Abstract
Falling asleep is no easy task. It is a fine art and a performance art, and some of us are better at it than others. We start as actors: in the bedroom’s dark, we prepare ourselves for sleep by mimicking it. We get into costume. We get into position. We lie supine and close our eyes. We mentally rehearse our lines with heartfelt sincerity: “And now to sleep!”
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Notes
Kenton Kroker, The Sleep of Others and the Transformations of Sleep Research (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007), 74.
Erin Sullivan, “Insomnia,” The Lancet 371 (2008): 1497.
See Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s on-Line Pioneers (New York: Walker & Co., 1998).
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A fantasy similar to that found in the films Avatar and Inception, as mentioned in the Prologomenon.
Edward Lord Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1875), 46.
George Miller Beard and Alphonso David Rockwell, A Practical Treatise on the Medical and Surgical Uses of Electricity (New York: W. Wood & Co., 1871), 309.
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Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes, vol. 2, (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1910), 215.
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© 2014 Lee Scrivner
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Scrivner, L. (2014). A Modern Insomnia. In: Becoming Insomniac. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137268747_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137268747_2
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