Sounds Like David Brooks Did a Lot of Acid in College

Ha, the University of Chicago's newspaper dug up a 1982 column by NYT bobo David Brooks. It's about his nightmares. He had an intense fear of gargoyles, zombies, and totally weird wallpaper:

He dreams he's trapped in academia—strange academia:

My only company are the four gargoyles which adorn the corners of my diploma. They smile at me sinisterly.

As I say, this is how my nightmares always end.

That purple sunshine is killer. Sometimes David dreamed he was in the bookstore—zombie bookstore:

"Stop! Please!" I shout. "I can't read all these!"

"Oh, but you can," one of the zombies replies in an evil voices. "After all, this is what you're going to spend your life doing." And they begin laughing menacingly, echoing louder and louder until I'm finally crushed under the weight of the books, and I wake to find myself in the small office, chained to the degree.

Worst of all is when David dreamed he was watching the Brady Bunch in a room with wallpaper—trippy wallpaper:

I go back to the Brady Bunch and don't look up until a half-hour later, after Greg and Cindy have apologized to Bobby for stealing his skateboard. I notice the wallpaper is very strange.

Instead of the floral print I had expected, the guy is pasting up copies of Critical Inquiry and the American Journal of British Philology and The Annals of the Conference on Latin American Linguistics. When the walls are covered, the man leaves without a word. I notice that the room seems to be shrinking, the walls coming in on each other.

Doing that blue pyramid blotter in a colorful setting is a rookie mistake, dude. Explain yourself!

We contacted him to get his thoughts on the article, but Brooks came up blank. "Weird. I have no memory of that piece," he said.

HEH. [Chicago Maroon]