Wanye Koestenbaum's new book The Anatomy of Harpo Marx offers, in his words, "a blow-by-blow annotation of Harpo's onscreen actions." It also offers descriptions of Koestenbaum's dreams, reproduced below. (My review of The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, along with M.G. Lord's The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice, appears in this Sunday's edition of Newsday.)
Last night I dreamt that my typewriter's ribbon expatriated from the machine and curled onto the floor. Dreams are evidence I can't omit from my pillow book.
Inappropriate behavior: last night I dreamt that I threw a filthy party. An unwanted guest dropped food on my grand piano's keys and clogged the toilet with mechanical objects—hardware not meant to be flushed down.
In a dream last night I played Harpo on a TV show, my costume a hodgepodge of available scraps. I lingered, waiting to hear my Harpo impersonation's lingering effect on dowager consciousness: a grande dame lived in this liminal TV studio, a Mission-style mansion overlooking not one river but two.
I dreamt I was a yogi, hiking barefoot through marshy and Germanic-sublime terrain reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich paintings: companions disappeared, but clouds compensated.
I dreamt last night that I returned to New Haven and lent my flip-flops, uncomfortable, to a woman who worked the cash register at a sleazy or all-purpose spiritual store, selling ruined trinkets that assisted one's slow movement toward a nirvana beyond the whiplash of change and error.
I dreamt that Barbra Streisand, whose Jewfro in A Star Is Born looks like Harpo's wig, dictated her memoirs while riding in a limo.
I dreamt last night that Caroline Kennedy, at a bookstore, recited a tribute to Jackie Onassis.
A baby boy in my dream last night wrapped his arms around me and said, "Wayne has a fever."
I dreamt last night of kissing—slow-motion, in a vestibule—a half-Dutch, Jewish, photogenic student. He almost refused to recognize me, but I insisted on moist reconnaissance.
I dreamt, last night, of a performance artist, unclothed, discussing nudity. Her vagina behaved as a pointer—a compass, aimed toward my next invention.
I dreamt, last night, of a satisfying Verdi cabaletta, rushing headlong toward revenge and self-aggrandizement.
Dream: my father, in a surprise appearance, whisked me away to a Metropolitan Opera matinee. I had one or two tickets. I didn't understand the difference between one and two; numbers are philosophical problems. We entered a dark storage room, where our bodies pressed together: reciprocal hardness. The incest taboo didn't cow me.
Communication's impossibility reminds me of Adrienne Rich's poem "Trying to Talk to a Man." In my dream last night, Rich had buckteeth—new dental information I couldn't assimilate.
Another dream last night: I rubbed against some off-limits man, perhaps my father, brother, or student, or someone dead. Repeated rubbing turned my groin into a house, church, or bus station: I became a building because I'd illicitly rubbed against a taboo man (Harpo?): the sin of repeated, incremental observation and sampling. Now I remember: I was rubbing against one of my publishers! in a bathhouse! or a men's club, and aquarium, a terrarium. He apologized as he felt up my crotch, in the darkness, with Oulipian persistence. The room's darkness matched his out-of-control stubble, a field of hairs-gone-to-seed, a havoc of misattributions, a fecal intensity of inscriptions—triplicate hieroglyphs. His stubble was failure, not success.
Dreamt I slept with a writing teacher in her country house, Cape Cod or Mexico. Her breasts seemed inflated and artificial. She lay, with Lollobrigida insouciance, near a velvet pillow: the sight of velvet provoked a frozen interregnum sensation connected to air-raid sirens.
Last night I dreamt that Debbie Reynolds confessed to me, "I can't sing, despite my Singin' in the Rain fame."
Dream: I tried to explain the meaning of Heidegger's Da-sein to my students. I said, "God didn't create man. man was there, and he felt invented; he needed to describe his sensation of being-called-into-existence." A skeptical student, who planned to commit suicide tomorrow, scowled.
Last night I dreamt that I gave an A-minus to a Jewish girl, a student with red frizzy hair. She complained: she wanted a straight A. I told her, "Your essays were good, but you said nothing in class, and you befriended troublemakers." I consoled her with the gift of an old cologne bottle, still filled with French scent. (Pour un Homme?)
Dream: Harpo starred in a Yiddish film, a talkie. He spoke! His voice was soft and gravelly. Also dreamt I steamed an artichoke. Moral: I choke on art.
Dream: a woman called me complacent. In my hotel bed, she screwed a dark-haired man, whose Jewishness was undeniable, though domesticated by lawyerliness. I backed off, so she could monopolize.
Dreamt last night I gave a hand job to a literary powerhouse, while we sat, discussing finances, at a fancy Upper East Side restaurant. His dick: knobby.
Dream: I met Barbra Streisand at her home. Blonde, preoccupied, she confused me with another acolyte, a hack writing a book called Barbra in Motion.
In a dream last night I picked up the phone. A nineteenth-century woman on the other end said "Wayne?" I hung up. I didn't want to be recognized.
Dreamt I sucked my father's cock: I promise.
