C2 EZ RE K THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 , 2019
scious”: a state of heightened
anxiety about sleep that keeps us
from getting enough sleep. In
“The Crack-Up,” that self-pitying
collection of essays published
after his death, Fitzgerald wrote,
“The problem of whether or not
sleep was specified began to
haunt me long before bedtime.”
We are a people constantly
doing the math, computing how
many hours of shut-eye we got,
how many hours we missed, how
many hours the weekend might
offer. In her slim, thoughtful
book “Insomnia,” Marina Benja-
min suggests that “the collective
noun that fits us best is a calcula-
tion of insomniacs.”
I’ve tried all the usual solu-
tions: yoga, warm milk, mela-
tonin, lavender sachets — noth-
ing works. Four years ago, I even
subjected myself to a formal
sleep study at the Sibley Hospital
Sleep Center in Washington.
That ordeal involved spending
the night in what looked like an
aggressively bland hotel room —
the kind of nursing-home setting
in which a wealthy octogenarian
might peacefully pass away. The
room included a mammoth re-
clining chair covered in preemp-
tive plastic and a large-screen TV
that could only show “The Sibley
Hospital Sleep Center Introduc-
tion Video,” starring a sluggish,
middle-aged man who couldn’t
sleep well until he’d completed
his treatment at the Sibley Hospi-
tal Sleep Center. I was covered
with electrodes — about two
dozen wires glued to my scalp
and face; some running down my
legs; two stuck up my nose. I was
the Borg Queen ready for bed.
Resistance is futile!
But alas, that little adventure
produced no revelations. My
symptoms were judged too mi-
nor to treat with any dramatic
measures. No Darth Vader mask
for me. My wakeful nights have
continued, putting me in ex-
hausted sympathy with a yawn-
ing number of Americans.
Naturally, a cottage industry of
NOTEBOOK FROM C1
self-help books has grown up in
response to this problem. And
because no social crisis would be
complete without a multimil-
lionaire telling us how to live,
Arianna Huffington wrote a book
titled “The Sleep Revolution:
Transforming Your Life, One
Night at a Time.” She’s hardly
alone. There are dozens of simi-
lar books resting on the shelves.
They’re designed to appeal to the
curious (“Why We Sleep”), the
proactive (“The Sleep Solution”)
and the ambitious (“Sleep Smart-
er”). Readers who like it rough
might enjoy “I Can Make You
Sleep.”
Like sheep jumping over the
fence, the recommendations are
strikingly similar:
Avoid alcohol and caffeine at
night.
Get some exercise.
Keep your bedroom dark and
cool.
Every expert also recommends
avoiding electronic screens be-
fore bed. I know this because I’ve
read it in bed on my iPhone at
least a dozen times.
The heavy shelf of nonfiction
books on sleep is to be expected
in a self-help era like ours, but it’s
curious to see that same obses-
sion has long run through works
of fiction, too.Remember, we’re raised on
tales of sleep dysfunction: “Snow
White” and “Sleeping Beauty”
both revolve around characters
who can’t be awakened. Wash-
ington Irving transformed a clas-
sic folk tale into one of America’s
first stories, “Rip Van Winkle,”
about a young man who falls
asleep for 20 years. Decades later
in our own lives we realize just
how prophetic “The Princess and
the Pea” is.
Given the horror of insomnia,
it’s not surprising that sleeping
too much or too little is a recur-
ring motif in our favorite maca-
bre tales. Stripped of their blood-
lust, what, after all, are vampires
and zombies but insomniacs
with bad taste? Mary Shelley’s
Victor Frankenstein is haunted
by sleeplessness. Nobody — not
even the dead — can sleep in
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the
House of Usher.” The sleepless
heroine of Charlotte Perkins Gil-
man’s “The Yellow Wall-paper”
goes mad.
Modern-day horror-meister
Stephen King flips that terror in
“Sleeping Beauties,” written with
his son Owen King. In this re-
working of fairy-tale myths, any
woman who falls asleep gets
covered in a sticky white cocoon.
