Paprika
Yasutaka Tsutsui
Dreams have a
literary pedigree running from Homer to
Freud, and have evolved in
that time from religious or philosophical allegory to paranoid
fantasies, sexual
psychodramas, and CGI-inspired
spectacles. Paprika is one of the better of the many SF-flavoured dream novels that have been written,
its rendering of the chaos that results when dream thought gets entangled with waking reality
more plausible than plot-driven Hollywood versions
of the same concept (Tsutsui's
book inspired the film Inception). Unfortunately things get rushed at the end, and
all the time spent spelunking
through the unconscious might
have been better spent
creating some more fully rounded characters. One can understand the
attraction for FX-minded filmmakers (there was
even a psychedelic Japanese anime adaptation), but
I think dream stories should
emphasize the human element
and be less concerned with
technology.
Previously
|
April
25: Off for a brief vacation.
Back in June!
April
22: added my review of Bill
Gaston's The
World
April
15: added my review of Michael
Moss's Salt
Sugar Fat
ABOUT
GoodReports.net (originally Alex Good's Book Page)
was originally launched as a personal home page containing some of my book reviews. The site in its current
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