Dreaming by the Book

by Elaine Scarry

Dreaming by the Book explores the almost miraculous processes by which poets and writers teach us the work of imaginative creation. Writers from Homer to Heaney instruct us in the art of mental composition, even as their poems progress. Just as painters understand paint, composers musical instruments, and sculptors stone or metal, verbal artists understand the only material in which their creations will get made--the back-lit tissue of the human brain. In her brilliant synthesis of literary criticism, philosophy, and cognitive psychology, Elaine Scarry explores the principal practices by which writers bring things to life for their readers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Writing, Philosophy, Theory, Poetry, Art

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know, I had my doubts about Scarry's latest project. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World set a near-unmatchable standard, and On Beauty and Being Just's radical turn into aesthetic politics is as much a total collapse as it also is an enlivening, serene book with much to contribute to the way we think about works of art. Dreaming by the Book is another radical project that delves into the linguistic imagination and its instructional relationship through works of fiction and poetry to us, its readers and resurrection artists. For years I was put off by the uninhibited joy and delight in topics and chapters ranging from flowers to a basic process of the imagination (Scarry tells us) called "radiant ignition." I was wrong to recoil. This is a delightful thing.

[Katrinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I could explain it better, and I'll have to piece together exactly why, but I grew increasingly impatient with this one. I'm probably being unfair, and Scarry would most likely call me out for misinterpretation of her project, but part of my dissatisfaction may have been due to what felt like the imposition of an inescapable and/or purposefully adopted system that goes into literary production.

[Linda Michel-Cassidy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by some of the ideas presented here--particularly about writing transparency. I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars only because at some points the writing seemed pointedly inaccessible when describing concepts that were not actually that hard to grasp.

[Maide Karzaoğlu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yazarın karmaşık anlatım şekli kesinlikle beklediğim ve umduğum gibi olmayan ama içeriğinin hakkını da yemek istemediğim bi kitap.

[Kent Dickerson · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a brand new writer, I was excited to find this book in the Army Library. The book promised to study and explain how authors bring imagination to life. I had hoped to find help in becoming a better descriptive writer. I did not find any such help here.
To illustrate her writing, I'll include these sentences that occur early in the first chapter which tell the purpose of the book. "Phrased another way, only by decoupling "vividness from "the imaginary" (where we unreflectingly and inaccurately place it in many everyday conversations about aesthetics) and attaching it to its proper moorings in perception, can we then even recognize, first that the imagined object is not ordinarily vivid, and second, that its not being vivid is tautologically bound up with its being imaginary. Now it is a remarkable fact that this ordinary enfeeblement of images has a striking exception in the verbal arts, where images somehow do acquire the vivacity of perceptual objects, and it is the purpose of this book to trace some of the ways this comes about." To say such writing is tedious would be an understatement. Elaine Starry my do a bit of tracing, but for me there is no help in understanding the subject here.
My first inclination was to return the book immediately. But I slugged through it, hoping it would have some usefulness. Unfortunately, that was not to be.
The review in Publisher Weekly's makes this observation, "In the long sections of the book devoted to the habits of a certain sparrow in Scarry's garden, or to charting every reference to vegetation in the works of Homer, Flaubert and Wordsworth, Scarry appears lost in her own lush imaginative world." I felt the same but would add that she does little to help explain or describe that imagination. IMO, Dreaming By the Book is little help to understand writing or imagination.

[Brendan Ho · Rating 5 out of 5]

We read some excerpts from "Dreaming by the Book" in poetry class, and when I saw it at a bookstore completely accident, I assumed it was fate. Elaine Scarry dives deep into how we form mental images in the mind while reading–what she calls "dreaming by the book." I don't really want to spoil what she has to say, because her assertions are just that revelatory and insane. I will say that, while she uses almost scientific language to describe these images in words, she never loses that wonder, that respect, for the true magic of those words. And also, the way she ends this book is crazy good.

[Ilya Zarembsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few books of literary criticism I've read that doesn't seem like bullshit.

Also, one of the few books of literary criticsm I've read.

Also, I've only read like 30 pages of it. But, those pages!

[William Cane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very creative insights into the graphic imagination of writers and readers, with a particularly revealing analysis of Flaubert.

[Isadora Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dreamy and innovative little book. Recommended for writers!

[Peter Russel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must read for someone getting an advanced degree in the Humanities, but otherwise not as compelling of a subject as I would have hoped.

[juozas Alminas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The theme of the book is interesting - how do we create mental pictures by reading words. The means to evoke moving pictures and transparency have been especially interesting to read about, and I think I took quite a bit out of it. But all too often the reading was really slow and the writing seemed to go way out into wilds with wordings and interpretations. I think it depicts very much a personal view towards certain texts and very personal and wild interpretations. Reading it often felt like a trip and at times I really wasn't sure if the author was being serious or not.

[Roy Kenagy]

Key resource in Comer, BRAIN MIND AND THE NARRATIVE IMAGINATION

[Kion You · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly a revelation - I wish I had read this book five years ago

[Norman Gautreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

For writers and readers alike: One of the best books I've ever read on the cooperative nature of the relationship between writer and reader in the generation of vibrant, electrifying images.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often meandering, but nonetheless a whimsical and thorough discussion of the mechanisms of writing to create mental imagery.

[Kate]

Recommended by Rachel Cohen 5 books editor

[Anda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, but got a tad repetitive. 3.5 stars.

[Bill Brydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When poets and novelists get us to imagine imagining, they almost never permit the exposure of the rules they are themselves capaciously using."