A Box of Dreams: Original Trade Paper

The id is out of its box and scampering all over this often hilarious and surreally distrubing gothic romp. The narrator wakes from a dream of sexual assault on a train--or was it’ Finding himself in a bewildering Mitteleuropa, he is counselled by a bogus Dr. Freud and embroiled in the irrational doings of a malodorous ticket inspector, a sadistic valet, a lascivious count and his luscious daughter. He is also confined to a velveteen skirt and taken for an authority on yodelling. Madsen has his favorite themes -- food, sex and Catholics -- and here adds psychoanalysis to the mix, as the hero struggles for self-knowledge. He sidles from dream to dream, and wakes to find his consciousness drooling again.