2.5
The Skin of Dreams
ByPublisher Description
In this delightful, cinema-inspired daydream of a novel, an identity-shifting protagonist uses the everyday inspirations of his life to catapult himself into the realm of imagination, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
The Skin of Dreams is a novel of waking dreams. Even as he lives his life, Jacques L’Aumône, its hero, daydreams a hundred other possible lives. A few lines on a page, a chance encounter, a remark overheard in passing, any of these are enough to kick things into gear and send him off outside of himself to become a boxer, a general, a bishop, or a lord. He lives alongside his life with diligence and steadfastness; and the passage from real to dream is so natural for him that he no longer knows precisely which him he is. Eventually he becomes an actor in Hollywood, and the basis of countless dreams for others. This Jacques L’Aumône, like the characters who surround him, has the same sort of haunting and fluid consistency as someone that we might dream of in our beds at night. And reverie, here, is born through the tale’s humor, which is as gentle as it is cruel, as well as by way of a writing technique that is itself drawn from one of Queneau’s great loves, the cinema.
The Skin of Dreams is a novel of waking dreams. Even as he lives his life, Jacques L’Aumône, its hero, daydreams a hundred other possible lives. A few lines on a page, a chance encounter, a remark overheard in passing, any of these are enough to kick things into gear and send him off outside of himself to become a boxer, a general, a bishop, or a lord. He lives alongside his life with diligence and steadfastness; and the passage from real to dream is so natural for him that he no longer knows precisely which him he is. Eventually he becomes an actor in Hollywood, and the basis of countless dreams for others. This Jacques L’Aumône, like the characters who surround him, has the same sort of haunting and fluid consistency as someone that we might dream of in our beds at night. And reverie, here, is born through the tale’s humor, which is as gentle as it is cruel, as well as by way of a writing technique that is itself drawn from one of Queneau’s great loves, the cinema.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Skin of Dreams Reviews
2.5
“Known to me and those around me as the “lice book” the Skin of Dreams is quite the ride. This is a story not easily followed, it jumps around without looking back to check that you are following. In this way there can be a sort of disconnect between the text and the reader. Yet, I didn’t feel disconnected from this book, instead I was brought close to it by the simplicity of the talk laced with absurd humor. Repeatedly I would read a paragraph imbued with fresh vocabulary before being faced with a section of dialogue so mundane yet strange in delivery and word choice that I couldn’t help but laugh. If nothing else this book gave me some good laughs and a now ever present awareness of lice that have seemed to invade my life.”“It took me for a trip, felt a bit confused most of the time, I enjoyed some parts more than others and wished the writer would have expanded these ideas. Also what’s up with the lice “jokes”? I do think the book got better and the idea of it is wonderful but I feel like sometimes meaning is lost from translation.”
About Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau (1903–1976) was born in the French town of Le Havre and educated at the Sorbonne. An early association with the Surrealists ended in 1929, and after completing a scholarly study of literary madmen of the nineteenth century for which he was unable to find a publisher, Queneau turned to fiction, writing his first novel. Influenced by James Joyce and Lewis Carroll, Queneau sought to reinvigorate French literature, grown feeble through formalism, with a strong dose of language as really spoken. Queneau’s books, which typically blur the boundaries between fiction, poetry, and the essay, include Witch Grass and We Always Treat Women Too Well, both available as NYRB Classics.
Chris Clarke is a literary translator and scholar. He currently teaches in the Translation Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. His translations from French and Spanish include books by Raymond Queneau, Pierre Mac Orlan, Éric Chevillard, and Julio Cortázar, among others. He was awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for fiction in 2019 for his translation of Marcel Schwob’s Imaginary Lives, a prize for which he was also a finalist in 2017 for his translation of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano’s In the Café of Lost Youth, published by NYRB Classics.
Paul Fournel is a writer, publisher, and diplomat. He wrote his master’s thesis on Raymond Queneau and has published a book-length study of the Oulipo, of which he is a member.
Chris Clarke is a literary translator and scholar. He currently teaches in the Translation Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. His translations from French and Spanish include books by Raymond Queneau, Pierre Mac Orlan, Éric Chevillard, and Julio Cortázar, among others. He was awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for fiction in 2019 for his translation of Marcel Schwob’s Imaginary Lives, a prize for which he was also a finalist in 2017 for his translation of Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano’s In the Café of Lost Youth, published by NYRB Classics.
Paul Fournel is a writer, publisher, and diplomat. He wrote his master’s thesis on Raymond Queneau and has published a book-length study of the Oulipo, of which he is a member.
Other books by Raymond Queneau
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