Blake Butler: Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia

Somnus (Roman god of sleep), 71

sound, 21–22, 23, 29, 84, 94, 110, 150, 175

space, fear of, 169–200

Sparling, Ken, 210 n

spells, 239 n

Stalin, Joseph, 233

Stanford Sleepiness Scale, 262

Stearns, Peter N., 74 n , 78 n

stimulants, 262

Stone, Geo, 176 n

stress, 28, 171, 263

Strong, Stanley R., 237 n

suicide, 44–47, 92, 176, 185, 230, 236, 272

Sukenick, Ronald, 67 n , 194–195

Suspiria (film), 183

Swann’s Way (Proust), 60, 190

Sydenham, Thomas, 73

synesthesia

Talking Heads

Tarkovsky, Andrei

tattoos, 132, 157

telephone, 143, 218, 254

television, 86, 89–90, 91, 150, 155, 161, 233

temperature, 32–33

terror, 9–10, 16–18, 58–59. See also fear; night terrors

“Texts for Nothing” (Beckett), 67 n , 85, 85 n

Thai Ngoc, 115

Thanatos (Greek god of death), 71

Thirty Are Better Than One (Warhol), 180–181

This Is Not a Novel (Markson), 194

Thousand Plateaus, A (Deleuze and Guattari), 41–42 n , 90, 90 n

Tillman, Lynne, 63 n

Time Bandits

time capsule, 4–5

torture, 5–6, 73–74

Tost, Tony, 49 n

Tractatus (Wittgenstein), 192

transient insomnia, 34

trazodone, 264

Tripp, Peter, 114

Trobe, Kala, 239 n

Tudor, David, 86

tunnels, 9, 16, 66, 107, 156, 186, 188, 190, 202, 206, 211, 212, 218, 222, 239, 244, 267

Twin Peaks , 233

Twitter, 253–254

Tylenol PM, 260, 275

Van de Laar, Merijin, 34 n

Van Gogh, Vincent, 233

video games, 245–246

Vincent, Norah, 234 n

violence, 174–176

against others, 174–175

toward self, 44–47, 92, 175–176, 230, 236, 272

Waldeyer, Heinrich, 77

Wallace, David Foster, 195

Warhol, Andy, 43 n , 54–55, 88, 180–182, 182 n

water imagery, 160

Watson, John, 83

Watts, Alan, 62 n

Webb, Ethel, 51 n

Wegner, D. M., 59

Weston, Maureen, 114

white noise, 22

Willis, Thomas, 73

Winchester Mystery House

wire imagery, 214–219

Wise, Deirdre, 237 n

witching hour, 9

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 192

Wong, Tobias, 176

Yahoo! Answers. See online forums

YouTube, 93, 240, 253

Deepest gratitude and thanks to my editor Cal Morgan, without whom this book would not exist; to Carrie Kania and Bill Clegg, for the constantly amazing support and faith; to the entire tireless Harper Perennial team, particularly Gregory, Justin, Milan, Erica, Michael, and Brittany; to my family and home friends; to everyone at HTMLGiant and my internet friends and internet-flesh friends and sleep-people and the unreal; to so many who’ve been so kind.

1 From “The Most Commonly Used Torture Methods Applied to Victims Seen at the Danish Centre for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims” (Roth, 1405).

2 Ibid.

3 Bonnet and Arrand, 9–15.

4 Ibid.

5 Morin, 69.

6 Kellerman, 199.

7 Morin, 39–40.

8 A study of schizophrenics found they sleep on average two hours and twelve minutes a night (Gove, 790), a figure comparable to the sleep of a giraffe.

9 Van de Laar et al.

10 Gove, 793.

11 Harvey and Greenall, 12.

12 Ibid., 15–17.

13 Each sentence a container for each other sentence.

14 A book of faces, face of bookends, butt ends, endings, air.

15 In silence, yes, as it is inert, but with furor thereafter in such spillage that it might be thicker in its size by seeming to have no true dimension up front, and yet quasi-unending, of tiny slivers that fill the face.

