Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
David Lynch's American Dreamscape
Music, Literature, Cinema
by Mike Miley
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones?
By interrogating this question, David Lynch's American Dreamscape broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch's work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination. As much as Lynch stands as a singular artistic voice, his work arises from and taps into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that illuminates not only his approach to creativity but also the way works interact with each other in an age of mass media. From children's literature to teen tragedy ballads, Nathanael West and Cormac McCarthy to folk music and mixtapes, David Lynch's American Dreamscape investigates the cultural frequencies Lynch's films tune into and positions Lynch's work as a conduit for American popular culture, a medium or channel through which the subconscious of American life finds its way into full view.
The book expands upon this approach by discussing how artists such as David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey graft Lynch's affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects. Reading their work as intertextual engagements with Lynch's films further illustrates the versatile interactions among creators and audiences to generate more works, readers, and readings.
About the Author:
Mike Miley teaches literature at Metairie Park Country Day School and film studies at Loyola University New Orleans, USA. He is the author of Truth and Consequences: Game Shows in Fiction and Film (2019) and the co-editor of Conversations with Steve Erickson (2021).
Press Reviews:
"In David Lynch's American Dreamscape, Mike Miley presents a fascinating new approach to Lynch's films, treating their intertextuality in a way that expands rather than restricts our understanding of them. Miley adroitly connects literary, filmic, and musicological perspectives in an analytical approach that will prove invaluable and accessible to scholars from many fields in their study of Lynch, one of our most idiosyncratic American filmmakers. Following Lynch himself, Miley's book gives us more 'room to dream' around the filmmaker's work." ―Katherine M. Reed, Associate Professor of Musicology, California State University, Fullerton, USA, and co-editor of Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds (2021)
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic
See the complete filmography of David Lynch on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
> On a related topic:
The Politics of Twin Peaks (2022)
Dir. Amanda DiPaolo and Jamie Gillies
Subject: One Film > Twin Peaks (TV Series)
Pervert in the Pulpit (2004)
Morality in the Works of David Lynch
by Jeff Johnson
Subject: Director > David Lynch
Frank Capra's Eastern Horizons (2014)
American Identity and the Cinema of International Relations
Subject: Director > Frank Capra
Un-American Psycho (2012)
Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible
by Chris Dumas
Subject: Director > Brian de Palma
The Oneiric in the Films of David Lynch (2026)
A Phenomenological Approach
Subject: Director > David Lynch
Networked David Lynch (2024)
Critical Perspectives on Cinematic Transmediality
Dir. Marcel Hartwig, Andreas Rauscher and Peter Niedermuller
Subject: Director > David Lynch
David Lynch and the American West (2023)
Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films
Dir. Rob E. King, Christine Self and Robert G. Weaver
Subject: Director > David Lynch
Back
