I'm writing a book that exists pretty much exclusively in the dream world. Does anyone have any suggestions for either works of fiction which handle dream scenes well or non-fiction books in which I can learn more about the mechanics/symbolisms of dreaming? Also, any books about/dealing with the subconscious. Anything you think would be relevant/beneficial. Thanks!
The White Darkness is a great non-fiction book to try out. Its all about a young girl who escapes dealing with the death of her father by daydreaming on a much stronger and mature level. Its mostly dealing with her subconscious and shows how someones mind can be really chaotic without much encouragement.
There would be a lot of psychology books about the subconscious if you're in need of good info. They aren't written to be interesting, or written to be read for hours at a time (in my opinion) - but they are good sources of info.
This. One thing most Surrealists believed in was of absolute freedom. Particularly evocative against their WW2 time-frame, their attempts to liberate the mind through challenging, but often congruous imagery often lent their works a dreamlike quality. I stress dreamlike, because often their point was not to explicitly enter the oneiric realm, rather just invoke it. Certain amongst the Surrealist ranks took these ideas further. The poet Robert Desnos set some of his pieces up so that his surreality became more real than reality. I won't explain quite how he attempted to do this, but dream became very important to him in these studies. With the reality of reality suspended, the freedom so essential to the Surrealist movement shifted into the dream world for Desnos. In summary, the notion of dying in dream became the most absolute freedom of all: Desnos's most poetic pinnacle. Anyway, you might like to explore some of these concepts within your work. Happy reading; happy writing.
If you're including movies in this, then might I point out Inception? You've probably heard about it already, but despite being confusing, it's a great movie. Yes, I know you're talking about books. But movies can be useful for research as well. Merlin Out.
The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. Considered to be one of the greatest graphic novels of all time and in my opinion one of the greatest pieces of fiction as well, it deals with Dream of the Endless--or Morpheus--and his dealings with the Dream Realm, his relatives (Death, Destiny, Desire, and so on...), etc. It makes for one interesting read, and I could say it falls into surreal and dark fantasy fiction.
You're definately going to need to read Freud if you want to know about dreams and also get a basic understanding of sleep from a psychological pov.
The problem with Inception is that it has very little to do with real dreaming. For its plot to work, it makes up a large number of premises, which are not true for real dreams. E.g, that time flows faster in dreams by a certain factor. That dying in a dream puts you in a "Limbo" for the remainder of the sleep. That dreams within dreams are neatly ordered in a hierarchy, with time flowing faster on each subsequent level. That dreaming about dreaming requires a deeper sleep.
For clarification, is that time thing not true? I know it's not a set number, but can time seem faster in a dream? Sometimes I feel like I've dreamed for a long time just to have been asleep for 10 or so minutes.
If you can find the cremaster cycle movie(s)...you'd find sequences that are very close to the time dilation within dreams...
