Review of A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky

That thimbleful of Speculiction's readers are aware this blog has no love for fantasy which elicits a vibe of anything is possible therefore nothing is interesting. The kitchen sink is a mess, not art. Reading back cover copy for Daniel Polansky's A City Dreaming (2016) is not promising in this regard. I paraphrase: An immortal, charmed man visits the surreal side of New York City, a place full of monsters, pirates, shifting cafes, witches, aliens, zombies, Mister T, and much more. But it's Polansky, a writer who is one or two novels away from taking a place on Speculiction's (unenviable, unpublished) Top 10 Underrated writers' list. Let's dive in to the milieu...

Indeed, A City Dreaming is the story of a modern mage in an urban world—at least some of the time. His name is M, and at the outset of the story he leaves Paris for NYC to stay with a friend. In the course of his daily life—going to cafes, walking the sidewalks, and trying to pick up girls and/or narcotics—he finds himself slipping in and out of alternate realities. But the chump lifestyle has its price. Maybe those occasional rewards are worth it?

A City Dreaming is wonderfully well written. The book struggles with plot motivation, but each page, each paragraph, each line has some clever or colorful way of expressing the situation or mood or character or scene, egging the reader on. In fact, if it weren't for the prose I would have given up after four or five chapters, so embedded is the story's motive.

But Polansky does get the story somewhere. It's not the direct—Ha ha! Here is how all the random elements click together into an Escher puzzle that makes perfect plot sense. No, it's more subtle, perhaps more personally thematic. The options are as follows:

First is veiled autobiography—the wacky life of the fantasy and science fiction writer (aka starving artiste) living in New York City, an environment that offers the observer a significantly more varied and absurd reality than small town U.S.A. Second possibility is metaphor/allegory for NYC, itself. Mild spoiler, as M's adventures progress through the novel, the fantastical scenes draw closer to the realist scenes, to the point the reader has trouble distinguishing them as they draw nigh to the conclusion. Perhaps the wackiness is just a jaunt through Times' Square?

In the end, A City Dreaming is a novel for readers who prioritize prose and imagination. Polanksy often captures David Mitchell-esque levels of prosaic satire and offers an endless parade of uncanny scenes—everything in the kitchen sink, wrapped around what may be a personal allegory, or perhaps just a surreal portrait of a city. For readers looking for plot and character—the hallmarks of traditional storytelling, this will not be for you.