Insomnia is their only hope.Earlier this year, Karen Thomp-
son Walker’s “The Dreamers”
considered a spreading sleeping
sickness in a slightly more realis-
tic setting. Jasper Fforde brought
his usual madcap wit to a reflec-
tion on sleep in last year’s “Early
Riser,” about a culture in which
most people hibernate through
the winter — the ultimate fanta-
sy!
How telling that the latest
novel from banned Chinese writ-
er Yan Lianke, “The Day the Sun
Died,” portrays his country’s
overcharged economy as a night
of exhausting sleepwalking: “the
great somnambulism [that] blot-
ted out the sky and blanketed the
earth, leaving everything in a
state of chaos.” Apparently, we
have successfully exported our
economic anxiety and our pecu-
liar liberty: Freedom from sleep!
That same pressure to meet
impossible standards propels the
female executive in Taffy
Brodesser-Akner’s fantastic new
novel, “Fleishman Is in Trouble.”
By the end, sleeplessness has
effectively shredded her mind.
Of course, modern characters
know we have a full spectrum of
sleep medications at our disposal
— along with all the unnerving
side effects. And the very market-
place that has disrupted our rest
is eager to sell us sleep apps,
monitoring bracelets, mouth
guards, weirdly shaped pillows,
white-noise machines, blue night
lights, nap pods, breathable
sheets — on and on, luring us
ever further from the natural
tranquility we crave.
In the title story of Deborah
Eisenberg’s most recent collec-
tion, “Your Duck Is My Duck,” a
doctor tells a painter that she
needs to figure out why she’s not
sleeping.
“What’s to figure out?” the
painter replies. “I’m hurtling
through time, strapped to an
explosive device, my life. Plus, it’s
beginning to look like a photo
finish — me first, or the world.”
Pleasant dreams.
[email protected]Ron Charles writes about books for
The Washington Post and hosts
TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com.At first, Mrs. Bunting worries
about her “perfect” lodger catch-
ing a chill on his nocturnal excur-
sions — how would she and her
husband survive without him and
his shiny new sovereigns? Worse
still, he might encounter the in-
sane killer who leaves a triangular
gray card inscribed “The Avenger”
on the mutilated bodies of his
victims. Day after day, the morn-
ing newspapers report this shad-
owy fiend’s latest outrage, theorize
about his identity and, not least,
drive the plot inexorably along.
Joe Chandler, a young detective
assigned to the case as well as a
friend of the family, regularly stops
by for a cup of tea, often asking
about Mr. Bunting’s almost 18-
year-old daughter, Daisy. Because
she and her stepmother don’t get
on well, Daisymainly lives with an
old aunt in the country. But even-
tually she arrives for a long visit.
Since its publication as a novel,
“The Lodger” has been made into
a stage play, filmed several times
(in 1926 by a young director
named Alfred Hitchcock), and
even turned into an opera. One
can see why. There are, essentially,
only five characters, most of the
action takes place in the Buntings’
house, and Mr. Sleuth and Mrs.
Bunting are roles to die for. So to
speak.
As time goes by, Mrs. Bunting
grows ever fonder, ever more pro-
tective of her reclusive lodger — he
is so well-mannered, so apprecia-
tive of her attentiveness to his
needs. Nonetheless, she eventual-
ly notices that he is always out on
the nights when the Avenger
strikes. As her suspicions increase,
so does her mental distress. Mr.
Sleuth has saved the Buntings
from ruin. Could this courtly gen-
tleman really be capable of brutal
savagery? Soon, Mrs. Bunting is
making excuses for her lodger’s
unsettling behavior, even lying
about his movements to Joe Chan-
dler. And then Mr. Bunting starts
to have his own suspicions. Mean-
while, Mr. Sleuth has taken notice
of the pretty, vivacious Daisy.
Marred only by an incongruous
few pages toward the end, “The
Lodger” remains an unput-
downable study of moral indeci-
sion. Being in Mrs. Bunting’s place
today, would you or I have acted
any differently?
