How Did You Sleep?

By Paul Glennon

Paul Glennon makes a commanding debut with a writing style that is both quirky and elusive. His stories -- strange, yet funny -- are about madmen, paranoiacs and the allegorically burdened. For the characters in these stories life is a board game to which we have lost, or perhaps never had, the instructions. Their predicaments are impossible, absurd but strangely genuine. A husband wonders if his wife has always been made of wood. A scientist suspects his left hand is plotting against him. A tourist visits a museum dedicated to his own failed romance. The world is trying to communicate something to these characters, but they cannot interpret it.

These stories navigate an unusual course between science fiction, satire and psychology. It makes for a journey that is strange, disturbing and surreally comic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889842159
• ISBN13: 9780889842151
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Keep an eye on this one

Paul Glennon lives a real life. He works at a real job (as much as any computer-related job can be a real one.) But you wouldn't know it to read this book.People familiar with Donald Barthelme will have some inkling of what Glennon's stories are like. But How Did You Sleep is not as distant, not as cold as Barthelme could often be. These stories are confessional; they're personal; they're also very strange: a man discovers his wife is made of wood; another man wanders through a museum devoted to his failed love affair; a high-powered businessman is thrown off the Board of Directors and turned into a bear. But the highlight story, perhaps, is not really a story at all -- it is a story merely implied in the notes for a (fictional) art exhibit.I would heartily recommend this book to fans of Barthelme, or of Ray Vukcevich. Or to anyone interested in something coming from another direction altogether from most everyone publishing today.