SOURCE: "Dream Surgeon," in Nation, Vol. 263, No. 13, October 28, 1996, pp. 58-60.

Seymour is an American journalist, editor, and author of such works as Jazz: The Great American Art. In the following review, he reflects on the absence of imagination in modern society and responds favorably to Wideman's treatment of the subject in The Cattle Killing.

Dream is dead. I should have known about it sooner, but I rarely bought the Sandman comic book in separate installments, preferring the bigger, glossier compilations. So it was only when I read The Kindly Ones (DC Comics Vertigo), which appears to be the final collection of stories from Neil Gaiman's extraordinary graphic fantasy series, that I found out that Dream—a k a Sandman, Lord Morpheus—had ceased to be. Worse, there isn't much left of Morpheus's kingdom except the corpses of his loyal followers and a tender-hearted raven named Matthew, his lone...