![]() ![]() The novel is a hymn to my relationship with the city, constructed out of history, memory, and nostalgia. Looking at Behind the Scenes now, I can see that York, not Ruby, is the all-pervading main character of this book. ![]() When I woke up, I immediately thought, “That dream was called ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum.’” My second thought was more revelatory: “Of course, that’s what the novel should be called.” I rarely remember dreams, let alone give them titles, but I presume that my unconscious self (not usually so lucid or so obviously helpful) was engaged at some deep level in the “writing process,” as we glibly call it-as if sentences roll out smoothly on a factory production line rather than being manually wrought in a hellishly tedious part of the brain. ![]() Although it was dark and frightening, I was compelled to investigate (as we are in dreams) and, as I moved from room to room in the museum, objects sprang to life-a fire suddenly flared in a hearth, an automaton began to move. I Had A Dream In The Early Stages Of Writing The book-long before any publisher or agent was interested and when it was still a small handful of random chapters-and in the dream I was in the Castle Museum in York, on my own, in the middle of the night. Introduction to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition of Behind the Scenes at the Museumįirst, The Title. ![]()
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