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Season 11 of the Two Month Review: “The Dreamed Part” by Rodrigo Fresán

After a slightly longer hiatus than expected, the Two Month Review is coming back! In fact, we’re coming back TOMORROW, Thursday, March 5th at 1:30pm. We’ll be recording an introductory episode in which Chad and Brian combine their weakened, time-ravaged memories to recap The Invented Part, the first volume in Rodrigo Fresán’s trilogy (and the subject of the first ever season of TMR) before launching into the second volume, The Dreamed Part, both translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden. (The third volume, The Remembered Part, is forthcoming, but it’s the longest, so it’s going to take Will a minute to get this done.)

If you want to read along, you can get a copy of The Dreamed Part from your local bookstore, online retailers, or directly from our website. If you use the code “2Month” at checkout, you’ll get 20% off. (BUT, if you order now, the book is only $10 as part of our #NoAWP2020 sale. ALL of our books are $10 for one, $20 for three through this weekend. So go wild!)

Here’s the jacket copy for The Dreamed Part:

Following his failure to break into the Hadron Collider and merge with the so-called “God particle,” The Writer from The Invented Part can no longer write or sleep. Instead, he lies awake, imagining and reimagining key moments of his life, spinning out a series of insomniac visions every bit as thought-provoking as they are dreamlike. A mysterious foundation dedicated to preserving dreams, suddenly invaluable in the wake of the dream-eradicating White Plague; a psycho-lyrical-photophobic terrorist; an electric and mercurial lullaby; three lunatic sisters (and an eclipsed brother) who write from the darkest side of the most wuthering lunar heights; a hallucinating prisoner and a hallucinatory family; a genius addicted to butterflies and an FBI agent addicted to that genius; a looney and lysergic uncle and parents who model but are not model parents; a revolutionary staging of Shakespeare for the children of chic guerrillas; a city of sleepless bookshops; and a writer who might be 100 years old. Or not.

With characteristic wit, careening style, and array of cultural references, high and low and everything in between—from Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters, and Vladimir Nabokov to Talking Heads, superhero movies, and Rick and Morty—the second volume of Fresán’s trilogy is one of the most ambitious, unique, and entertaining novels of our time.

And now, the most important part, this season’s schedule:

March 5: Introduction

March 19: “That Night (Footnotes for an Encyclopedia of Sleepwalkers)” (pgs 1-57)

March 26: “That Night (Footnotes for an Encyclopedia of Sleepwalkers)” (pgs 57-111)

April 2: “The Other Night (Irrational Catalog for an Exhibition of Restless Shadows” (pgs 112-155)

April 9: “The Other Night (Irrational Catalog for an Exhibition of Restless Shadows” (pgs 156-202)

April 16: “The Other Night (Irrational Catalog for an Exhibition of Restless Shadows” (pgs 202-254)

April 23: “Tonight (Manual of Last Rites for Waking Dreamers)” (pgs 255-307)

April 30: “Tonight (Manual of Last Rites for Waking Dreamers)” (pgs 307-362)

May 7: “Tonight (Manual of Last Rites for Waking Dreamers)” (pgs 362-424)

May 14: “Tonight (Manual of Last Rites for Waking Dreamers)” (pgs 424-487)

May 21: “Tonight (Manual of Last Rites for Waking Dreamers)” (pgs 487-539)

As always, we’ll record these LIVE on YouTube, so that you can interact, ask questions, get to know the various places where we live and/or work, come to the realization that my preferred mode of dress is a hoodie and a hat, etc. The podcast version will drop on all the Thursdays listed above, and is available from wherever you get your podcasts. (Except maybe Spotify? I need to figure that out . . .)

If you haven’t listened to the season on The Invented Part, you’re totally missing out. That was a wild, entertaining, amazing season over the course of which Brian and I figured out our groove and how to do this podcast. Every episode–and every post that I wrote for this–can be found here.

I’m really looking forward to this season and hope you’ll all join in and read along!!



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