Dam-Burst of Dreams
- Dec 22, 2019
- 2 min read
★★★☆☆
Brought to my attention by a friend who explained to me the story behind U2’s 2004 song “Miracle Drug,” Christopher Nolan was born a paraplegic, suffered from cerebral palsy, and was only able to communicate with his eyes using a signal system. That is, until the age of 10 when he was given a medication that sufficiently relaxed his muscles and allowed him to type using a wand attached to his head. What came pouring out of him nobody could have expected: a torrent of poetry, autobiography, plays, and prose that was, four years later, collected and published under the title Dam-Burst of Dreams.
Nolan’s writing is remarkable on many levels, from the sheer determination required to get the words down at all (it could take as long as 15 minutes to type a single word) to the maturity of the work itself (these do not read like the writings of a typical 11-to-14-year-old). Full of alliteration, mixed meanings, and, when vocabulary fails him, made-up words and self-built portmanteaus, the works are evocative, playful, euphonious, and intense in their bleakness and their beauty. I found it all interesting but did not find it all good. When Nolan’s writings worked for me, they really worked; when they failed me, they failed miserably. I most enjoyed his poetry and found his earliest works to be the most immediate. The brief autobiography which opens the book was moving, engaging, enlightening, and wholly original. The two short plays, written at the ages of 13 and 14, were, for me anyway, Nolan’s weakest material. While I understand and can appreciate their inclusion, the book, and my experience reading it, would have been greatly enhanced by their absence.
Like anything else, Dam-Burst of Dreams isn’t for everyone. But Hibernophiles, lovers of Yeats and Joyce, fans of U2 who want to gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for “Miracle Drug,” and anyone who likes a story of triumph over adversity will find more than enough to savor in Christopher Nolan’s unlikely debut.
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