Dreaming: Hard Luck And Good Times In America
by Carolyn See
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carolyn SeeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-05-05
ISBN: 0520204824
Number of pages: 343
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of Dreaming: Hard Luck And Good Times In America
Book Review: Completely Irresistible
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't say that at the end of this book I wanted to turn back to the beginning and start all over again. I'm not that strong! I'd need to regroup before I could have a second go at this stunning, sometimes cheerful account of alcoholics, bad parents, drug addicts, lost souls and those who eventually find themselves. What I wanted, instead of starting again from the beginning, was for the book to go on without stop. I could easily have read another 340 pages, another thousand pages. I was stretched out on the mat, knocked silly---but all I wanted was more of the book.
The drinking! We've all seen it, or some of it. It has torn through my own family---my mother at least---and I watch too many friends these days use alcohol to smother or drub their feelings. At the same time, there's a lively side to the act. "Drinking," See writes, "meant a chance to turn over the rocks of daily life and see the crawly stuff underneath." And I always want to see that crawly stuff.
And who could resist Carolyn See's language? Of her parents she writes, "The people who'd heard about Freud by then were not people Kate and George hung out with. Kate and George were starlings getting sucked into the jet engine of life."
She writes, "The second most boring thing in the world after people bending your ear about dreams is people bending your ear about their acid trips. Nevertheless!" And she goes on to describe her first acid trip, and of course it isn't boring at all, because Carolyn See does not write a boring paragraph.
She also has a family history that is, frankly, ideal for a memoir. We don't want to read about sturdy and prosperous families, we want to read about emotional and social disasters. (Statistically, from the memoirs that sell, I think this is the inescapable conclusion---and it's certainly true for me.) It's hard to compete with the twenty-page chapter about the author's sister, titled "Finding Rose," with its breathless streak of drink, drugs, crime and general debauchery. Underlain, in that strange way of families, with love.
Wonderful, too, how See lets go of normal chronology. The book reads more like the mind works, or how a conversation flows, weaving around, doubling back to topics already covered, exploring them in a different light.
All in all, completely irresistible.
Summary of Dreaming: Hard Luck And Good Times In America
In this bittersweet and beautifully written memoir, Carolyn See embarks on nothing less than a reevaluation of the American Dream. Although it features a clan in which dysfunction was something of a family tradition, Dreaming is no victim's story. With a wry humor and not a trace of self-pity, See writes of fights and breakups and hard times, but also of celebration and optimism in the face of adversity. The story of See's family speaks for the countless people who reached for the shining American vision, found it eluded their grasp, and then tried to make what they had glitter as best they could.United States Books
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