16 Words bouncing other words out of them in a silence, refracted by association, filling out the flesh around the flesh inside the head with what.

17 Each day the same websites refreshed over and over, seeing nothing new and nothing new, though the flutter of the possibility of a newness having appeared since the last refresh causes some internal corridor through which I eventually return and find myself again refreshing, and refreshing, the site inert, to which I kneel.

18 “The abstract machine crops up when you least expect it, at a chance juncture when you are just falling asleep, or into a twilight state or hallucinating, or doing an amusing physics experiment. ..” Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.

19 These people removed of body, organs, removed of touch and sound, translated into symbols, numbers, smudged of tone.

20 Why am I still thinking about this. Why am I still thinking about this. It’s a Facebook comment. Why am I still thinking about this.

21 Inside the sentence, each word or image shits another; and from each of those, again, again.

22 All these people’s words inside my words.

23 What are minutes. I’ve been in here all these years.

24 “My mind wanders too much to drive.” Andy Warhol.

25 Their own hours at the glowbox, typing into nowhere, node to node.

26 Where’s that.

27 “ Where are these thoughts from? Rudd wondered. Who is crammed in here with me? Within him someone was speaking, leading him further and further out.” Brian Evenson, The Open Curtain.

28 The drift between each instance of any word that much larger than the word itself.

29 The knives in any house.

30 No two pictures of a person ever seem to really look the same, even exact copies.

31 There is no such thing as metaphor.

32 All blood, except quite up close, looks the same, despite its codes.

33 The chains and chains of cells grow out of the brain, draped on air and draped on floors we together walk upon.

34 These thoughts tend to rarely transcend their box — they mostly only ever serve as reinforcements for the semi-impermeable distinction between mind and skull and skin — encircling the self with gradually increasing spiral, stitches in a blanket, cells inside a shield.

35 Slumber, Shut-eye, Sleepyhead, Sleepy time, The Land of Nod, Nighty-night, Sleep tight, Sleep light, Oversleep, Shut-eye, Haven’t slept a wink, Fall asleep, Go to sleep, Go to bed, Go bye-bye, Go night-night, Turn in, Zonk out, Knock out, Roll over, Drift off, Pass out, Doze off, Conk off, Nod off, Forty winks, Sleep on it, Sleep one off, Crash, Collapse, Bedtime, The big sleep, Lights out, Shut up, Catnap, Get a nap in, Catch some z’s, Count some sheep, Siesta, Snooze, Sack time, Slumberland, Bed down, Bunk up, Saw wood, Hit the hay, Hit the sack, Hit the lights, Retire, Death, Die, Doze, Drop, Dream.

36 Sleeping gas, Sleeping bag, Sleep mark, Sleep goggles, Sleep Inn, Sleep King, Sleeper sofa, Sleepaway Camp, The Big Sleep, Sleeping Beauty, Sleepless in Seattle , Sleeping in, Sleep out, Sleep over, Sleeping around, Sleep with the fishes, Good night’s sleep, Sleeping soundly, Sleeping well, Sleep sores, Sleep aids, Sleep deeply, Power sleep, Sleep it off, Sleep standing up, Asleep on the job, Asleep behind the wheel, Crash, Crash out, Sleeping together, Sleep pills, Sleep drugs, Sleep meds, Sleep like a log, Sleep like shit, Sleep like a baby, Sleep like the dead, I’ll sleep when I’m dead, No sleep for the wicked, 24/7/365, The city that never sleeps, Sleep herbs, Sleep shirt, Sleep Nazi, Sleeper, Sleeper car, Sleepwalking, Sleep trouble, Sleep Society, Sleep advice, Healthy sleep, Sleep patterns, Master of Sleep, God of Sleep, Sandman, Orpheus, Sleep perchance to dream, Shhh the baby’s sleeping, Sleep on the sofa, Sleep on the street.