A Catalog Of Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On

Dung Kai-cheung’s A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On is a playful and imaginative glimpse into the consumerist dreamscape of late-nineties Hong Kong. First published in 1999, it comprises ninety-nine sketches of life just after the handover of the former British colony to China. Each of these stories in miniature begins from a piece of ephemera, usually consumer products or pop culture phenomena, and develops alternately comic and poignant snapshots of urban life. Dung’s sketches center on once-trendy items that evoke the world at the turn of the millennium, such as Hello Kitty, Final Fantasy VIII, a Windows 98 disk, a clamshell mobile phone, Air Jordans, and cargo shorts. The protagonist of each piece, typically a young woman, is struck by an odd, even overriding obsession with an object or fad. Characters embark on brief dalliances or relationships lasting no longer than the fashions that sparked them. Dung blends vivid everyday details—Portuguese egg tarts, Japanese TV shows, the Hong Kong subway—with situations that are often fantastical or preposterous. This catalog of vanished products illuminates how people use objects to define and even invent their own selves. A major work from one of Hong Kong’s most gifted and original writers, Dung’s archaeology of the end of the twentieth century speaks to perennial questions about consumerism, nostalgia, and identity.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on

Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

Every life retells the hero or heroine's journey: a wondrous, sometimes painful but always necessary movement toward wholeness. What better way to understand our own experiences of growth and transformation than to hear from others who have gone before us? In "Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On" Helen Luke explores the inner life through dream and imagery, story and symbol. The first half of the book covers Luke's life from her earliest recollections until the age of seventy. It weaves together dreams and symbolic images from her inner life with accounts of personal events, including her seminal meeting with Jung. The book's second half is comprised of selections from the journals she kept during her last twenty years of life, offering a rare glimpse into a personal path of individuation.