From popmatters.com –
It’s easy to tell the difference between a book that is written with genuine passion, and one that’s written to fulfill a contract, or build a curriculum vitae, or fatten a wallet. Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville fits firmly into the former category, as is apparent from its very first pages when the author, David Freeland, recounts a recurring dream: “Although some details change, the basic situation is the same: I am walking in an American city sometime during the middle of the 20th century. I keep searching for a neighborhood that I know, from my previous visits, contains a large number of old theaters. By the time I figure out where the neighborhood is I am forced to remember that many of the theaters have been torn down… but always I am able to find one or two that are still there—and feel tremendous relief when I go inside and head to a seat, usually in the balcony where I can get a nice view of the whole building. But always something is different about the interior: either it has been stripped of all architectural detail, just a blank shell, or else the stage seems so far away that I can barely see it. It’s as if I’m watching it from the opposite end of a telescope. Everything appears to be growing smaller, shrinking in front of me to a pin-sized speck before evaporating completely.” The emotions that motivate a recurring dream like this are a combination of nostalgia for a past that never was, and yearning, mixed with a bitter regret, for a present that can never be again. Freeland, a writer who has the courage of his dreams, is not afraid to remind us of what we have wiped out, and in our stumbling, childlike sleepwalk through time, continue to destroy. Michael Antman.
