumbrates his real-world exploits and the world he consciously created in his fiction. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From Library Journal:
For 25 years novelist Greene recorded his dreams. His interior dream work played a substantial role in his writing, helping him to overcome writing blocks and even inspiring a few of his short stories. The dreams in this slim, posthumous volume were carefully chosen by Graham during the last months of his life. The world they represent is Greene's alone, because, as he says in the introduction, there are no witnesses. There are, of course, some impressive personalities, equally impressive locales, and scenes of despair and danger, delight and happiness. The reader should be prepared to meet, fleetingly, such notables as Sartre, Henry James, Solzhenitsyn, King Leopold, and Pope John Paul II. The locale may be the Vatican garden, a house party, a river trip, or a room with Goebbels sitting in a gilt armchair. The dreams are told simply, without adornment, yet they are brimming with effort and energy; this is a creative firmament not entirely at rest. For all those who dream.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVintage Canada
- Publication date1996
- ISBN 10 0394280164
- ISBN 13 9780394280165
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages144
- Rating
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