A Book of Dreams

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Well, the Dad's ideas and inventions became ever more, well, worrying, including his design for a machine to burst the clouds and make it rain ("But every time it rains, you're here in my head. I had trouble tracking a copy down, but after hearing that it was the inspiration for Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting (one of my favorite artists) I knew I had to.

Written more like a stream of consciousness than a play-by-play retelling, it weaves a beautiful but tragic story of a man trying to make sense of his childhood trauma. g. Jesus and Giordano Bruno – and a willingness to surrender one’s freedom to the most neurotic – e. In some ways this book reminds me of The Glass Castle in that much of it is in the voice and point of view of a young child relating the imaginative way they coped with a father who lived outside of the norm.Peter Reich is the son of Wilhelm Reich, one of the most brilliant and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Whilst the story is unusual and quite unique, the writing on a second go-around feels a little detached and removed. It seems to have made the rounds in influential artistic circles a few decades ago, but never really into the mainstream public. And it's very unusual, beautiful book, written by this man through the eyes of himself when he was a child, looking at his father, and the relationship between them.

Including Reich, who I remember pretty well because his whole thing was inventing a special magic box you could wank off and if you remember just one thing from your A-levels, it's going to be the magic wanking scientist (I got an 'E').Wilhelm Reich fue un incomprendido que terminó sus días encarcelado y lejos del hijo que amaba, quien lo recordaría por el resto de sus días en ese horizonte extraño que desdibujó la realidad y el sueño y convirtió a su infancia en un misterio indescriptible.

I wish the author had more info about himself and what he is up to now but the book is out of print and he has disappeared into anonymity. I felt compelled to read this when I became obsessed with the song “Cloudbusting” by the Staves, a cover of a song Kate Bush wrote about this book. And the long term psychological impacts that mental illness and delusions can have on those closest to the sufferer. From the late 40s through to the mid-50s Reich was under investigation by the American Food and Drug Administration for providing an unauthorised form of treatment – the accumulators. Remembering who you are and where you came from is crucial, especially during that transition to adulthood.Melancholic recollection of a dream and fantasy filled childhood that conflicts, jarringly, with the reality of his world and intruding memories as he comes to terms with his father's death.

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!The book is short, slim, and important, written by a man whose careers spanned journalism and child daycare according to the jacket.