And it does come back, doesn’t it?
That is: Not the thing, but the representation of the thing. Not the passion, but passion’s show; not emotion, but the memory of once having experienced the emotion; not life, but a half-life, a representation of a life, one set out by someone or something, possibly higher, probably not, but certainly other, though for what purpose it’s not possible to name, not possible to summarize — only that intention does not count, or desire, or tragedy, or comedy, but instead some unnameable other, some word still unspoken, unthought of by anyone since the very beginning of words, the most important word of all, which is, at the same time, perfectly and totally irrelevant to anything that ever was thought, or could be thought, no matter when.
And why, if the dead only dream that they are living, should they want to wake? Why should they want to come back, to spread out once again, like a stain?
To rerun.
Which is not the correct word at all, by the way.
To touch.
To participate.
But in what?
Not that it matters.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the early readers of this book: Lee Montgomery, Janice Shapiro, Dylan Landis, Monona Wali, and also to my wife, Jenny, and our son, Henry, all of whose responses were invaluable. I am amazingly fortunate to have Meg Storey as my editor; her care and thoughtful annotations to each draft are reflected on every page. Special gratitude to Julie Starrett for her permission to use Michael Woodcock’s painting St. Joseph’s Day for this book’s cover.
PRAISE FOR THE SLEEP GARDEN
“The Sleep Garden is Jim Krusoe’s looniest and most satisfying book. Inane and trivial questions are given close consideration, while questions of life and death (and the differences between life and death) are intimated and then suspended.
Only a special kind of genius (or an idiot savant, as the book suggests) could dream this stuff up. I have no idea how he does it, but do it he does, and no one else can blur stupidity and significance with such sublime, funny, and human results.”
— MICHAEL SILVERBLATT, Bookworm KCRW
PRAISE FOR JIM KRUSOE
“Krusoe’s sure and subtle imaginings of such characters — yearning, isolated and finally enigmatic — place him among the foremost creators of surreal Americana.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“Krusoe’s latest is a self-reflective coming-of-age story wrapped in a fable and sprinkled with wry observations. . Parsifal becomes a piquant commentary on tensions between nostalgia and reality, the past and the present, and humanity’s need for myths.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Jim Krusoe is the mad scientist, the man behind the curtain. . Krusoe does something magical with regular words and regular life. His adjectives glow with possibility. . like an alien presence with a new language that sounds enough like our own to make us strain to uncover its meaning.”
— Los Angeles Times
“Jim Krusoe’s work is full of the most curious urgency: I love to keep reading, and I don’t know what I’m waiting for, exactly, but I know whatever I find will hover in my peripheral vision for a while after I’m done.”
— AIMEE BENDER, author of The Color Master
About the Author
JIM KRUSOE is the author of the novels Parsifal, Toward You, Erased, Girl Factory, and Iceland; two collections of stories; and five books of poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund. He teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles.