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y separately published work icon Dreams of Speaking single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2006... 2006 Dreams of Speaking
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Alice is entranced by the aesthetics of technology and, in every aeroplane flight, every Xerox machine, every neon sign, sees the poetry of modernity. Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb, is an expert on Alexander Graham Bell. Like Alice, he is culturally and geographically displaced. The pair forge an unlikely friendship as Mr Sakamoto regales Alice with stories of twentieth-century invention. His own knowledge begins to inform her writing, and these two solitary beings become a mutual support for each other a long way from home. - Back cover

Notes

  • Epigraph: 'Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking' - Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Milsons Point, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Vintage Australia , 2006 .
      image of person or book cover 108869986227657259.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 229p.p.
      ISBN: 1741665221
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      2007 .
      image of person or book cover 8368896595117565607.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 213p.p.
      ISBN: 9780099472049, 009947204X
    • c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      2007 .
      image of person or book cover 2618714506295431759.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 224p.p.
      ISBN: 9781741667233
Alternative title: Der Traum vom Sprechen : Roman
    • Hamburg,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Ed. Nautilus ,
      2006 .
      image of person or book cover 5730293178591210552.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 221p.
      ISBN: 9783894014919

Other Formats

  • Also braille, sound recording,

Works about this Work

The Mixed Temporalities of Transnationalism in Dreams of Speaking Timothy Steains , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March vol. 41 no. 1 2017; (p. 32-46)
'This article explores the mixed temporalities inherent in Gail Jones’s treatment of transnational grief in Dreams of Speaking(2006). I examine the novel’s interests in modernity and temporality and show how the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, in the novel, creates grief that is shared across national boundaries. The novel explores the coexistence of the modern and the unmodern, and Jones exemplifies this in the spectral nature of grief; it haunts the two protagonists throughout Dreams of Speaking. This article reads the coexistence of modernity and the unmodern alongside the ways in which Japan unsettles Eurocentric notions of colonial modernity (with its insistence on shared temporalities of progress) by having been a colonial power as well as by undertaking substantial modernisation in the postwar period. I employ Harry Harootunian’s notion of “mixed temporalities” to show the transnational dimensions in the cross-cultural interaction this novel facilitates. I compare the novel’s treatment of the bomb, and of temporality, to Salvador Dalí’sThe Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory(1954) and highlight the transnational sentiments in Jones’s treatments of the tropes of water and resonance.' (Publication abstract)
Pushing the Boundaries in Australian Studies. Maggie Nolan , Julie Kimber , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March vol. 41 no. 1 2017; (p. 1-2)

'An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including young women of Australia, Indigenous music, and a book review of "Dreams of Speaking".' (Publication abstract)

Paratactic Stammers : Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones Saadi Nikro , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 1 2016;

'Norman Saadi Nikro’s essay, ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ sets out to explore how Jones’ ‘sense of fascination and wonder with the technology and culture of modernism informs the phenomenology and tenor of her novelistic style, especially the characters that emerge through the wave lengths of this style.’ Addressing himself to Jones’ literary fiction published to date, Nikro seeks to ‘track the duration in her novels whereby memory, history and story are experienced by her characters as something like intersections, intervals nor spacings, taut and tense folds or pleats in which time is riven by “a strange accession to memory and speech,” as the character Perdita comes to learn in Jones’s Sorry (202).’ Drawing in part on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and on Gilles Deleuze’s ‘engagement with the work of Bergson,’ Nikro examines in Jones the ‘relational contiguity of parts whose variable movements and orientations to one another bring about a transfiguration of their subjective capacities (as in Perdita’s realisation of her stuttering as a relational dynamic).’ ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ offers a rich and original reading of Jones’ fiction, both sympathetic and critically rigorous. Echoing Jones’ own views on modernity, Nikro traces in her novels a poetics of modernity that inflects both the writing and the thematics of the work. ‘Jones’s prose style,’ he suggests, ‘what she calls “a kind of prose poetics’” (Royo Grasa 1), calls attention to the gaps and intervals by which the temporality of narration is not only possible, but rendered a vacant site for the stammer of an interruptive image or voice encompassing an alternative engagement of time and its graphic imprints.’ Like Kirkpatrick, Nikro too highlights the forceful way in which an Australian author develops a distinct narrative voice, in the case of Jones one informed by a constant intertwining of local and global aesthetic and political sensibilities.' (Editor's introduction)

Book Review – Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones Joanne Peulen , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Booklover Book Reviews 2011;

— Review of Dreams of Speaking Gail Jones , 2006 single work novel
Australian Literature Inside and Out Nicholas Jose , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2009;
Twists Turn Dreams into Nightmare Catherine Keenan , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 29 January 2006; (p. 66)

— Review of Dreams of Speaking Gail Jones , 2006 single work novel
The Gift of Sound and Vision James Bradley , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 4 February 2006; (p. 24)

— Review of Dreams of Speaking Gail Jones , 2006 single work novel
Yearning Expressed in Elegant Prose Diane Stubbings , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 4 February 2006; (p. 13)

— Review of Dreams of Speaking Gail Jones , 2006 single work novel
An Image of Sound Waves Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February no. 278 2006; (p. 26)

— Review of Dreams of Speaking Gail Jones , 2006 single work novel
Ring Cycle Sally Blakeney , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 14 February vol. 124 no. 6507 2006; (p. 68-69)

— Review of Dreams of Speaking Gail Jones , 2006 single work novel
Parallel Lives Aviva Tuffield , 2006 single work biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 11-12 February 2006; (p. 20-21)
On Intimate Terms Aviva Tuffield , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 19 February 2006; (p. 16)
The Interview : Gail Jones Michele McCrea (interviewer), 2006 single work interview
— Appears in: Wet Ink , Winter no. 3 2006; (p. 26-29)
Gail Jones' "Light Writing": Memory and the Photo-graph Lyn Jacobs , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 5 2006; (p. 192-208)
'This article traces Jones's interest in photography/film and the ways in which metaphors of light, shadow and mirroring shape narratives.' (p.192)
Blood on the Plot Stephen Matchett , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 September 2006; (p. 40)
Matchett compares the merits of three literary novels: Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved, Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart and Gail Jones's Dreams of Speaking.
Last amended 13 Jul 2021 12:35:26
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