[email protected]Michael Dirda reviews books each
Thursday in Style.never had she felt so hopeless, so —
so broken as now. Where was the
good of having been an upright,
conscientious self-respecting
woman all her life long, if it only
led to this utter, degrading poverty
and wretchedness?” Virtually pen-
niless, the couple don’t know
where to turn, when Mrs. Bunting
answers a tremulous, uncertain
knock at the front door:
“On the top of the three steps...
stood the long, lanky figure of a
man, clad in an Inverness cape and
an old-fashioned top hat. He wait-
ed for a few seconds blinking at
her, perhaps dazzled by the light of
the gas in the passage. Mrs. Bun-
ting’s trained perception told her
at once that this man, odd as he
looked, was a gentleman, belong-
ing by birth to the class with whom
her former employment had
brought her in contact.”
Might he see the rooms for rent?
At that question, Mrs. Bunting
feels her heart leap. “It seemed too
good to be true, this sudden com-
ing of a possible lodger and of a
lodger who spoke in the pleasant,
courteous way and voice which
recalled to the poor woman her
happy, far-off days of youth and of
security.”
Surprisingly, the soft-spoken
gentleman carries nothing but a
small leather handbag, about
which he seems strangely anxious.
Rather than go through the tedi-
um of supplying references, Mr.
Sleuth — for such is his odd name
— offers instead to pay in advance,
and to pay extra for that matter, if
Mrs. Bunting will keep her other
rooms unoccupied. Weary in body
and soul, he yearns for a haven of
solitude and peace. Still, Mr.
Sleuth grows positively excited
over a stove in one of the rooms. “I
am a man of science,” he explains.
“I make, that is, all sorts of experi-
ments, and I often require the —
ah, well, the presence of great
heat.”
The new lodger turns out be a
teetotaler and vegetarian, utterly
repulsed by drink and meat. Most
days, he studies the Bible for
hours, often murmuring verses
aloud: “A strange woman is a nar-
row gate. She also lieth in wait as
for a prey... .” What’s more, the
eccentric Mr. Sleuth likes to take
long walks in the middle of the
night and then, right after his
return home, immediately begin
one of his private experiments.BOOK WORLD FROM C1ACROSS
1 Suggestions,
informally
5 Many 40-Across
works
9 Supplement
14 Monsieur’s
mine
15 Champagne
designation
16 React to a loss
17 Watch
19 Palestinian
leader
Mahmoud
20 Childish
comeback
21 Increase,
with “up”
23 Simian
24 Jazzman
Fats Waller,
style-wise
29 “St. Louis
Blues”
composer
31 Huntsville’s
home: Abbr.
32 Nitrogen-
based dye
33 Turow book set
at Harvard
36 Quaking tree
40 “Boulevard
Montmartre”
series painter
44 Krispy
45 Room in una
casa
46 bran
47 Corn unit
49 Sisters on
whom “Little
Women” was
loosely based
52 Understand
57 It may be
inflated
58 Not bright
59 Dreadlocks
wearer
62 Golfer with
an “army”
65 Quake’s origin,
and a feature of
the answers to
starred clues
68 Walks
unsteadily
69 Make over
70 “Star Trek”
