Beyond Sleep

Although I am sure it has been and will be appreciated by many different kinds of readers, anyone who has struggled through the trials of a doctoral dissertation and student-adviser relations will immediately recognize this particular form of over-the-top self-pity and self-loathing that the central character endures. It took decades for a translation to appear in English, so some aspects--particularly the heavy dose of Freud--may strike today's reader as trite. Still, it is well-worth reading and very funny in parts.

If you created a map of Europe on which the countries were represented by their historical 'mass' rather than their square kilometers, Netherlands would be as large as France or Germany. Likewise a map displaying scientific and technological achievement. There's a sense of such wry self-awareness about this Dutch novel, read by far more people in translation than ever in the original language. The narrator, Alfred Issendorf, journeys from his small flatland, the most densely populated nation in the world, to the emptiness of northern Norway, Ultima Thule for him in every way. The comedy of manners that he portrays -- his fumbling communication via English and German with his Norwegian companions, no one being able to express what he feels or thinks coherently -- makes for one layer of social/historical meaning in this many-layered novel. That's how it goes for Small-landers in a world ruled by the languages of Big-landers. Alfred is a bit of a nerd. A nebbish, a mama's boy, a navel-gazer. He fumbles badly in planning his grand scientific expedition. He is ridiculously under-equipped and hopelessly inexperienced in wilderness lore. He lacks the physical conditioning of an outdoorsman. As he slowly recognizes, he also lacks the intuition of an observer-scientist. He's the wrong guy in the wrong field for the wrong reasons, and he's way outside his safety zone, completely overmatched by the harshness of the tundra. Of course, everything goes from sorry ineptitude to serious danger, but the surprise is that Alfred finds the resources in himself to survive, a heroic effort really but one that he has to mock: mere survival is hardly greatness. "Beyond Sleep" begins with a muddle of miscommunication, Alfred's hapless efforts to secure the maps that he needs to find evidence of his thesis, and ends with another muddle, Alfred's lame encounters with two beautiful females, one too young, one too old for him. The muddle and the inconsequentiality of experience is not just loose plotting of the novel; it's the whole story. Meanwhile, squeezed between these goofy episodes, there's an 'existential' novel of considerable suspense and emotional power, the tale of Alfred versus both Nature and his own nature. There's another level of writing in "Beyond Sleep", the dubious pleasure of vicarious misery. Alfred IS miserable out there on the tundra. He's carrying a pack much heavier than he is ready for. He has the wrong shoes, the wrong sleeping gear, and preposterously little food for such a trip. It rains constantly. He falls in the river fords and soaks his gear, and then he falls and scrapes his leg badly enough to make gangrene a threat. Two of his three companions, arrogantly well-prepared and seasoned hikers, abandon him, while the third is as bonkers as he is, and as quixotic. Worst of all, the mosquitoes! I've done a lot of back-country camping in the far North; I read this novel, in fact, while hiking in the Laurentides mountains of Quebec, where mosq

Willem Frederik Hermans is arguably the most important postwar Dutch writer and this work is one of his greatest. It will therefore hardly be possible to do justice to it in a short review. The book is about a young Dutch geologist who takes part in a scientific expedition in Finnmarken (northern parts of Norway). His aim, and the topic of his PhD research, is to prove that certain circular lakes in this area are holes caused by the result of meteorite impacts. At first glance the book may strike the reader as a rather dry-comic description of a failed scientific expedition taking place in a place where the sun never sets and mosquitos are ever present pests. At second glance some unusual features that are likely to strike the reader include: the disorienting mixture of comic irreverance and intellectual depth of the discussions between the characters in the book, the sharp and ruthless demystification of the 'elevated' activity of 'scientific research' (certainly striking in 1966), and maybe the references to Freudian theory. However, the real topic of this book lies well beneath these surface features. The main character of this book (Alfred Issendorf) is on a quest. Although practically the quest is just to find proof of his advisor's hypothesis that certain lakes are meteorite craters, beneath the surface this is all a metaphor for a much more general quest, namely the quest for immortality (which may be the oldest story in existence, i.e. Gilgamesh). Alfred tries to attain immortality by making an immortal scientific discovery. As the old Norwegian professor puts it near the beginning of the book: science is humanity's titanic attempt to escape from its isolation in this universe. In this sense the PhD topic is also metaphorical. Just as humanity has tended to look for the meaning of life not here on this earth, but in what lies beyond life itself, Alfred wants to prove that objects from beyond this earth (meteorites) have come down to leave their marks. Similarly, the nightless landscape of Finnmarken alludes to the topic of the quest, immortality. btw. in Dutch the title of the book is literally 'to sleep never more'. As the book progresses, the author piles up evidence to the crucial tragic fact that is the topic of this book: that even if Alfred were to make an 'immortal discovery', it would be the discovery and not him, Alfred, his personal thoughts and feelings, that would become immortal. In the end the quest for immortality is bound to fail. Along the way to this tragic conclusion the author manages to not only entertain and amuse us but also share some rather profound ideas. Some of my favorite examples include the suggested connection between the invention of photography and the phenomenon of psychological identity crisis, the claim that one day machines will have become so much better at doing science than humans that all 'true science' will be done by machines and that humans will only engage in scientific research as a form

Everything is interesting about this novel, its tone, pace, style, diction, setting, development, conflicts, characters, and change. One would have liked to see some more than passing romantic interest, but alas that's not possible for Alfred who operates close to the dark-side fringe of human compassion. The comments about the existence of God are tacked on, but interesting, especially the long list of evils that God permits to afflict his creation. All in all, a most satisfying read. Try it. You'll like it.

Beyond Sleep is a modern classic of European fiction, a hilarious and captivating story, set beyond the edge of the civilized word, as one man approaches a breaking point. The young Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf is determined to win fame for making a great discovery. To this end he joins a small geological expedition, which travels to the far North of Norway, where he hopes to prove a series of craters were caused by meteorites and are littered with extraterrestrial "Issendorfite," but ultimately realizes he's more likely to drown in a fiord or be eaten by parasites. Unable to procure crucial aerial photographs, and beset by mosquitoes and insomnia in his freezing leaky tent, Alfred becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid. Haunted by the ghost of his scientist father, unable to escape the looming influence of his mother, and anxious to complete the thesis that will make his name, he moves toward the final act of vanity which will trigger a catastrophe. A deadpan comedy reminiscent of Heller or Vonnegut at their best, with more than a dash of Kafka, Beyond Sleep is a unique and illuminating examination of how hard it is to be a true pioneer in the modern world- a masterpiece.