Customer Reviews

He Sleeps: A Novel

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HE SLEEPS is an engaging and scary portrait of an African American anthropologist in Senegal, trying to make sense of two worlds: the one he left behind in America, and this new one in Senegal. Unlike any number of contemporary writers who use self-conscious techniques that merely call attention to themselves, McKnight employees a wide range of rhetorical strategies to tell his story (letters, straight narrative, journals), but they are never distracting in HE SLEEPS, and after you've finished the novel and stand back, you realize that the various parts create a larger and more complex picture. I have no doubt that McKnight's reputation will continue to grow. HE SLEEPS is a novel that should be taught in university African American lit. courses not only because it defies conventions of a genre, conventions that, ironically, professors come to expect from black writers, but because it's a damned good book.

This is a really exceptional short novel. The main character is a black American ethnographer doing field work in Senegal. He's looking for material for his research project, variations on contemporary African legends. The story is told as much through the character's own writing as through conventional narrative, beginning with his letters to his estranged wife back in Denver, which include extraordinarily vivid descriptions of the people and things he encounters in Senegal, and his notebook, which contains his work, but increasingly discloses his emotional and spiritual life. As the character inexplicably starts sleeping and dreaming more and more, the line between dreaming and waking life becomes blurred. A kind of talisman is found, and there are suggestions that someone has put a curse on him and made him sick, but he doesn't know who, or even what's happening to him.

His interracial marriage is effectively over because of an infidelity and his wife suspects further involvements while he's in Senegal. His refusal to let go, her uncommunicativeness, his attraction to a beautiful married Senegalese woman (one of a family of inadvertent housemates), and the unremitting dreams, are the catalysts which result in a self-examination of his attitudes towards race and sexuality. There's a haunting scene at the barracoon at Goree Island in which the woman who accompanies him discloses something unexpected about her own past.

A complex, uneasy relationship exists between the character and the culture he's studying. There's some basis for mutual understanding between the Senegalese, who are mostly educated in the West, and the American, who's a student of their culture. Interestingly, the novel pays homage to Amos Tutuola's "The Palm Wine Drinkard," a book which made an impression on him in college (I picked up a copy after reading this novel). When he first arrives in Senegal, he's shown some deference by his taxi driver due to the nature of his research work, but later a child innocently refers to him as a toubob, which is ironic because his identity as a black man is vital to his sense of self. Whatever acceptance he receives comes with varying degrees of mistrust, attraction, jealousy, and animosity, and there's a feeling that he's being judged in ways he really can't understand. What defines a man in their culture may be more a matter of tradition and ritual than race. In one sense (strictly my interpretation), this novel describes a cross-cultural collision between traditional African communal society and the European notion of legitimation through writing and the irony is that a black American is the man in the middle. The judgement against him, based upon the inner self revealed in his writing, could almost be a metaphor for the honesty of this novel. And unless I'm mistaken, it would appear that some of the oral narratives he's been collecting and transcribing are more than legends, they're stories which may belong to the very cultural rite of passage into manhood with which he becomes intimately acquainted in the book's harrowing climax...

This was a lyrical dream to read. I like the way the author puts us in the mind and in the life of the main character. The action is a little weak, especially when it picks up towards the end of the story, but the mood he puts you in, the images he creates and the relationships you get to observe make this a nice read. Going over his words is much like taking in poetry. The character development was very strong, even though I really didn't like the main character, I was really able to feel how his issues impacted his life and in part why he went through the story the way he did.

Take a trip to Senegal with Bertrand, an African-American anthropologist gathering urban folktales for his dissertation. What seems like a routine field trip for collecting information and material turns into a journey of self-examination. Bertrand struggles with his marriage to a white woman. He scrutinizes the intention of his would-be friendships in Senegal. He learns first hand that things aren't always what they seem. He sleeps.

Coming into contact with a part of his psyche long buried, Bertrand takes stock of why he has become who he is and why he has done the things he has done. His once dreamless sleep turns into a vivid display of his relationships and emotions.

He Sleeps is not your typical "man on a pilgrimage" tale. Fashioned ornately with descriptive imagery and latent characterization of a likeable protagonist, He Sleeps proceeds to capture the reader with intensity. McKnight has a way of telling a story that is, at the same time, engaging and stark. He is able to relate Bertrand's story in the manner of an urban folktale of sorts. An exceptional book that monopolizes the reader's attention.

Reviewed by CandaceK

Bertrand, a black anthropologist goes to Senegal to study folk tales and traditions. He finds himself sharing a house with the Kourman family, Alaine, a government worker, Kene, a teacher and their young daughter, Mammi. Unwittingly he finds himself intertwined in their lives including their troubled marriage while he himself is trying to reconcile the disintegration of his own marriage to a white woman back in Colorado. Bertrand has never dated or been intimate with a black woman, a source of inner turmoil as well as a target for ridicule and wonderment in the village where he is staying.

Told alternatively in both third person and in first person journal form, the title refers to the constant chaotic dreams that at times are not only horrifying, but are downright scary, while others are very erotic, and frighteningly real. At times it is hard to tell when the dream ends and real life begins. Each day he sleeps more hours and develops unexplained illnesses. Though Bertrand just wants to finish his research fellowship and go back home and finish his doctoral theses, he finds himself becoming more involved in Senegalese life and culture. The beautiful, alluring Kene becomes an obsession, he is dreaming while awake, and he gets no respect from the Senegalese whom he has tried to convince he is their friend and native son. Bertrand finds himself communicating in three languages, English, French and Wolof and yet still unable to fully make himself understood.

Culture, witchcraft, identity, and passion clash in this literary tale full of symbolism and surreal occurrences that belie the reader's sense of reality. It is also a lesson in how language and culture intersect and clash, how black Americans go to Africa in search of the Motherland and their "roots" and sometimes find themselves strangers in a land where mores, values and traditions are worlds apart. Rich in tradition, (I loved the story of the Cock Thief) this is a must read by this underrated writer in the tradition of Ralph Ellison.

Dera Williams
Apooo Bookclub

This book is beautifully written and I love the descriptive prose, but I couldn't get past the first one hundred pages. I think it was clever the way the author displayed thw text for dreams in a different font..at first. I soon found that I couldn't tell when Bertrand was dreaming or not. I'm sure the author did this intentionally, but after page 100, I just got tired of it. I became so tired of the long, drawn out, discriptive dreams. There wasn't enough interaction between the characters for me. I tried to hold on and finish the book, but I couldn't. I peeked forward on some of the pages, but all I saw was more drawn out dreams. To me, it was repetitive.

One of the previous reviews, defensive, spiteful and jealous in tone - Colson Whitehead really IS all that - reads as though it was written by the author himself. Anyone who reads Black Issues Book Review magazine knows what's hot and what's not in the black literary world. As it is, the title of this book very aptly describes what happens when any reader of the male gender picks it up and tries to read it: HE SLEEPS. This one should be recommended for insomniacs.

Colson Whitehead, a recommended author, was today announced a winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Readers should definitely check out his two novels, "The Intuitionist" and "John Henry Days", two brilliant novels from this young newcomer to the black literary scene.

"The Emperor of Ocean Park" by Stephen L. Carter and "John Henry Days" by Colson Whitehead are truly outstanding books by black male authors. And, of course, anything by Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur "Genius" Awardee James Alan McPherson is highly recommended, especially "Hue and Cry" and "Elbow Room".