How Did You Sleep?

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

It is accepted wisdom not to judge a book by its cover, but Rene
Magritte’s Reckless Sleeper provides one frame through which Paul
Glennon’s first collection of short stories can be viewed: surrealism.
Glennon is not a surrealist writer, however. When viewed in the context
of Eluard and Breton, his fiction is far more conscious, careful, and
edited.

Art is a recurring theme. Whether considering a museum of memories
(“The Museum of the Decay of Our Love”) or examining the work of a
fictitious group of artists (“Via Crucis: A Retrospective”), Glennon
pairs his pared-down fictions with fictional works of art. The latter
speak their thousand or so words directly to the reader instead of
Glennon spelling them out.

Glennon also offers lists of artful definitions. The title story is a
dialogue in which the two speakers describe to each other how they have
slept. This exchange of dreamy/nightmarish definitions is on one hand
very specific in terms of description. On the other, it is general
enough to allow the reader to apply any number of characters and plots.
“A History of My Mistakes” defines a single event through a series
of “literary” fallacies that have been categorized and listed.
Eventually, the Furtive Fallacy becomes the Furtive Fallacy Revisited
and while the story is an interesting exercise, the final definition
leaves the reader with the same feeling as the phrase: he woke with a
start to realize it was all a dream.

Transformation is another theme. A chairman is turned into a bear after
a corporate takeover in “The Bear Story,” while in “Chrome” the
narrator wakes to find everything has turned to chrome. Unusual and
entertaining, How Did You Sleep? is a collection to be appreciated for
the risks its author has taken.