Sleep [Paperback]

Stephen Dixon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1999

Contemporary short stories about edgy, urban, obsessive characters by one of America's best writers of experimental fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As this collection of stories written over the past 25 years confirms, there is no mistaking Dixon, twice nominated in fiction for the National Book Award (Frog, Interstate), for any other writer. His insistent narrators and obsessive characters view and review their situations, as if worrying that each moment could change everything. The moments are often small: a hairpiece vexes an elderly, vain theatrical producer; a man drives his route home again and again, looking for something he may have seen out of the corner of his eye; a young father mourns the instant his daughter chooses not to kiss him good-bye at the bus stop. Several of the stories might be called metafictional. Rather like a dog circling around in his bed before settling down, the narrator of "The Stranded Man" turns his desert-island fantasy this way and that: Is he or is he not on an island? Is there a woman with him? Does he marry her? Do they have children? How can such a story end? "Many Janes" begins "Give me a line," reminding us that good fiction, like good improv, can begin with any premise, and ends with the concatenation that comprises almost any life, "city, country, sickness, death." The fiercest metafiction in the collection, "Tails," is a jesting story that never lets the reader forget that every choice an author makes is arbitrary; it also contains Dixon's strongest self-criticism: "You repeat too much and too much of what you repeat is the obvious." The powerful title story contains all of Dixon's signature postmodern conventions, but is a little more forgiving. It depicts a man troubled because at the moment of his wife's death he has a thought that might be more selfish than loving: "Now I can get some sleep." In his inimitable way, Dixon reveals the heartbreak in something as quotidian as admitting one's weakness at the wrong moment.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

What more is there to say about Gould Bookbinder, the sex-obsessed antihero of Gould: A Novel in Two Novels (LJ 1/97)? Dixon has come up with 30 more chapters of Gouldiana, recounting the hopes, regrets, and anxieties of his later years. In this new installment, Gould is an aging academic who lives in New York City with his wheelchair-bound wife, who suffers from MS. All of his mental energy goes into elaborate sexual fantasies involving much younger women. A waitress at a vacation resort in Maine, the daughter of a faculty colleague, a young woman playing frisbee in the parkAin Gould's mind they all want to have sex with him. Dixon presents Gould's obsessions in extravagant run-on sentences that build into page-long paragraphs. Each chapter is essentially a self-contained short story. The overall effect is engaging and somewhat addictive. Gould is a self-centered boor, but he is also a very recognizable Everyman. Recommended for larger fiction collections. [Dixon fans should also consider Sleep, a story collection he has published this spring with Coffee House Press, ISBN 1-56689-081-0, pap. $15.95.AEd.]AEdward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angele.
-AEdward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; 1 edition (April 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566890810
• ISBN-13: 978-1566890816
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,097,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I mean, I'm cool with run on sentences some of these go on paragraphs within the sentences, once you see grammar is unreal, August 16, 2006

By 

My Uncle Stu (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sleep (Paperback)

This guy grows on you, Stephen Dixon. At first I was pretty turned off by the odd syntax of Dixon's writing. Sentences run on and on, spiraling off tangents, intermixed with fragments, strange little stops and stutters where words just seem to drop out. I had trouble with it because, hate to sound like a rules person, but those rules of grammar exist to help us understand the meaning of the of what we hear or read. I would read Dixon, laboring, confused, which person did he say did that, or was that a description of the hallway...? I started a couple of his novels, recommended to me by someone whose taste I respect, but I never got too far into them. I didn't just lose interest, I was actually annoyed.

The short stories work for me though. I like them, short and linear enough to keep me reading through them despite my discomfort with the style. And then suddenly, I got it. The problem was my attitude, not Dixon's lack of precision. It's like a painting that draws you in, you can get lost in the detail, focusing in on brush strokes and splashes of paint. But then you stand back and view it at a distance, and you see what the picture is. Dixon's work makes a kind of sentence when you just read through it and don't let the little twists and turns of the language snag you. Don't get stuck in the stabs of non sequiturs, side-streams of consciousness. The moment of revelation, and it was funny and poignant and honest and infectious as you can see, and there I was, back ten, twelve years ago rock climbing. Stuck in a spot, sewing machine legs giving out underneath me, fighting to stay focused and plan my path, tuning out the wind and the birds and the rushing creek underneath you, loud water stifling communication but that's why the canyon wall is there is the first place so who could complain, and then I got it, that you just keep your feet moving, that you just grab anything, lean on anything, push off any tiny thing you can plant a toe on, but don't stop, just keep moving and you can climb out of a canyon.

Good stories, the perfect length. I particularly enjoyed Sleep, To Tom, Hand, and the Hairpiece. I may even go back and attempt one of his novels, but I don't want to ruin a good thing for now.