Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream! [Paperback]

James Chapman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2000

In James Chapman's new novel, a woman identified only as Frieda tells us the story of her life, from before her birth until after her death.

Frieda is trying to reconcile the things she believes in with the things she knows to be true. Each chapter of the book, though, shows a different failed attempt of hers to take on some sort of faith--faith in the power of her own physical beauty, power of art, power of love, duty, religion--finally just the power of existence. Each time, she immediately tests her new faith, and hits its limit, hence breaking one more enclosure for her spirit. Each smashed faith is like a box that breaks open, leaving her in a larger one, in which she then sinks her faith, only to then furiously test it in turn.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Chronicling the inner life of a fiercely independent, idealistic outsider, this intriguing but obscure experimental novel explores the paradoxical nature of human consciousness in a perplexing, ever-changing world. Frieda, the narrator and eponymous "daughter," opens the novel, speaking as a fetus from an Edenic state of unbounded freedom and perception in which she can "create anything." Her bliss is short-lived, however; she is soon "tricked into being born" in an elaborate, glitzy ceremony involving costumes, musicians and flamboyant choreography. The stylized expressiveness of the birth ceremony is meant to invoke a mythological inclusiveness, but the effect is fragmented and elliptical. From there, it's all downhill for Frieda; each successive chapter finds her a few years older and increasingly stifled and dissatisfied, with her stream-of-consciousness raging unabated. She spends her childhood biking through her drab hometown in Northern California. As a teenager, she hopes to provide humankind with a glimpse of the Divine through a career in nude modeling, but her plans are dashed by an unscrupulous photographer. She flirts with a bohemian lifestyle in Chicago, but soon grows impatient with the inability of art to make an immediate, lasting impact on social conditions. An emotionally abusive marriage and boring desk job are followed by her ignoble, lonely death in a trailer park. At every stage of her existence, her idealism punctures her determination, rendering her capable of little but turgid rumination. But there are occasional flashes of philosophical brilliance and surreal humor in Chapman's (Our Plague) prose that amply reward the reader's attention. Ultimately, the novel leans too heavily on the already burdened legacies of Faulkner and Joyce (and the protagonist's namesake, Friedrich Nietzsche) to be praised for its originality, but the stream-of-consciousness narration, which shifts in style and tone as Frieda ages, provides its own unique momentum. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

James Chapman is the author of six other novels.

He is married to the novelist Randie Lipkin, and lives in New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 217 pages
• Publisher: Fugue State Press (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1879193078
• ISBN-13: 978-1879193079
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,828,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Chapman is an novelist.

He lives in New York.

His novels (eight so far) are emotive and experimental. Lately they've gotten exalted and Hindu-sounding or mythic.

He's been been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in magazines, etc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another masterpiece!, August 4, 2000

By 

Eckhard A. Gerdes "Eckhard Gerdes" (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream! (Paperback)

Waiting for each new book by James Chapman is as difficult as it must have been for readers of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce to wait for new books from those greats. And I'm not throwing those names out lightly. Chapman is on par with them, with the works of greats such as Arno Schmidt and Italo Calvino, with the best of Brautigan and Vonnegut, with the finest Nouveau Roman publications. After reading In Candyland It's Cool to Feed on Your Friends, I couldn't have imagined where Chapman could go next or that he could equal that amazing achievement, but here he has. We are seeing a master reaching full stride. This wonderful work (and the sense of Wonder here is the strongest I have seen in any serious work since the novels of Kenneth Patchen) concerns itself with the life and innerworld of a disconnected, beautiful, almost messianic female named Frieda. Chapman traces her from conception to afterlife in a captivating, sometimes dizzying combination of concrete imagist and abstract expressionist prose. Bravo! Bravo! Dare I hope for yet another encore?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Master's Piece, September 8, 2005

By 

Hari Garber "none" (HI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream! (Paperback)

James Chapman is probably the greatest living novelist in the American language. He is most certainly the greatest unknown. This book is his best. If literary posterity has a future, Chapman's all over it.