Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Bill Hayes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2001

Bill Hayes grew up in a family in which the question "How'd you sleep?" was as much a staple at the breakfast table as orange juice or coffee, a question that encouraged genuine reflection and, as it turns out for the author, a legacy of life-shaping implications. If there's such a thing as an insomnia gene, he tells us at the outset of this beautifully written memoir, my father passed it on to me, along with his green eyes and Irish melancholy.

Bill Hayes' life as an insomniac is rooted in the wry trappings of irony: his father ran a Coca-Cola factory, of all things. I've often wondered if all that sugar and caffeine altered my neurochemical makeup. Moving seamlessly to and from his present vantage point in San Francisco, Hayes' narrative affords an intimate look at one man's singular journey through contemporary life -- from his sleep-disturbed childhood through his sleepwalking in adolescence to the height of his insomnia, when his partner struggles with AIDS and Hayes must face an increasingly troubling and debilitating sleep disorder.

Along the way, armed with an infectious curiosity and an obsession with the mysteries of his personal demons, Hayes leads us on a fascinating exploration of disorders such as sleep-talking, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea and contends with all manner of theories and experimentation, from the conceptions of sleep in ancient mythology to today's state-of-the-art sleeping aids and clinics.

As with desire, sleep resists pursuit. It must come find you. Nevertheless, I look for it. This powerful book is the result of Bill Hayes' lifelong search for sleep.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For as far back as he can remember, Hayes has had trouble sleeping. He'd wander his parents' house at night, "existing on nothing but the fumes of consciousness," jealously wondering how everyone else slipped into dreamland so easily. From these nocturnal ramblings grew an unblinking, lifelong fascination with sleep (or the absence of it), which Hayes has transmuted into a skilled and graceful debut that variously reads like a journey of scientific discovery, a personal memoir and a literary episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not. Hayes, a freelance writer from San Francisco, chronicles all his attempts to secure a good night's rest, from folk remedies to psychotherapy to sleeping pills (which failed to provide relief: "The difference between drugged and natural sleep eventually reveals itself," Hayes writes, "like the difference between an affair and true romance"). In charting the struggle of scientists and philosophers throughout history to understand insomnia, Hayes produces a bonanza of oddball trivia. We learn the longest verified period without sleep was 180 hours, achieved in 1957 by an amphetamine-driven researcher, and that the presence of an internal biological clock was proved in 1955 by flying a hive of bees from Paris to New York on a newfangled jet. Intertwined with all these anecdotes are Hayes's recollections of growing up Catholic and coming to terms with his homosexuality. Though these memories have little to do with his reflections on insomnia, Hayes is such a fluid, poetic and entertaining writer that it doesn't matter. The explanation of how a researcher discovered REM (rapid eye movement) sleep by studying his own son, for example, is just as gripping as Hayes's descriptions of how he helped his partner manage his AIDS symptoms. An intelligent, beautifully written book, Hayes's curious hybrid will delight readers who snore past dawn as well as those who pace away while the midnight oil burns. Agent, Wendy Weil.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Read this one, savor it, just don’t take it to bed with you.” -- Out, April 2001

"Who knew insomnia could be so much fun?" -- Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2001

Robert Pinsky Poet Laureate of the United States, 1997-2000 Like the most rewarding kind of travel writer, Bill Hayes is both informative and personal as he takes us through the borderlands of sleep and waking, mysterious yet familiar. I'm grateful for the way this intimate, reflective and factual guidebook captures the feeling of that terrain. -- Review

“[A] graceful hybrid of a book that’s half research treatise and half memoir." -- Entertainment Weekly, March 9, 2001

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; First Printing edition (February 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671028146
• ISBN-13: 978-0671028145
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,810,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"One of those rare authors who can tackle just about any subject in book form, and make you glad he did." -- San Francisco Chronicle.

Bill Hayes is the author of the national bestseller "Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir" and "Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood." His work has also been published in The New York Times Magazine and Details, among other publications. He has been featured on many NPR programs as well as the Discovery Health Channel. He lives in New York City

Hayes's first book, "Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir" (2001), received glowing reviews in Entertainment Weekly, Out, Kirkus Review, and others. In a starred review, Publisher's Weekly called Sleep Demons, "An intelligent, beautifully written book...that variously reads like a journey of scientific discovery, a personal memoir, and a literary episode of 'Ripley's Believe It or Not.'"

In his next book, "Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood" (2004), Hayes wove together memoir and medical history in a compelling look at the five quarts of vital fluid that runs through each of us.

"The Anatomist," his latest book, (2008), is a narrative nonfiction account of the story behind the 19th-century classic revered by doctors and artists alike, Gray's Anatomy. "Bill Hayes has written a thrilling book that is simultaneously an autobiography, a biography of Henry Gray, a scientific essay on our human anatomy, and a heart-breaking elegy," author Richard Rodriguez notes. "I do not know another book like it."

"With prose both lucide and arrestingly beautiful...Hayes pays eloquent tribute to two masterpieces: the human body and the book detailing it."
-- Publishers Weekly.

"Remarkable! The Anatomist deserves a place on every bookshelf."
-- Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars highly recommended: it kept me up at night, March 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir (Hardcover)

Though I've never had trouble sleeping, I found this book fascinating. I couldn't put it down, reading late and awaking early to enjoy its beautifully written passages. Hayes expertly weaves the scientific and historic aspects of sleep (and sleep disorders) with his own extremely personal revelations. The very specifity of his details triggered my own reflections on my relationship with sleep and with the world. Don't miss this remarkable debut from a wonderful wordsmith.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, May 29, 2001

By 

Jody Grant-Gray (Santa Monica, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir (Hardcover)

As a sleep researcher myself, I appreciated how the author connected his personal sleep problems with ancient, historical, and current studies about sleep. Quoting a variety of sources from books, interviews and articles, the book presents the information in a very candid yet engaging manner. I wish the author a good night's rest, finally.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Intermittently interesting, but recommended nonetheless, April 22, 2010

By 

y2pkreads - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir (Paperback)

Sleep Demons is part memoir, part discussion of sleep and sleep disorders by Bill Hayes, a self-described agnostic gay insomniac. I found both the memoir and the sleep information intermittently interesting: Some of the scientific sections came off as dry and tedious to me, and I wasn't expecting to read so much about Hayes's active sexual life. Of particular interest to me were his childhood and family life, and then later years living in San Francisco with his partner, Steve, who was HIV-positive and later developed AIDS. The first-person narrative of their life at this time was intriguing and touching, and was what ultimately made me glad to have read Sleep Demons. I'd like to have given it 3 1/2 stars, but felt 4 was too high for my thoughts on the book. So 3 stars it is.