The Insomniac Reader

The Insomniac Reader

edited by Kevin Sampsell

Manic D Press, 255 pp., $13.95 (paper)

There is an impulse in all of us that is solicited by the night: to look in a stranger's window; to walk, alone, into a seedy bar; to dare to make that pathetic 3am call to an ex. To see someone doing something desperate or desperately human. The authors in The Insomniac Reader have entertained those thoughts, and those nocturnal musings fuel this collection of short stories. The holy trinity of the night – sex, drugs, rock & roll – fill the pages in poetic and furtive tones. The joys of stalking are espoused in Richard Rushfield's "Stalker's Paradise," which traces the root of obsession to an underground group of professional peeping toms. Jonathan Ames' "Everybody Dies in Memphis" takes a first-person look at a city overrun with hookers, swingers, and famous people all waiting to see Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis beat the shit out of each other. Ames paints a surreal picture; he escapes nearly impaling himself on a barbed-wire fence, wanders into a swinger's club, visits Elvis' house, and witnesses the dizzying spectacle of violence. ("I've smoked crack and the energy in the arena is like five really good hits in a row," Ames admits. "My heart is ready to ejaculate itself out of my chest.") Michelle Tea's "Fourteenth Street" takes a look at an eclectic, grimy San Francisco neighborhood on its way through sex, drugs, and gentrification. Tea describes it as "a great place for drunks to pass out with their bottles, for junkies to peel off a sock and shoot up between their toes." Several shorter stories tell tales of prostitution, grandmothers with fake arms, and phone sex via call waiting. For all the Reader's slapdash tawdriness, each story ultimately leaves us restless, wanting more. This is how the night operates.