Book of Dreams
This new edition of the primary beat's private dream diaries  presents the whole of Kerouac's original manuscript, including  some 200-odd dreams not published in the initial selection  (1961). More or less liberated from the requirements of the Beat  swagger, Kerouac's writing is at times blissfully uncool,  evoking an almost na ve and sentimental sensibility: " this  kitty was an angel, and spoke the truth"; "nobody loves me  'cause there's no me." Correspondences between some dream  characters and their counterparts in the novels are not  accidental, and are correlated in a prologue (and by poet Robert  Creeley, in an insightful introduction). But many facets of  Kerouac's oeuvre appear here much less polished, and more naked  and powerful: " My mother and I are arm in arm on the floor, I'm  crying afraid to die, she's blissful and has one leg in pink  sexually out between me, and I'm thinking 'Even on the verge of  death women think of love & snaky affection' Women? who's  dreaming this?" Lost love, madness, castration, cats that speak,  cats in danger of their lives, people giving birth to cats,  grade school classrooms, Mel Torme, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tolstoy and  Genet all make repeated appearances, lending the collection a  repetitive, nonprogrammatic logic and exposing an unfamiliar  sort of vulnerable beauty in Kerouac's iconic persona. One only  wonders, in the end, whether anyone, even Jack Kerouac, really  has such fantastic dreams. (June 30) Forecast: With memoir still a dominant beach-read genre, and  with Kerouac still a Dean-like name, proper promotion and review  attention could lead to significant sales. City Lights, still  the premier publisher of Beatiana, will also bring out a  collection of interviews, San Francisco Beat: Talking with the  Poets (including Joanne Kyger, Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder),  in June ($19.95 paper 384p ISBN 0-87286-379-4).Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.