creator
Roddenberry
71 Sore throat
cause
72 Word with dash
or happy
73 Novelist FerberDOWN
1 Female rodent,
to Fernando
2 Arab chieftain
3 Returns
4 Afternoon break
5 Kimono sash
6 Anger
7 “Filthy” moolah
8 Expensive
9 Physicians’ gp.
10 Bio info
11 City with the
world’s tallest
building
12 Snares
13 Kickoff
18 Dirty work?
22 By way of
25 Object of much
reverence
26 Newton fractions
27 Rueful word
28 Voyager org.
29 Eccentric
30 Überauthority
34 “Learn about
the UV Index”
org.35 Pastel shade
37 Voiced one’s
opposition
38 Logician’s “E”
39 Forget-me-__
41 “How __ Your
Mother”
42 “Troublemaker:
Surviving Hol-
lywood and Sci-
entology” mem-
oirist Remini43 Brine has a lot
of it
48 Signal to stop
50 Virologist’s goal
51 Creamsicle
flavor
52 Gets ready,
with “up”
53 Long-billed
wader
54 Copier cartridge
55 Places to tie up56 Drive
60 Miss.
neighbor
61 Plane
measurement
63 Martinique,
par exemple
64 Clairvoyant’s
claim
66 Journalist
Tarbell
67 Steal, in slangLA TIMES CROSSWORD By Winston EmmonsWEDNESDAY’S LA TIMES SOLUTION© 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. 8/22/19KidsPost and Fred Bowen are on vacation
this week. Read more of his sports
kidspost columns in the archive at kidspost.com.OAdapted from a
recent online dis-
cussion.Hi, Carolyn: My
husband and I
had Baby No. 3
this year, we also
have 3- and 5-
year-olds. We
have a pretty good life and are
essentially living the dream, I’m
sure. We both work full time and
put all of our remaining time and
energy into our littles.
I feel — and my husband does,
too — like we’ve lost our
relationship. We like each other a
lot and appreciate each other
hugely (on good days!), three
kids and keeping house is
definitely a team effort for us,
but our relationship has been
back-burnered to the point that
we’re not sure how to get it back
on track. We live together, we get
along okay, we make a point to
have the occasional-bordering-
on-rare date night, but there is
little intimacy and not much of a
connection between us anymore.
We talk about it, we try to
make an effort, but we’re always
exhausted and it seems like we
keep swinging and missing at
attempts to get back to how we
used to be. He’s missing the
intimacy, I’m missing the
connection and we get frustrated
when we feel like we’re making
an effort and getting no return.
— Three Kids and No
RelationshipThree Kids and No
Relationship: Please, give
yourselves two gifts: a once-a-
week (not “occasional-bordering-
on-rare”!), standing
appointment to spend time
together without the kids, and
permission to take the long view.
The kids won’t be this
exhausting forever, or even five
years from now.
Wait — third gift: permission
to stop trying to “get back to how
we used to be.” Forget the little
kids thing — that’s not a realistic
goal ever. Life moves forward
and changes us, and changes
what we have. So, focus on
making something more
appealing out of what your life
and your relationship actually
are now. To keep looking back towhat once was, as if it’s somehow
achievable, is torture.
If money stands in the way of
your having a regular date night,
then look into low-or-no-cost
options like a babysitting swap
with another family. You can also
pay for care but keep the dates
low-cost or free. And keep in
mind how expensive counseling
and divorce can be, so you beat
back any temptation to skimp.
It’s important also for each of
you to find some alone time, too,
to keep yourselves from getting
swallowed up by parenthood.
Ideally you can find a way to
remain interesting to yourselves
and each other, but if that just
sounds like another chore or
another way to feel like you’re
doing everything wrong, then
frame it instead as just a way to
get out of parent mode for an
hour so you don’t lose yourfreaking minds.
Plus, when you’re covering for
each other as the other one gets
some air, you get to find your
groove with being solo parent,
and the confidence you build
that way can make the whole
gong show less stressful overall.
Plus it’ll give you a shot of
intense gratitude for each other.
And, again, be patient. A little,
a toddler, a baby, a house and
two full-time jobs? Of course you
miss intimacy and connection.
Remind each other you’re all in,
and surrender yourselves to the
ride.Write to Carolyn Hax at
[email protected]. Get her
column delivered to your inbox each
morning at wapo.st/haxpost. Join the discussion live at noon
Fridays at live.washingtonpost.com.Date nights are cheaper than divorce
Carolyn
HaxNICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTA Jack the Ripper-like
stranger roams the night
A phenomenon that writers can’t close their eyes to
ISTOCKThe
Reliable
SourceHelena Andrews-Dyer and Emily Heil
are away. Their column will resume
when they return.