If the game is stump the reviewer, Jim Shaw wins a big stuffed dog. What is this book? No introduction, no explanation; just a single-syllable title from the So-Cal artist/author, followed by 250+ pages of eerie, deadpan surrealism in the form of pencil sketches and matching text. Are these, as the title seems to suggest, actual descriptions of Shaw's actual dreams? Or is this a coded confession, a comic-book course in self-analysis, an art prank, a new form of graphic poetry?

Whether Shaw really dreamed all this material or only dreamed it up, he should be commended for his persistence and dedication. From the first page to the last, there's not a shred of extended narrative to be found here. Each "dream" (there are often three or four per two-page spread) is completely unrelated to the next, and within any given entry, a half-dozen startling, irrational, silly, or meaningless images might butt heads.

The result is challenging, to say the least, but the pace of Dreams is perfectly geared to the channel-surf mindset. A reader can skip around in the book guilt-free, because every page is a submersion to the same depth in Shaw's stream of unconsciousness (and keeping track is almost impossible anyway, since the pages aren't numbered).

The text - which suffers from the EXTREMELY unfortunate circumstance of being printed in all caps - captures perfectly the unrehearsed tone of dreams being recounted. Shaw's detail-rich vignettes are delivered with flat matter-of-factness, yet never give way to a sense of reality. Without cracking the slightest grin, Shaw delivers thousands of declarative statements like "MARNIE WAS CLEANING THE DOG'S TOENAILS & ALMOST GOT SOME OF THE DIRT ON MY PENIS." (I guess some symbolism is so volatile that it's best to voice it without inflection.)

Evidently Shaw is one of those people who doesn't dream in color. His illustrations are gray, unrefined pencil sketches in the style of "boy realism" - the instantly recognizable drafting technique that talented ninth-graders use when filling spiral notebooks with superheroes and heavy-metal guitarists. Shaw - a noted connoisseur of kitsch, thrift-store, and album-cover art - seems to have adopted this struggling, earnest look on purpose (though his proficiency with it suggests that drawing like a 14-year-old comes easily for him). But while his style is adolescent, his imagery is decidedly adult, by turns frightening, sarcastic, or simply irrational, and the scraps of visual culture that pop up persistently in Dreams - comics, fine art, advertising, etc. - demonstrate that Shaw is, if not a stylist in his own right, at least an innovative mimic.