Falling from the Ladder of Dreams
Title: Lush Life: A Novel
Author: Richard Price
List price: $26.00
Amazon price: $17.16
"A Kaleidoscopic Perspective on a Murder, and Dreams Lost and Found.“ This recent newspaper headline, psychedelically effusive, caught my eye. As did the subheadline above the article’s continuation on a second page: "Kaleidoscopic Perspective on a Dreamer’s Murder.“ These dream-related headings announce a review of Lush Life, the latest novel by Richard Price (one of the writers for the critically acclaimed and now ended HBO series, The Wire) written by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times (04 Mar 08).
These headlines certainly open the doors to the world of dreams, tantalizingly connecting this inner world with the bleak outer world of murder. While I’ve not yet read the book, the review indicates that dreams play a not-insignificant role in Mr. Price’s novel.
In her positive reflections upon the novel, Ms Kakutani expounds: "Lush Life is a novel that give us a wide, 3-D Imax portrait of a small corner of New York City (the Lower East Side of a few years ago, at that hinge point in time, when young hipsters were beginning to push out the immigrants and the working poor), a novel that captures Manhattan’s magnetic appeal to dreamers and drifters, and its ability to crush the weak and unlucky and turn their dreams into disappointment and rage.“ The same location that attracts those who dream (daydreamers, no doubt, as well as those with more specific goals and aspirations, or, perhaps, even noble ideals) is the same site where the dreams are tested against harsh reality and, it seems, not only don’t survive, but turn into nightmarish stuff. This certainly sounds not much like the treacly world of dreams as advertised by, say, the land of Disney.
Kakutani describes a key interaction between two characters, two dreamers, that sets the trajectory of the story. Eric Cash, "a restaurant manager and wannabe writer“ is with bartender Ike, when Ike is killed on the street. "Eric seems to have had an irrational grudge against Ike since the moment they met. With his casual confidence and dreams of artistic success, the young bartender makes the 35-year-old Eric overly conscious of how his own life has stalled, how he is still working at a restaurant after so many years with nothing to show for it all but an unfinished screenplay. Ike reminds Eric of who he used to be, and he also reminds him of how far he’s fallen from the ladder of his dreams.“ Uh-oh, envy, the stuff of drama.
The inner world of dreams must interfact with the outer world. The interface can be more or less successful, as dreams are fulfilled, or dashed into pieces against the cement of waking reality. A Dreamful approach ongoingly checks inner dreams against outer reality. When the match is poor, then the dreamer can reassess, revising her strategy or even her dreams. Dreams ongoingly unfulfilled tend to result in the dark shadows of anger, resentment, envy and depression. These less-than-pleasant emotions can be used to revamp and revitalize dreams and re-double the effort to make them real. Or they can manifest themselves in nightmarish behavior. All too often, when unexamined, unfulfilled dreams can be murder.