Sleepers Awake

by Kenneth Patchen

Sleepers Awake, first published in 1946, is one of Kenneth Patchen’s major prose books. A work of extraordinary imaginative invention, it might be described as “novelistic fantasy”—a pioneering new direction in fiction which created its own protean form as it was written. Patchen mingled narrative with dream visions, surrealism with satire, poetry with statements of principle, and explored the then almost uncharted territory of visual word structures twenty years before “Concrete Poetry” became a popular international movement.

Sleepers Awake is a rallying cry to young and old, as Patchen advances his long struggle against inhumanity, oppression, war and hypocrisy. Now brutal, now lyrical, he gives us life and the world as we must take these if they are to have full meaning; the horror and the beauty, the joy and the suffering together.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Surreal, Novels

388 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Kenneth Patchen was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of William Blake and Walt Whitman. Patchen's biographer wrote that he "developed in his fabulous fables, love poems, and picture poems a deep yet modern mythology that conveys a sense of compassionate wonder amidst the world's violence." Along with his friend and peer Kenneth Rexroth, he was a central influence on the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation.

Reviews

[Eckhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, the best book I have ever read. I have read this almost ten times. It is simply brilliant, beginning to end.

[Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Patchen is prime for a major rediscovery. Erudite, ecstatic, uninhibitedly playful. Confidently written in multiple genres, as if it were following a common form. This is poetry. I will re-read and re-read, etc.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

a beautifully hallucinatory romp through an anti-war psyche in the guise of a detective screed. one of my favorite books of all time. literature as pure art

[Sergei Voitovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

This should be treated like a book of poetry. A dense experiment with forms, borderline mad. Sleepers Awake reminded me of David Lynch’s Eraserhead with its equally vivid feelings of being deeply disturbed. But what it’s really about is all the beautiful things in this world, about passions and devotions of each and every human, and how hopelessly unreachable those are for the most.

[E.R. Carlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult if not impossible to characterize the effects of the Sleepers Awake experience. In a basic sense, Kenneth Patchen’s work consistently addresses the boundless nature of human consciousness and experience. As an artist, Kenneth Patchen’s uncompromising commitment to his own truth and to creative expression is awe-inspiring. Willing to sacrifice for his artistic vision, he breaks through the conventions of content and form to create an experience that is chaotic, imaginative, and unquestionably free.

For me, the heart of this anti-novel is carried in a poem. The poem essentially begins on page 209 and ends on page 211; although it neither begins nor ends, but rather becomes something else. The poem itself is a blend of dialogue between a man and women in bed on the precipice of lovemaking. The women is begins to lament the state of the world. The intrusion of sorrow into the urgent desire of the situation is analogous to the continuous interruption of the narrator and his urgent need to tell his story. As the dialogue unfolds, the basic crux of the novel is spelled out. “I’m/sorry I did a lot of the things I’ve done/maybe I killed somebody/who ever knows/when they’ve killed somebody/who ever breathes/without depriving somebody of breath” (210). The killing here is both physical in the case of war and metaphorical in the case of the spirit. “I mean the gun in your mind, Al” (318).

Kenneth Patchen acknowledges the inability of humans to exist without each other and without imposing themselves on each other. Not only does this imposition create chaos and the possibility of love, it creates an unstable world that violates the basic unique identities of each human being. Perhaps we are doomed to find ourselves always "AWAKE ON THE PRECIPICE," (and if lucky) about to transform, but never knowing how we arrived and always interrupted by life, poverty, space, war, time—(the artist) always struggling to live in anti-novelty.

[Andrew Sare · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mistake by me of getting this from the library and not purchasing it, which will be corrected with my next Patchen adventure. It's quite the artifact. Razor sharp writing (a rusty razor though) with proto-concrete poetry, picture poetry, self reflection, violence, love, care for the reader, literary criticism, social criticism and metafiction, all wrapped up in a surreal dreamscape which is an incredible read.

I think I subconsciously picked this up as on a companion to Miss MacIntosh My Darling because both are based in dreaming (arguably, or arguably not). MMMD book is endless character introspection constantly confusing. Sleepers Awake is vivid, alive in form, barely a book, biting and never as gentle. The two are opposite in many ways.

"A book can't do much except bleed. Damn if I don't think its too late for books anyway. You shouldn't be amused - you should get a good kick in the ass. You want form, do you? I'll give you a form. I'll make you really wish for something nice and cozy - Something all chewed and digested for you - Look, things get worn out - it don't work no more. If it aint in a pretty package, you don't want it because it aint art. Because the book critic for the New Porker might might now want to see a bit more respect for tradition, hrrum, hum. I go my money on nobody... Greatness ant truth are in danger from these wretches." - Kenneth Patchen

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Третий роман - ок, книга прозы - Пэтчена, текст такой же причудливый и дурокатый, как и остальные два крупных куск его прозы. Nonsensical в хорошем смысле, зыбкий и написанный согласно его принципам, сформулированным в других местах:

People in a book should be independent of people out of books. Literary living is bad enough without a literature that "lives." Actually, for the last thirty years, there hasn't been any artistic excuse for the writing of novels. The bad thing is that all the forms are wornout and flabby.

Each line of a book must overcome and dispense with the line which precedes it, the coarse wiping out the fine, etc. A change of gait—and often, even, a change of mount. How dull (and copyclerkish) it would be to write at one's best all the time. How idle to praise freedom, and to do your own work like a slave.

[Jamie E · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has an interesting premise: some sort of beings in an alternate state of being (so many beings) that take over human bodies and then just live in them. They're not very nice beings. I sort of lost the story about 1/2 way through. The writing is quite fractured and I couldn't tell if it was on purpose or not. If it was on purpose, the author didn't do a good job of making it work. It was ok, meaning that I finished reading it, but it was not at all poignant, nor entertaining enough to recommend it.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to stop at "clean slip." Alright, moving on and setting aside the faint whiffs of Beatnik misogyny (not claiming the man is, he's not, but it's par for the Beat-course), Patchen is clearly an awesome visionary lyricist who shook things up. His raw anti-war fury is righteous and also beautiful.

Basically, I need to put on my surreal hepjazz dirty angel hat (get high) and re-read this like a poem like I read his other great poems. It's sort of impenetrable and exhausting, but that's ok too.

[Dave Rendle · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite books, Sleepers Awake could be considered Kenneth Patchen's most important novel. Daringly experimental. as always, he fully explores his ability to express rage, humor, and compassion, his profound pacifist commitments, and his Anarchist base.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kenneth Patchen writes in a unique and wonderful way. His drawing poems can take my breath away. Try reading Patchen aloud!

[Cleo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“They said there would be Truth here. Where is the Truth?”

[Miller Downer · Rating 5 out of 5]

kenneth patchen your drip too hard your style too different they'll kill you twin

[J. Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense and difficult. I came across a copy of Ken Patchen's book in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I suppose.
It intrigued me; it didn't look like other poetry books I'd read. It was hard to follow, but a rewarding window into the mindset in the immediate aftermath of WWII (published in 1947).

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy formatting that makes you feel like you’re in a fever dream, but once the pieces begins falling together the overall message from the author is wildly impactful.