"I really can't be expected to drop everything and start counting sheep at my age," said Dorothy Parker. "I hate sheep."

Joyce Carol Oates could have had Parker in mind when she wrote of "the secret pride of the insomniac who, for all his anguish, for all his very real discomfort, knows himself set apart from all the others." But Woody Allen offers this consolation: "The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more."

As the authors of this book note, the world is divided into those who sleep well and everyone else. If you're wide-eyed at night, you're in good company, a member of a club that includes geniuses, statesmen, musicians, movie stars, authors, scientists, wits, and one of this book's authors, San Francisco writer Deborah Bishop. Co-author David Levy is a New Yorker who reports no trouble sleeping in the city that doesn't.

In this quirky compendium, they seek the ideal reader, as described by James Joyce, someone "suffering from an ideal insomnia." The authors mix pithy quotes, poems, and selections from both fiction and non-fiction on the trials of missing sleep with mini-essays on advances in sleep research. The latter include reports on hormone activity in sleep, sleep in teenagers and the elderly, sleeping medications, lucid dreaming, and more. The authors propose an insomniac's film festival, and provide summaries of Taxi Driver, Rear Window, and others you might find channel surfing at 3 a.m.

The book is designed for random browsing, mimicking the way the mind works when sleep proves elusive. Some of the graphics, unfortunately, prove more jangling than soothing: very large or very small typefaces often are superimposed on black and white illustrations, making the words hard to read. Some of this book's contents are dreary: there's lots of angst over similarities between sleep and death.

But most of what's here is entertaining, including a list of 85 topics of regret, remorse, resentment, and recrimination. "Why didn't I buy a house 15 years ago, instead of a new Toyota?" "The Pomeranian seemed cute in the window." "Am I eating enough cruciferous vegetables?" "Is my new computer already obsolete?"

Here's one more: "Why am I staying up to read this, instead of snuggling under my blankets in the dark?"

-Current Month-    -Archives-    -Author List-    -About Lynne Lamberg-

Copyright (c) 2000 Websciences
All Rights Reserved