Skip to main content

“La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream”

Image from amazon.com

“La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream” is one of many texts collected in an anthology of P. Craig Russell’s work, titled Isolation and Illusion: Collected Short Stories 1977-1997. In this wordless tale, Russell employs colorless, romantic and surreal illustrations to evoke the strange opulence of a dream world. The plot begins with a frame story in which the protagonist sleepwalks. While sleepwalking, she dreams of being an angel who joins others to journey to the City of Sleep where they gather at a tower and peer through the window at a Rude Goldbergesque machine that generates the world of dreams. Upon entering this world, the angels soar through the air, narrowly escape the predators of the sea, and revel in their own splendor. Eventually, the protagonist leaves the group and returns alone to the city where she re-enters the tower and exits the dream world that it creates. “La Sonnambula” pairs well with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” which was composed one night after an opium influenced dream. Coleridge was interrupted while writing the lines of poetry that came to him from his dream, causing him to forget the remainder. Like Russell’s tale, Coleridge’s poem is “a fragment of a dream.”

  • “La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream” by P. Craig Russell
  • High School
  • Dark Horse Comics
  • 10pp.
  • Published 1985
  • 1-56971-838-5
  • $14.95
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Decloaking Wakanda: Creating Space for BIPOC Nerds

On February 9, 2023, at the fourth Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC), I had the exhilarating experience of guiding a discussion that focused on the need to connect with nerd culture and create a welcoming environment for the BIPOC fandom. The soul of this session had been several years in the making and built on countless heart-to-heart moments. So, I couldn’t imagine a better venue for seeing it actualized than my first JCLC. Furthermore, for this session, I had the honor of being in conversation with fellow nerds and comics librarians Jean Darnell and Deimosa Webber-Bey . To my eternal amazement, our talk was met with a standing room only reception, and afterward we were repeatedly regaled with tales of being turned away at the door. In hopes of capturing a small portion of that day's magic, this post grew out of that discussion. *** For the past 30 years, BIPOC nerds have existed in the cringe-worthy shadow of Urkel. What if, instead, they’d had portrayals such as ...
1 comment
Read more

Let’s Connect!

  Originally published July 17, 2024 Library Developments Blog | Library Development and Networking Division Texas State Library and Archives Commission The Library Development and Networking Division is your partner in serving the community by connecting you to our library management services. Here are the tools that can help you stay one step ahead! Library Management Services Website – This suite of webpages is the online home for evergreen information about our library management services including resources for new directors, small library management, and library governance. Library Management Services Updates – In this monthly post on our Library Developments blog , we provide a round up of upcoming opportunities and ongoing tools pertaining to library management that have come to our attention. Although you can subscribe to the entire blog, there’s no easy way to subscribe to these posts exclusively. Alternatively, you can bookmark the link above and create a Google aler...
Post a Comment
Read more

Secret Coders

Image from  goodreads.com “Welcome to Stately Academy, a school which is just crawling with mysteries to be solved! The founder of the school left many clues and puzzles to challenge his enterprising students. Using their wits and their growing prowess with coding, Hopper and her friend Eni are going to solve the mystery of Stately Academy no matter what it takes!” - from the publisher Secret Coders is a fast-paced, interesting read that introduces the basic premises of programming in a non-threatening way. This series would be a fantastic accompaniment to an elementary library’s efforts to support a STEAM curriculum, a local chapter of Girls Who Code, or its use of Code.org. Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes Elementary FirstSecond 91 pp. Published 2015 ISBN 978-1-62672-276-7 $17.99
Post a Comment
Read more