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Sleep Has No Master

by Jon Konrath (Goodreads Author)

4.7 of 5 stars 4.70 · rating details · 10 ratings · 7 reviews

Can we tell the difference between our dreams and reality? In his latest collection of short stories and flash fiction, Jon Konrath dances between metafiction and nihilism in an absurdist world of geek culture where cancer is the latest fashion trend, books have been replaced in schools with episodes of Barney Miller, time travel is possible but annoying because of the com...more

Paperback, 234 pages

Published June 24th 2012 by Paragraph Line Books

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May 06, 2013 Arthur Graham rated it 5 of 5 stars

Like any good party, it starts off with some old-fashioned drug abuse, continues with a marathon of scat porn, Billy Joel records, and impromptu abortions, wraps up with more drug abuse, (fill-in-the-blank)-o-philia, and Japanese Noisecore, and ends with an epic, shock-induced enema. Published just last year, Jon Konrath's Sleep Has No Master is well on its way to being the family-friendly, feel-good sleeper hit of 2013!

This book includes a rather lengthy disclaimer at its outset, because appare...more

18 likes · like · see review

Mar 22, 2013 Frances rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

This is like a dog trying to crap a peach pit.

First, this shit is funny! Konrath makes me laugh. Reading this is like watching Clerks for the 49th time, and reciting the entire script while eating cheese puffs and smoking …uh, yeah… smoking.

Konrath has heart. It may be full of greasy, artery clogging KFC fried chicken, homemade hillbilly heroin, and Mountain Dew, but it’s in there. He tackles those important issues that affect all of us at least once in our lifetime: sexual anxiety, religion,...more This is like a dog trying to crap a peach pit.

First, this shit is funny! Konrath makes me laugh. Reading this is like watching Clerks for the 49th time, and reciting the entire script while eating cheese puffs and smoking …uh, yeah… smoking.

Konrath has heart. It may be full of greasy, artery clogging KFC fried chicken, homemade hillbilly heroin, and Mountain Dew, but it’s in there. He tackles those important issues that affect all of us at least once in our lifetime: sexual anxiety, religion, politics, the hillbilly-zation of America, insomnia, parking.

I LOVE his highly quotable style, and since finishing the book, I have used the following in daily conversation:

“I’ve never fucked anyone in a Chuck E. Cheese bathroom.”

“I’ve never even had a hard on in a pizza restaurant.”

“Corn dog, corn dog, fuckin’ cocksucker corn dog.”

“I guess you’re not spray painting anything on your cunt tonight.”

“You are nothing but the smeg from Jesus’s ball sac.”

I’ve decided that the following quote will get me a fast ride to the loony bin, so I will wait for the right time to slip it into a casual conversation:

“Wanna fuck me in the ass with a gas nozzle for a dollar?”

I was intrigued by Konrath’s presumed paid product placement, and scoured eBay, HSN and cqout.com for Winnie the Pooh nipple clamps, a case of Jolt cola, and one crate of the 2 foot long Pixy Stix mega tubes. Also, I booked a bus trip to Tampa to visit Uncle Kenny’s Sex Dungeon.

I perfected the recipe for his homemade energy shake. The ingredients are hard to come by, but this combination seems to work best for me: 4 - OxyContin tablets, 1 tablespoons Lorazepam, 2 - 12oz. cans of Mountain Dew, and 2 tablespoons Fentanyl. Snap top on NutriBullet, give 2 quick zing, zings, and voila! You're ready to fuck shit up!

I’m pretty sure I’ve been brainwashed into joining Konrath’s “special” club, because like any great Amway salesman, he has convinced me to “invest” in the rest of his books, and read until I have made 10 contacts within my centralized territory. Thanks a lot, buddy, hope to see you at the semi-annual Konrath Convention.(less)

7 likes · like · see review

Nov 04, 2012 Cassie-la rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads

REVIEW ALSO ON: http://bibliomantics.com/2012/11/04/b...

This is one of those books you need to read all the way through, starting with the hilarious multi-page disclaimer full of every warning already known to mankind. Konrath apologizes for “Resemblances to actual persons living, dead, or undead…” makes note to readers that, “This book should not be considered a legitimate historical document,” and that it “Mentions chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.” Also it may cause...more REVIEW ALSO ON: http://bibliomantics.com/2012/11/04/b...

This is one of those books you need to read all the way through, starting with the hilarious multi-page disclaimer full of every warning already known to mankind. Konrath apologizes for “Resemblances to actual persons living, dead, or undead…” makes note to readers that, “This book should not be considered a legitimate historical document,” and that it “Mentions chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.” Also it may cause “nausea” or “vomiting”, is not a toy and should not be used as fuel and most importantly it, “Does not protect against HIV … Or other sexual transmitted diseases.” Just in case you thought it did.

The chapter/story titles give you a hint of the insanity and depravity to come, with half of them sounding like “Big Bang Theory” episode titles and all of them making you wonder just what could possibly happen in a story with a title like: “Tesla Motors Doesn’t Have a Blowjob Referral Program”. Other noteworthy story titles include: “The Gamecube Junkie Abortionist’s Revenge”, “The George Washington Buttplug” (no relation to The Baby Jesus Butt Plug), “Art Garfunkel is my Copilot”, “Fifty Shades of Napalm” and “With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemas?” Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical.

Despite being a short story collection, they all feature the same narrator (at least I’m 90% sure they do) a struggling writer with sleep deprivation problems and his insane group of friends. Specifically: Fat Mike, Alex, Rocky, Odin (who has a grudge against Thor) and Marshall. Although the stories aren’t linear, they are still set in the same world whether it be the past in a community called Bighikistan, the present in New York City or the not so distant future. Or maybe not future, I’m honestly not entirely sure, this collection is a mind-fuck of epic proportions.

