I mourned Lynch's death the same way I've been celebrating his life for the past thirty years: by watching Twin Peaks. But I kept quiet here on Psychobabble.
Well, reviewing Todd Huddleston's new book, David Lynch: His Work, His Life, seems like a good opportunity to acknowledge that my favorite human being who I will never meet has died, and typing that makes me feel really, really sad.
But David Lynch: His Work, His Life makes me happy, because author Huddleston clearly feels the same way about Lynch that I do. He understands Lynch too, which is important since the filmmaker/painter/furniture-maker/TV series-creator/poet/ animator/autobiographer/musician/cartoonist/sound designer/actor spent a good deal of his professional life dogged by accusations of smug irony and cynicism. This is sad not only because the sheer emotional power of Lynch's work should be enough to dismiss such charges but because he was such a disarmingly sincere and almost delusionally hopeful person. Remember that time when everyone freaked out because he did an interview with the Guardian and said that Trump "could go down as one of the greatest presidents"? Such outraged reaction would be understandable if anyone but David Lynch had said that, because Lynch wasn't saying that the fascist, adjudicated rapist was great; he was saying that the president had it within him to achieve greatness by overcoming his monstrousness to bring the country together with kindness, like Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning a completely changed man. It's hardly cynical to recognize that Lynch's wish was an impossible one. The most evil man in America is clearly completely incapable of the kind of self-reflection and positive change that Lynch wished for. However, the fact that Lynch was capable of thinking like that shows how hopeful and uncynical he was.
Todd Huddleston approaches Lynch's life and work understanding the goodness within the man who had Laura Palmer murdered and Dorothy Vallens serially abused. Frankly, I was concerned that, because it is being published so close on the heels of Lynch's death, David Lynch: His Work, His Life might be nothing more than a cynical cash-in with lots of nice pictures to gaze at and cursory, ill-informed text. While the book does provide the former, it avoids the latter. Instead it is insightful, well-researched, and supported with a wealth of previously published quotes from the the title character (nearly no one but Lynch is quoted throughout the book).
Though Huddleston is a fan, he is not a mindlessly forgiving one, admitting to the flaws of Dune, often with delicious offhand English humor (my favorite: his description of "nappy-clad pop star Sting"), and noting Lynch's flaws, such as his multiple extra-marital affairs and inchoate understanding of politics. The author presents a nuanced discussion of the misogyny debate that swirled around Lynch ever since Blue Velvet, seeing the points of both sides of the argument.
There are a couple of very minor gaffs (ex: Lynch's nickname for Laura Dern was "Tidbit," not "Peanut," as Huddleston's states; that was just her character's nickname in Wild at Heart), and I don't always agree with his conclusions. I never understood those like Huddleston who insist that Carnival of Souls is the most Lynchian non-Lynch movie ever made, and I can't see how Wild at Heart, so full of distinctively Lynchian obsessions, is a less personal work than The Elephant Man or Dune (though I did agree with the author's self-contradictory statement that Lost Highway was Lynch's least personal film since Dune). But I generally felt like I was in good hands throughout His Work, His Life. With its insights, thoroughness in the face of page-count brevity, good writing, thrilling images, and thoughtfully measured reverence, it's just the book I wanted to read at this sad terminal in the most wonderful and strange of lives and careers.
I'll always miss you, David Lynch.
