Catching the Big Fish

February 26, 2007
Lynch blends biography, filmography, spiritual quotes and his philosophical perspective on the life-changing capabilities of transcendental meditation, all within two and a half hours. Having practiced meditation for three decades, director Lynch discusses how it has influenced his life and helped him to concentrate his energy. Listeners may catch glimpses of creativity and consciousness, but Lynch's rants lack cohesion and substance. Within the audiobook's short chapters, Lynch barely broaches a topic before moving onto the next, leaving listeners to question his emphasis to go "deep." The most interesting aspects arise out of his anecdotes and comments about his films, like Eraserhead
and Blue Velvet
. His dry rattling voice hints at the passion behind his statements, but more often comes across as insistent and almost whiny. He reminds listeners that authors do not always make the best voices for their books. However, on the sound production end, the lightly blowing wind for the quotes from the Upanishads and Sutras adds mystical air to their reading. It's unfortunate that neither his words nor his voice live up to that standard. Simultaneous release with the Penguin/Tarcher hardcover

December 15, 2006
The creator of such outr films as Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Eraserhead as well as the cult television series Twin Peaks, Lynch has earned a reputation as an auteur of the weirdness lurking beneath the facade of everyday "normal" life. He is also a devotee of transcendental meditation and the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to whom the book is dedicated. Perhaps the term book is a bit overblown; instead, this is an amalgam of random musings on meditation and filmmaking in no seemingly rational order. It includes aphorisms such as "get your sleep and a little bit of food, and work as much as you can" and "in order to create, you've got to have energy." There are sections in which Lynch discusses various aspects of his films, career, and life and the filmmaking process at more substantial length, but these also tend to be somewhat fragmentary. It is difficult, then, to fathom a readership for this book, even for die-hard Lynch fans, but perhaps it will have a modicum of appeal to followers of transcendental meditation. [Lynch's latest film, Inland Empire, was widely released in the fall of 2006.Ed.]Roy Liebman, Los Angeles P.L.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2007
Author David Foster Wallace once observed that, as a filmmaker, David Lynch seems to care more about getting inside the heads of his viewers than about communicating a particular message to them once he's inside. With this book, Lynch offers us a rare glimpse into his own head. A longtime practitioner of transcendental meditation, a set of meditation practices popular in the 1960s, Lynch is primarily interested in communicating to readers the powerful creative vitality that he has tapped through meditation. In 85 brief, airy chapters--many koanlike and some only a sentence or two long--Lynch discusses the techniques with which he expands his consciousness, catches ideas, and gives form to abstraction. (It's not all lofty stuff: milkshakes are, it turns out, a key vehicle for creativity.) In the process, he reveals just enough biographical information, philosophy of film, and general behind-the-scenes dirt (including the connection between Lynch's " Lost Highway "and O. J. Simpson)" "to keep the attention of those more interested in Lynch's films than in his consciousness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)