I Must Be Dreaming

by Roz Chast

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Anytime Roz Chast offers her dreams, musings or cartoons, it’s a wild and wholesome ride that makes a profound impact. It’s Chast’s world (and now her dream world) and we are all a part of it.

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Best Graphic Book of the Year

#1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s new graphic narrative, exploring the surreal nighttime world inside her mind—and untangling one of our most enduring human mysteries: dreams.

Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans—humanity has never ceased trying to decipher one of the strangest unexplained phenomena we all experience: dreaming. Now, in her new book, Roz Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always hilarious, accompanied by an illustrated tour through “Dream-Theory Land” guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. Illuminating, surprising, funny, and often profound, I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast’s newest subject of fascination—and promises to make it yours, too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620403228
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	14,611
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Roz Chast's cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker in 1978, where she has since published more than one thousand. She is the author of the graphic memoirs Going Into Town (Winner of the New York City Book Award) and the #1 New York Times bestseller (100+ weeks) Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize winner and finalist for the National Book Award; What I Hate: From A to Z; and her cartoon collections The Party, After You Left and Theories of Everything, among others. She was awarded the Harvey Hall of Fame Award. She lives in Connecticut and New York.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/10/2023

This delightful graphic account from New Yorker regular and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Chast (Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?) is both a reflection on the nature of dreaming and the creative process, and a catalog of her own vivid, loopy dreams. Dreaming, for Chast, is the ultimate accessible entertainment: “I am creating them. So why, as they unfold, am I always so surprised?!?!” She categorizes and draws episodes including “Cartoon Idea Dreams” (not a huge surprise given her daytime occupation), “Body Horror Dreams” (relatable), “Everyday Dreams” (skewed quotidian scenarios), and fragments, like “something about a leprechaun with a unibrow.” Chast also leads readers on a trip through dream theories across the ages, from ancient Greece and Egypt to the Kabbalah, Freud and Jung’s interpretations, and modern evolutionary neuroscience. The cartoonist is not particularly spiritual or mystical in her approach, and doesn’t consider dreams as prophecies: “Somebody always knows somebody whose aunt dreamed that somebody’s plane was going to crash, so they didn’t take the plane, and GUESS WHAT CRASHED,” Chast observes, unimpressed. Yet she’s also saddened by “rabidly scientific” analyses. Her loose-lined drawings, full of people with duck feet and unnerved facial expressions, bring to life the illogical leaps of her own dreams (“Nan Goldin filming a commercial for an ice cream cake”) and others’ (like her son’s dream about a painting of a leg with three long creepy hairs). Chast perfectly captures the weird joy of dreaming—an act that is both universal and deeply personal. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"[Chast] has proved herself to be one of the funniest and most acute observers of modern urban living's insanities and anxieties. Now she has turned her gaze away from the streets and characters of her beloved New York City and toward her own sleeping mind . . . But Chast is Chast, and the sleeping world she depicts is only somewhat more absurd – and equally as funny and profound – as waking life." —David Marchese, New York Times Magazine

"The cartoon chronicler of urban neurosis sketches scenes from her nocturnal imagination (food plays an outsize part) and wryly chews on the many theories of what the mind does when our eyes close. It’s a little odds-and-endsy, but a pleasurable rummage nonetheless." —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

"This Halloween, why not give Linus and Lucy a rest for Wallace and Roz? Chast’s dreams are a window cracked open onto her creative process; a grab bag of treats more salty than sweet." —Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times Book Review

"We give ourselves blissfully over to Chast as our tour guide through the ‘Dream District of our brains.’ Drawing in her familiar vibratory style, she details a bizarre series of oneiric adventures, including one in which Glenn Close’s ‘chest and face were covered with thousands of baby spiders,’ and another in which she has to care for a murderous ‘baby from the future.’" —Washington Post, Best Graphic Novels of 2023

"Inspired." —The New York Times, "33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall"

"There’s nothing more boring than someone else’s dreams—unless that someone is cartoonist Roz Chast. Among the conjurings of her sleeping mind: a leprechaun with a unibrow, helium hairspray, and an encounter with a spider-covered Glenn Close. Nighttime dullards, the pressure is on." —People Magazine

"Delightful . . . I Must Be Dreaming demonstrates that Chast has figured out a way to catch and release her dreams — transforming them in the process into yet another charmingly relatable book." —Heller McAlpin, NPR.org

"My mom and I used to joke that Roz Chast must have installed surveillance cameras in our house – how else could her New Yorker cartoons hit so close to home? Well, the tables have turned, and now we get a behind-the-scenes tour of Chast’s unconscious in her illustrated compendium of dreams . . . The book is a bizarre field trip into someone else’s head – and great fun for anyone curious about what our minds are up to after we close our eyes." —NPR, "Books We Love"

"“Per­haps the chief delight of Chast’s mem­oir is that while many expe­ri­ence this kind of exot­ic dream life, few of us would be able to ren­der it so vivid­ly on the page . . . Chast . . . proves her­self to be a genius in these art­ful­ly weird and won­der­ful pages." —Jewish Book Council

"I Must Be Dreaming beautifully illustrates the essentially playful nature of dreaming. Rather than analyzing or interpreting the dreams, Chast lets the vibrant images do the talking. Her cartoons create a delightful visual world in which others can share her amazement at the wonders of the human imagination." —Psychology Today

