CATCHING THE BIG LYNCH

“David Lynch: The Man from Another Place” was written by author and New York film curator Dennis Lim and focuses on the personal and private life of director David Lynch (“Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Eraserhead”). This includes his multiple marriages, the troubled productions of his first feature film “Eraserhead,” as well as his space odyssey “Dune” (based off the critically acclaimed Frank Herbert novel of the same name), and his long-time love affair with transcendental meditation.

As with most biographies, the book includes many details that one who knows Lynch would already know. For example, there is the battle between Lynch and the executives at ABC over the resolution to Laura Palmer’s murder in “Twin Peaks,” the critical reaction at Sundance to “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” and how Lynch was originally going to be an artist before he started to experiment with film. That being said, Dennis Lim’s look at the life of David Lynch provides some new information that I have not heard before, like how Lynch and Terrence Malik (director of “The Tree of Life,” “The Thin Red Line,” and “Badlands”) went to the AFI film school together and how Lynch created his own organization to promote transcendental meditation.

The novel was very well written and was thin enough that one could read through it in a week. Regarding transcendental meditation, it’s the novel’s ultimate downfall. The author spends way too much time on the subject, and the way it’s written can make it seem like he’s just writing in circles and repeating the same information. Because of this, “David Lynch: The Man From Another Place” earns an 8.6/10.