I Dream with Open Eyes

A Memoir

Whatever the ideological slant of our information feeds, nowadays we all share a sense of binge-watching the apocalypse. Facing so much uncertainty, we need a language for thinking about the unknown not simply as a threat but also as a space of fertile possibility. George Prochnik has chosen to reflect on these urgent themes through the lens of a personal narrative: an account of his own family's decision to leave the United States.

I Dream with Open Eyes begins with an exploration of Prochnik's ancestral past: the pilgrimage of his mother's family, who were among the first English settlers in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel migration unfolds as Prochnik, along with his wife and their son, makes the decision to uproot their lives in New York to move to England.

A deep critique of this current moment, Prochnik takes the words of nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, "I dream with open eyes, and my eyes see," as an inspiration to ask how, as a society, we might use art and literature to refract and expand our vision of the future, while simultaneously generating a new focus on present realities.

©2022 George Prochnik (P)2022 Kalorama

One of the best memoirs I’ve read/listened to

Prochnik weaves together the strands of his past personal and extended family history with his (and everyone’s collective) dilemma over a renascent fascism. All mirrored through profound analysis of intellectual history, especially that of those European pre-ww2 German thinkers in which he specializes.