A Surreal Good Time
Right now I'm about to finish reading The Bridge by Iain Banks. He's a Scottish author who burst onto the scene some years ago with The Wasp Factory, a book that was controversial for some reason. Anyways, The Bridge is about the inner reality of a man who was in a car accident on a real bridge and the surreal inner reality of his dreams/thoughts while in a coma. Much of the narrative is grounded in the "reality" of an actual bridge that stretches seemingly forever and whose occupants have never seen beyond the bridge (Kafka, anyone?). You know it's a dream straight out, yet you're fascinated by this strange reality that includes dreams within the dream, some of which are actually from the 1st person POV of a pirate on these insane quests, one of which is through the underworld. Very cool read.
Banks also writes science fiction, under the name Iain M. Banks, as if his middle initial changes everything.
Blogagaard Loves to Ponder
About Me
- David Oppegaard
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- I am the author of And the Hills Opened Up, The Suicide Collectors, and Wormwood, Nevada.
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3 comments:
Dreams in stories really upset me - as if all your reading was for nothing. I remember the first time I saw The Wizard Of Oz movie. I was so upset after watching it, realising Dorothy had been dreaming all the time, that I stamped on my jam sandwich.
I know what you mean. I once read "Dream of the Red Chamber", the ancient Chinese classic, and 3,000 pages later I learned it, too, was all just a dream.
The good thing about "The Bridge" is that he isn't trying to be cute about using dreams, or surprising. My jam sandwiches have so far remained safe.
It's a long way to the top
If ya wanna rock-n-roll!
-AC/DC
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