A Book of Dreams

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A Book of Dreams inspiró a Kate Bush a escribir una de las mejores canciones de los 80, por ser un libro bellísimo, narrado desde la perspectiva limpia e inocente de un niño que recuerda la vida de su padre. The book is short, slim, and important, written by a man whose careers spanned journalism and child daycare according to the jacket.

g. Jesus and Giordano Bruno – and a willingness to surrender one’s freedom to the most neurotic – e. The feeling of what it must be like to be a child caught up in events beyond one's comprehension is very powerfully conveyed. It reminded me of Richard Brautigan and similar authors from the 1970s: chronology and point of view lurch all over the place, reality and fantasy merge and are hard to disentangle. I struggle at times to understand how cultures of beliefs that seem irrational to me are so persistent, but this story about a boy needing to keep living in the world of meaning his father created for him makes it so sympathetic; it’s about believing in his family and the relationship as much as any given philosophical or political ideal.

Both the song and the book convey the author's sense of despair at, as he sees it, letting his father down and not being able to protect him. This famous book, the inspiration behind Kate Bush's 1985 hit song 'Cloudbusting', is the extraordinary account of life as friend, confidant and child of the brilliant but persecuted Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Before I say more about the book itself I feel it is important to include some background on Wilhelm Reich, as the book can be a bit confusing if you aren't already aware of some of the details of his fascinating life. Remembering who you are and where you came from is crucial, especially during that transition to adulthood. Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality.

I thank Peter Reich for being extremely vulnerable about his experiences through this memoir, and reminding us what makes fathers special. But this book isn't that, it's understandably too close to what happened and I guess I'm after something straighter and more detached. When I found out it inspired the song and also the music video for CLOUDBUSTING by Kate Bush I had to read this book.I think I could've just continued to enjoy the magic of the baroque-pop Kate Bush song it inspired without having read the book itself. Although the exact science of the Accumulator was disputed (and is now considered pseudoscience), it became a hit among many, who claimed that it gave them a boost in energy as well as sexual vigor. Anyway, I'm still keen to learn more about Reich, because his ideas were interesting, and while clearly a lot of what he ended up believing was nonsense, there's apparently something in some of what he did, and there was something weird going on with the FDA smashing his orgone accumulators and him dying in prison and all. Reich did prior to writing this, but it reminds me of the creative writing that some of my creative writing students do when they put out something that is so magnificent and do not realize how beautiful it really is because they do not normally create with words. I then learned that another musical idol of mine, Kate Bush, has a song (and music video) about this book as well: "Cloudbusting".

I was not entirely sure what to expect when I picked this up and paid the most money I have ever paid for any used book - but I did know that there was something special about it because of the sheer amount of other works of art that used this text as an inspiration. Having been a Kate Bush fan for decades, I was drawn into reading this from knowing she used the book as inspiration for the song lyrics Cloudbusting (bloody love that song!I originally learned about this book when looking up the lyrics for the Patti Smith song "Birdland", from her debut album "Horses". His sister does not seem to have written anything about their father or his work or how it affected her.