Filmmaker David Lynch still an enigma in memoir

Mystery is important to David Lynch, explanation anathema. His films defy interpretation; he’s never offered any. About his own biography, he’s long been coy. His press kits used to read simply, “Born Missoula, Montana. Eagle Scout.” So “Room to Dream,” a memoir pushing 600 pages, may come as a surprise. Is the game up?

Fans who share Lynch’s pleasure in mystery will approach this book anxiously, hoping that his secrets may somehow be both revealed and sustained. Luckily for them, he seems incapable of selfrevelation. In telling his life story, Lynch demonstrates the same disregard for causality and tonal consistency that marks his films.

Lynch’s position in Hollywood is itself mysterious. How has such an idiosyncratic, uncommercial director achieved such success? “Room to Dream” provides only partial answers. Luck certainly played a part. A chance meeting with Mel Brooks led to “The Elephant Man” (1980), Lynch’s first mainstream success. A contractual provision allowed “Blue Velvet” to proceed despite the failure of sci-fi epic “Dune” (1984). “Twin Peaks” arrived in 1990, just when TV audiences were ready for something wild.

But all these works required specific conditions to produce them, too, and Lynch and co-author Kristine McKenna use their book to make a case for artists being given the freedom to do that dreamwork unrestricted.

Money was always a factor. Lynch’s first film, “Eraserhead” (1977), took five years to make, during which he supported family and movie alike in part by delivering newspapers. But, ironically, the $40 million or so granted to him later to make “Dune” felt like a prison. A big budget mandated an audience-friendly script and a running time suited to theatrical schedules.

“I started selling out before we even started shooting,” he writes. “It was the only way I could survive.” The film flopped, and Lynch would never again relinquish control of the final cut. Instead, he found happiness and acclaim working with small budgets.

Security in this niche has given Lynch the freedom to etch his violent, surreal vision of America into popular consciousness. The resulting body of work vindicates the old dream that uncompromised vision might equal artistic success.

Lynch’s vision appears to reflect his real-life worldview and experience. Indeed, “Room to Dream” sometimes feels like a tour of primal scenes, with several iconic theatrical episodes transplanted directly from Lynch’s life.

Memory behaves similarly for Lynch. Consider this line from “Lost Highway”: “I like to remember things my own way ... not necessarily the way they happened.” That would be the perfect epigraph for this book. In its alternating chapters, McKenna presents the way things happened (the historical record), and then Lynch provides his own version. When he doesn’t remember something, he digresses on subjects that matter to him: trees, LA light, Transcendental Meditation.

This technique ensures that “Room to Dream” offers countless new stories, even for Lynch fanatics. We see him meditating with Roy Orbison, taking a print of “Eraserhead” cross-country in a shopping cart for a screening in New York, attending Fellini’s deathbed. All is told with Lynch’s considerable charm, characterized by boyish enthusiasm.

“Room to Dream” pulls off a neat trick in revealing little. Despite the book’s heft, there’s not much to explicate the mysteries of Lynch’s work. But then, for him, the mystery’s the thing.

What we get instead is insight into his creative process. Lynch shows us to a room that provides refuge from the world outside, where he finds the safety that’s necessary to create. To borrow language from his beloved TM, it’s where he goes to dive within, where his experience is reborn as art. With the right approach, he suggests, other artists may also find a room to dream.

Charles Arrowsmith is based in New York City and writes about books, films and music.