The legendary writer-director was known for his cult hits, including Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man, sparking a genre of movies and TV series that revealed the dark undertones of outwardly idyllic America and inspiring generations of artists beyond Hollywood.

The book “calls for a new approach to Lynch’s films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch’s work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination,” per the synopsis.

The academic title examines how Grammy-nominated singer Lana Del Rey, late writer David Foster Wallace and other creatives “grafted Lynch’s affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects.”

American Dreamscape has been in the works since 2011, long before Lynch revealed in August that he was diagnosed with emphysema and could no longer leave the house, the writer says.

The book was born from an article that eventually became the chapter on Lynch’s 1990 film, Wild at Heart (starring Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage).

Portions of the work were published in 2020 and the rest was completed during the pandemic.

He adds, “David Lynch’s work has been a more or less constant part of my life since I was 5 years old and ran screaming from the theater during a showing of Dune. More than any other artist I’ve been enamored with, Lynch has been the one whose work I’ve never tired of or grown out of. In fact, it has only gotten better the more time I have spent with it, and his career is a marvelous testament to how someone can grow and change as an artist while remaining wholeheartedly and undeniably themselves. His artistic signature is unmistakable — we even have the word ‘Lynchian’ for it — and yet this style inspires others to create a signature of their own and devote themselves fully to what he called ‘The Art Life’ in ways big and small.

“It wasn’t always the most lucrative path he could have taken, but he pursued his aesthetic vision to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes that meant toiling in relative obscurity with less funding for his projects, other times he found the culture came to him, as it did with Twin Peaks. Perhaps more than any other American filmmaker, he made sound an equal to image in his filmmaking and, along with [Martin] Scorsese, is responsible for the now-ubiquitous trend of repurposing pop songs in dark stories.

“But even more than his artistry, we have in him a beautiful example of someone who saw the world with wonder and acceptance and encouraged others to do the same.”

Miley continues, “Lynch’s power as a filmmaker is that he had an amazing access to his subconscious and the ability to put that subconscious on film without judging it or overthinking or rationalizing it. Scholars and fans turn to his work again and again because it shows us the things about ourselves that we normally shield from everyday view. If he thought about his ideas the way that we do, these films wouldn’t exist, and cinema would be worse off as a result.”

Lynch movies could be stream online:

Blue Velvet, Dune (1984), Eraserhead, Fire Walk With Me and Inland Empire are on Max.

Twin Peaks and its reboot are on Paramount+ with Showtime; Mulholland Drive is streaming on demand at Criterion Channel or available to buy or rent on Prime Video and Apple TV; and The Straight Story is on Disney+; to name a few.