In this collection, we are also given a set of works laden with pop-culture and set in a world strangely similar to yet certainly not our own. For example, Bighikistan, is a fictional place full of red-necks who believe in high school demolition derby teams, a reliance on energy drinks and herbal supplements, and “mandatory religious literature condemning science”. We are never told if these stories are taking place in an alternate version of America or if our untrustworthy narrator just sees the world differently thanks to his inability to sleep properly and every story found within is just a dream or paranoid delusion he witnesses while awake. Or a little bit of both. Although this is bizarro, so an explanation might not really be required.

Our nameless narrator (possibly a hyper-exaggerated Jon Konrath, maybe not) lives in an America struggling to rebuild after the fast food wars and the tooth whitener market crashes. On the plus side there are time machines (some of which are in USB adapters) just don’t buy the cheap ones that only allow you to travel forward and backward 10 years in alternate universes only. I’d still buy it, who wouldn’t want to visit their alternate self and see how much better their life could be? Wait…

And of course there’s the satire on our consumerism and fame obsessed America. A world in which Bill Gate’s lifelong dream was to, “Write really shitty software that always crashed” (which he unfortunately achieved), people purchase exercise bikes that beat you in the head with sticks, the franchise Uncle Kenny’s Sex Dungeon can be found inside every Barnes and Noble in the country and even time machines make you watch five minutes of advertisements every two minutes. Then of course there’s the carcinoma fad in which celebrities make cancer cool so everyone is standing out in the sun and watching microwaves so they can have leukemia just like their idol Brad Pitt. Ugh, this is so close to reality it makes me want to stab myself in the leg. With a Kardashian endorsed knife of course.

Children don’t have things much better, in a world where Goofus and Gallant have been replaced with Highlights Extreme (which features BASE jumping and serial-killers) and Pixar is making animated snuff films, although they still have “moralist plots” for the parents. They’re also forced to watch cinema masterpieces such as the 3-D Lion King sequel Godzilla Versus the Lion King with voice over work by Samuel L. Jackson. Okay I take it back, most of these things are awesome and I kind of wish they were real.

That’s not to say just the world is weird, the people who populate it aren’t the most normal citizens in the multi-verse. Retired ex-wrestler Terry Funk teaches an honors calculus course (very poorly), the narrator’s friend Alex’s dad runs a “profitable prepaid colostomy card business” at a kiosk in the mall and Alex himself quit school to deal drugs and raise a pod of dolphins in the pool of his apartment complex. As the narrator makes note of, “Every place I ever leased would give me shit about the most miniscule things, like mixing paper and metal recyclables… Or leaving a severed foot in the front lobby,” yet in this magical world one can raise dolphins in a chlorinated swimming pool!?!

My absolute favorite story (“Fifty Shades of Napalm”) is the one in which the characters break the fourth wall and discuss the spelling of words so that the reader of the story can understand the difference between ball sac and Balzac. Or the inclusion of a scene integral to the plot but so heinous that it would scare publishers away at the same time: enter Vietnam, masturbation and children engulfed in flames. The chapter ends with a plea to us (the readers) to like the book so much that we tell everyone to buy it so, “It becomes as popular as those vampire romance teenage wizard books, but not so popular that someone buys it and edits it into a god damned Julia Roberts movie.” I’m a sucker for meta.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 24, 2012 Etienne DeForest rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bizarro, kindle-lendable

This is the second book by Konrath that I’ve read. Let me tell you what happens when you read one of Jon’s books.

He walks up your leg, bypasses the torso through some tunnel you had no idea existed, comes out of your neck, and walks into your ear. Once he’s in your brain he sets up a camping chair, chops up some lines of drugs made in a trailer park bathroom, snorts half the pile, and sprinkles the rest onto the brain tissue he’s sitting on so you can get on the same level as he is.

Then he tells...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Steve Rueffer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bizzaro

Wow! Konrath can really write. I loved every minute of this. Some educated and witty, yet bizarre stories await all those who dare enter these pages of twisted text. Reading portions of this book in public was a poor idea, as I often laughed so hard that people must have thought I was crazy. These stories kind of stumble around in your brain too... coming back from time to time to hasten back the fits of laughter. Great juxtapositions of odd characters and nostalgic moments also served to ignite...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 29, 2012 Ben Ditmars rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sleep Has No Master is edgy fun that will leave you uncomfortable and confused while having a deeper understanding of several sordid topics. The narrator from story to story doesn't really change but I found myself not noticing under the strength of Konrath's observations. It is a book you will laugh out loud reading. You will likely feel guilty for doing so as well.

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Sep 14, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Konrath has really slammed down some fluid, wild stories in this collection. I liked it even better than "Fistful of Pizza." The stories weave around and through fragments of junk and obsessions littering the collective American conscious with relentless speed and seamless ease. The leaps are sometimes staggering, but as delightful as occasionally obscene or blasphemous. In short, this is really a good one.

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Shelves: books-we-own

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Shelves: minerva

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Dec 30, 2012 Olga is currently reading it

Dec 11, 2012 Therese rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bizarro, fiction, short-stories, read-in-2012

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Shelves: ebook

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About Jon Konrath

Jon Konrath has written and published seven books, including Summer Rain and Rumored to Exist. He is the principal of Paragraph Line Books and editor of the literary journal Paragraph Line (ParagraphLine.com), and written for many other zines and publications. He is also an inventor, computer programmer, and amateur x-ray technician. He lives in Oakland, and has bought 40 acres of land in the moun...more

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