A stranger walks up to a man enjoying a glass of beer at a pub. After rushedly introducing himself, he tries to explain how this—the pub, the conversation, the entire setting—is a dream. He claims the other person is either also dreaming or, more eerily, that he’s a mere character in the dream and not a real person at all. “You’re sick,” replies the man at the table.
‘Oh, God. Are you mad or drunk or what?’
‘Nothing like that. I’m asleep’.
In the (very) short story titled “Mason’s Life”, Kingsley Amis takes the Lynchian-Hindu question of “who is the dreamer?” and gives it a British spin. As always, he infuses the narrative with tight-lipped humour: an air of polite neurosis surrounds the characters—as if the whole dream affair was all-too-slightly embarrassing.
The dream motif rhymes well with John Thorne’s interpretation of Twin Peaks:
After quoting the ancient phrase [Monica Bellucci] asks, "But who is the dreamer?"—a critical question that both the audience and Cole must ponder. Who is the dreamer? And yet, the question is redundant because Bellucci essentially answers it: "We are like the dreamer." Monica Bellucci stares straight into the camera and tells us that we are the dreamer. All of us. Each of us lives inside our own dream.
Like Lynch, Amis ends his story on a wistful note, tainting the humour with a dash of tragedy. This ambiguity, this blending of aesthetic qualities in the right proportions is, I think, the mark of worthy literature.