"Roz Chast gives us a deeply personal (and, naturally, hilarious) view of the meaning of her own dreams and their influence on her work, in cartoon form, of course. Includes a fascinatingly nerdy section on the history of dreaming and dream interpretation, across many cultures." —Anne Peck, The Southern Bookseller Review

“Amid the comic relief, there is profound vulnerability and anxiety playing out in weird and wild scenarios ... I Must Be Dreaming is your ticket to the dreamland of a genius. Go willingly.” —New York Journal of Books

"Pleasant, sometimes unsettling and occasionally poignant. It's a work of causal erudition, funny in a gentle way . . . Chast is a treasure." —Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"Delightful . . . Chast perfectly captures the weird joy of dreaming—an act that is both universal and deeply personal." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Wide-ranging and thoroughly charming . . . Truly fascinating, frequently hilarious, and not to be missed." —Library Journal, starred review

"Chast is a genius at mining her life for bits she can exaggerate into comedic gold, expertly portraying relatable emotions to her reader . . . I Must Be Dreaming takes Chast’s legion of fans on yet another uproarious, touch­ing and zany ride." —BookPage, starred review

"Illustrations and visual storytelling weave together a broad range of content on dreams that offers insight while never feeling burdensome or overly analytical. Easy on the eyes and witty, this book will have readers reaching for their own dream journals. A sharp compendium of dreamy visions that could only have come from the iconic cartoonist’s sleeping mind." —Kirkus Reviews

"[A] laugh-out-loud funny tour through [Chast’s] dream journal, as well as a brief introduction to dream theory . . . The book delightfully captures the randomness of dream topics and dialogues. The handwriting font and full-color illustrations are vibrant and lend a congenial intimacy." —Shelf Awareness

"Sure to appeal to nonfiction comics readers and dream-theory enthusiasts alike." —Booklist

"I Must Be Dreaming is Roz Chast at her chastiest, serving up cartoons direct from the source of her apparently vintage chintz-upholstered unconscious. They reduced me repeatedly to spasms of laugh-crying. Indeed, I imagine Freud and Jung are not only spinning in their graves right now, they are peeing their pants." —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and The Secret to Superhuman Strength

"You will laugh constantly while reading Roz Chast’s dreamy new book. You might also tear up. It’s profoundly reassuring to be reminded that the deep emotional mysteries of life are there waiting whenever we shut our eyes, and even more reassuring to remember that they can be so hilarious." —Liana Finck, author of Let There Be Light and Passing Human

"Chast treks with extraordinary candor and vulnerability through the maze of her own psyche, mapping out our own in the process." —Maria Popova, The Marginalian

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2023

New Yorker cartoonist Chast (Going into Town) presents a wide-ranging and thoroughly charming exploration of her lifelong fascination with deciphering the dream world inside her mind at night. A survey of what Chast terms "Dream-Theory Land" reveals what various scholars, religious texts, and civilizations since the beginning of recorded history have had to say about why humans dream and how those dreams should be interpreted. Rather than avowing allegiance to any existing idea or attempting to cook up a conclusion of her own, though, Chast embraces the mystery of human consciousness, using vividly illustrated recreations of her own dreams and nightmares to ponder the differences between her conscious and subconscious selves and to discern how dreams influence her creative process. Chast alternates sequences of panel-to-panel storytelling with unexpected blocks of hand-scrawled text or dynamically rendered illustrations that bleed between pages to create a palpable sense of her enthusiasm for the subject. VERDICT Truly fascinating, frequently hilarious, and not to be missed.

Library Journal

2023-05-01
The renowned cartoonist taps into Freud, Jung, and Kabbalah to discuss what happens when the head hits the pillow.

Chast, famed New Yorker cartoonist and winner of the inaugural Kirkus Prize for Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? makes it clear that while your own dreams may be inherently interesting, listening to other’ dreams is markedly not. Thankfully, the author’s thumbnail depictions of dreams that span a cross section of her bedside dream journal bring just enough humor and wit for readers to be charmed instantly. “This book is dedicated to the Dream District of our brains,” writes the author, “that weird and uncolonized area where anything can happen, from the sublime to the mundane to the ridiculous to the off-the-charts bats.” Familiar classics—“alone at a party,” “teeth falling out”—sit alongside the bizarre and hilarious—e.g., “too many birds not enough cages.” Even actor Wallace Shawn, son of former New Yorker editor William Shawn, makes an appearance: “He and I were walking down Main Street in a town in Connecticut and I needed to point something out to him: ‘Look, It’s a Broccoli Patch!’ ” From “Recurring Dreams” to “Nightmares” to “Dream Fragments or Ones That Got Away,” Chast explores beyond the first blush of the strange and personal in dreams. She writes, “here’s what’s interesting: dreams come out of my brain…as I sleep, I am creating them…so why, as they unfold, am I always so surprised?!??” The author reaches for answers beyond Freud and Jung to a wider range of insights from Kabbalah, Aristotle, neuroscientists, molecular biologists, and more. Illustrations and visual storytelling weave together a broad range of content on dreams that offers insight while never feeling burdensome or overly analytical. Easy on the eyes and witty, this book will have readers reaching for their own dream journals.

A sharp compendium of dreamy visions that could only have come from the iconic cartoonist’s sleeping mind.

Kirkus Reviews