Ten Novels That Follow Dream Logic
(Kelly Link, following the lead of Howard Waldrop, distinguishes between three kinds of story logic: dream logic, daytime logic, and nighttime logic. The idea is that a sequence of events has dream logic when at the end you say, “This happened, and then this happened, and it doesn’t make any sense.” With daytime logic, you say, “This happened, and then this happened, and it makes sense, and I can explain why.” And with nighttime logic, you say, “This happened, and then this happened, and it makes sense, and I can’t explain why.” In other words, daytime logic produces a logical, causal kind of sense, while nighttime logic produces a more mysterious, emotional kind of sense. Dream logic produces motion but not sense. This list of novels (and a story collection) that follow dream logic is by request, and arranged in something like their order of popularity, from the most widely read to the least.)
The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
The Little Buddhist Monk by César Aira
The Voice of the Moon by Ermanno Cavazzoni
Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini
Palafox by Éric Chevillard
The Conductor and Other Tales by Jean Ferry
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz
Everything We Miss by Luke Pearson
— March 10, 2022