I Dream with Open Eyes

"Whatever the ideological slant of our information feeds, we may nowadays share a sense that we are binge-watching the apocalypse. Facing so much uncertainty, we need a language for thinking about the unknown not simply as a threat, but also as a space of fertile possibility. Rather than approaching the subject as an abstract conceit, George Prochnik has chosen to reflect on his themes through the lens of a personal narrative: an account of his own family's decision to leave the United States. I Dream With Open Eyes begins with a reflection on Prochnik's ancestral past in the United States and the arrival of his mother's family, who were Pilgrims, in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel pilgrimage is unfolding, as Prochnik and his family make the decision to uproot their lives in New York. They left behind their neighborhood, their community, their friends and family, to return to England from which Prochnik's family had come generations before. A journey of reckoning and renewal follows, but what ensues is by no means a traditional memoir-rather, it is an examination of an individual imagination. This narrative nonfiction is told in three parts: the interplay between the personal and political in the decision to emigrate; a period of geographical flux, in which the work of Elizabeth Bishop becomes lode star; and, finally, the implications of resettlement, as seen through a survey of revolutionary gestures that have shaped the course of history. A deep critique of this current moment, Prochnik takes the words of nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, "I dream with open eyes, and my eyes see" to ask how we might use art and literature as tools for refraction, expanding our vision for the future while simultaneously taking stock of present realities"--