Gently Down This Dream: Notes on My Sudden Departure

A beautiful final note, previously unpublished, from one of the most successful and pioneering confessional writers of our time

If ever a book warranted the overused terms classic and groundbreaking, it would be Hugh Prather’s 1970 Notes to Myself. And if an author ever deserved to be called beloved and pioneering, it would be Hugh Prather. In 1970, a struggling unpublished Prather sent his unsolicited manuscript to a small, independent publisher in Utah. What happened next was unprecedented in publishing history: Without national advertising, a sales force, media appearances, book reviews, or social media promotion, Notes to Myself sold over a million copies in its first year of publication. The New York Times, in a full-page profile, called Prather an American Kahlil Gibran.

The fresh, authentic humor, comfort, and insight Prather offered resonated phenomenally. He articulated a way through what can often seem the prison of the self, revealed a prism through which to view love, and provided a means for navigating the world at large.

Gently Down This Dream’s subtitle references his sudden death in 2010. The book’s autobiographical essays, poems, and aphorisms make for a lovely, and loving, PS to his millions of fans and a winning introduction to his truly beautiful mind for new fans to come.