By Bruce Hartman (Guest Blogger)
The Rules of Dreaming takes place in
and around a private mental hospital and many of the characters are
either mental patients or psychiatrists. Though I have read widely
about psychology and various mental phenomena usually dubbed “mental
illness,” I don’t pretend to any expertise in the field and have
not attempted a realistic portrayal of what it’s like to suffer
from mental illness or be a patient in a mental hospital. Two of the
main characters are described as “schizophrenic,” but I suspect
that experts will differ with my use of that term. In fact the
narrator, the young psychiatrist Ned Hoffmann, is uncomfortable with
this diagnosis which has been placed on Hunter Morgan and his twin
sister Antonia:
Everyone
at the Institute referred to them as “schizophrenic” because that
was the official diagnosis, carried forward on their charts over a
seven-year period. But in fact their illnesses bore almost no
resemblance to classic schizophrenia or any other recognized form of
mental disturbance. Whatever they had, it was unrecognizable,
unique, defying classification. This troubled me because it went
against all my training and experience up to that time. Patients,
I’d been taught, can always be diagnosed—that is,
categorized—because they’re not like you and me. They are not
normal, healthy individuals with unique personalities that can
express themselves in an infinite number of ways. They have
illnesses with certain symptoms; there are only a limited number of
possibilities. In other words, even if the rest of us are unique,
mental patients are not. But here were Hunter and Antonia, who
defied medical classification. The lexicon of modern medicine was
useless in the face of their individuality. The only thing you could
say about them was that they were crazy. Mad. That’s what they
were, I told myself privately: Mad.
The young psychiatrist wants to believe
in the uniqueness and unclassifiability of each individual’s
personality, regardless of whether they’re classified as mentally
ill. For this reason he prefers to think of the twins as “mad”
rather than to label them with some limiting scientific
classification. He is fascinated with them because they seem to
inhabit a parallel universe which is meaningful only to themselves.
As the story plays out, we learn the reason for the uniqueness of the
twins’ illness.
This concept of “madness” fits in
nicely with pre-scientific conceptions of mental illness as embodied
in Romanticism and other literary conceptions. The madman was seen
as a kind of prophet rather than merely a person whose chemistry
needed to be adjusted. Much of the story of The Rules of Dreaming revolves around The Tales of Hoffmann, the opera by Jacques
Offenbach based on stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann. This is a
beautiful, fantastic work which is all about the shifting boundary
between fantasy and reality.
E.T.A. Hoffmann popularized the
Romantic notion of madness as a spiritual state, akin to love and
artistic inspiration. Somewhat like the LSD-inspired hippies of the
1960s and their followers, Hoffmann believed (or claimed to believe)
in the existence of a “spirit world” accessible through dreams,
drugs and music. If all else failed, madness (though not
recommended) was another possible means of accessing the spirit
world. Hoffmann was enormously influential in France and Germany for
a few decades after his death in 1822. Offenbach’s opera portrays
him as an alcoholic artist tottering on the edge of madness,
tormented by his Muse and haunted by his three “mad loves.” More
recent productions of the opera have depicted Hoffmann as an inmate
in an old-fashioned lunatic asylum.
If you haven’t seen The Tales of
Hoffmann, I would strongly recommend that you watch the
surrealistic film version that was made by Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger in the 1950s. Powell and Pressburger were British
directors who also made The Red Shoes and The Thief of
Baghdad. The DVD of The Tales of Hoffmann contains a
fascinating commentary by Martin Scorsese, who was strongly
influenced by the cinematography.
My interest in the film and the
opera led to a study of E.T.A. Hoffmann, who is known in the
English-speaking world almost entirely through derivative works (The
Tales of Hoffmann, Tchaikowsky’s The Nutcracker, Robert
Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” Delibes’s CoppĂ©lia,
Freud’s essay on “The Uncanny”) and the stream of influence
that traces back to him (Schumann, Poe, Baudelaire, Dumas, Offenbach,
Doestoevsky). Unconsciously standing knee-deep in that stream
of influence, I recalled an idea for a story I’d had years before
(Hoffmannesque, without my knowing it) about a patient in a mental
hospital flawlessly playing a difficult piece of piano music without
the benefit of any musical training or experience. The Rules of Dreaming took off from there.
A novel of madness, music — and murder.
A beautiful opera singer hangs herself on the eve of her debut at the Met. Seven years later the opera she was rehearsing—Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann—begins to take over the lives of her two schizophrenic children, the doctors who treat them and everyone else who crosses their paths, until all are enmeshed in a world of deception and delusion, of madness and ultimately of evil and death. Onto this shadowy stage steps Nicole P., a graduate student who discovers that she too has been assigned a role in the drama. What strange destiny is being worked out in their lives?
Excerpt
Nicole was nimble and petite and very pretty. No, I take that back—“pretty” doesn’t come close to doing her justice. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, with cascading red hair and a bold, astonished look in her eyes that made her seem at once wild and angelic. But since my profession has liberated society from all of its taboos save one—that a psychiatrist shall not fall in love with his patient—all I could do was listen sympathetically as she pulled herself back together and prepared to return to her studies. I put her on appropriate medications and she began to make progress immediately.
As it happened, Nicole had been in the lounge when Hunter sat down to play the piano...
“Nicole,” I said, “did you hear Hunter playing the piano this afternoon?”
“Yes I did.” She stopped in the doorway, framed in the shadows that darkened the adjoining hall. “It was impressive, wasn’t it?”
“Impressive isn’t the word, when you realize that he’s never had a lesson or even touched a piano before.”
Her smile faded. “That’s uncanny.”
“Do you know what piece of music he was playing?”
“I think I’ve heard it before. One of the German Romantics, I think, maybe Schumann.”
She started through the door, but just before she disappeared into the shadows she turned back around and her eyes caught a sparkle of the afternoon light. “He went mad, you know.”
“Who went mad?”
“Robert Schumann. The composer. Died in an insane asylum.”
The Rules of Dreaming is available now at Amazon:
About the Author
Bruce
Hartman has been a bookseller, pianist, songwriter and attorney. He
lives with his wife in Philadelphia. His previous novel, Perfectly
Healthy Man Drops Dead,
was published by Salvo Press in 2008.
Bruce will award a $50 Amazon or BN.com gift card (winner's choice) to one randomly drawn commenter on one of the tour posts.
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12 comments:
Greetings, Bruce, and welcome to Beyond Romance. THE RULES OF DREAMING sounds intriguing. Having spent some time during my teenaged years in a psychiatric hospital, I've always been fascinated by madness.
Your cover is absolutely exquisite, by the way.
Good luck with the tour!
Thank you for hosting
Agreed on the cover -- that's gorgeous. I've always been interested in stories about music/art that connects with people's madness. Sounds like an intriguing book! annabeth dot leong at gmail dot com
The cover is gorgeous but the concept is quite intriguing. Captivated me.
debby236 at gmail dot com
Wow, it's very clear that you've done your research on the subject! I bet that will be evident in your story as well. Thanks for the excellent guest post!
andralynn7 AT gmail DOT com
Thanks for the guest post!
hense1kk AT cmich DOT edu
What a great informative post, thank you.
Kit3247(at)aol(dot)com
The story [and cover] are both chilling, but I keep wanting to read more! tsukito34[at]yahoo[dot]com
What a fascinating concept for a story. I think it sounds awesome.
Thank you for another fabulous post Bruce.
marypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Very interesting post today. Thanks.
kareninnc at gmail dot com
HI ALL! FINALLY GOT IN ON DH'S COMPUTER AND HOPE I'M IN TIME!
lindarb49@hotmail.com
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