If the power of books is to bring people together, then there's perhaps no example more literal than the Craigslist missed connection I stumbled across just minutes before interviewing Karen Russell. The posting, titled (sic) "karen russel cutie - w4m", was written by an Austin-based woman who met a man reading one of Russell's books at a coffee shop. They hit it off, sort of.
"I said, "hey. karen russell. Right?" And i flashed you the cover of my book. As if you didn't KNOW i was reading it. We talked for a few minutes. You didn't even know. You didn't even know that um. You didn't even know that she had written other books. But i felt a connection."
I forwarded the link to Russell, who, delighted by the idea that her work could play matchmaker, said, "I want these people to find each other, and then I want to officiate at their wedding." Speaking with Russell, I found her sense of humor arresting, her laugh totally charming — a little surprising considering the darkness and moodiness of her latest work, Sleep Donation (one of our Best Books of the Month picks for March and a Kindle Single). It's a clever, haunting novella about a dystopian world where insomnia has become a fatal epidemic. The story follows a young woman named Trish who works at Slumber Corps, a company that helps those who are able to catch some Z's the ability to donate their shut-eye to the sleepless. Those familiar with Russell's previous work — her two short story collections, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and her novel Swamplandia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — will find the same sci-fi and fantasy-mashing sensibilities here. Russell attributes her category-bending to a childhood reading lots of sci-fi and fantasy and not recognizing the lines between the different genres.
"I actually had so little awareness of what distinguished Jane Eyre from A Handmaid's Tale. When I was a kid, they all just read like great stories to me," she said.
Her influences include many classic sci-fi authors, such as Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury, and Aldous Huxley. But since her world experience first came from novels, her reality is grounded in fictions that existed to critique the real world. She jokes that her upbringing was like visiting the fantastical version of Paris at Epcot Center, then actually visiting Europe decades later.
"I was introduced to these sci-fi and fantasy worlds, and later when I was in a history class, that was when I came awake to what they were riffing on or reassembling or responding to," Russell said. "It's like reading Tolkien and then eventually learning about the Great War."
The inverted world building of Russell's own life might actually be the best way to describe her work. Reality is approached through the tone of a fable; Sleep Donation's literary intricacies are presented with the color and tone of '60s sci-fi.
The inspiration for Sleep Donation started with an idea and an image. For the "Innovations Issue" of The New Yorker, the magazine asked several writers to come up with inventions as a creative exercise. Russell thought up a way for people to donate their dreams to insomniacs, and though the idea went unused for the issue, it became the starting point for Sleep Donation. Russell had the image of a sinister white van parked in a quiet suburb, with people queuing up outside it to contribute their rest to the needy.
Writing the novella took a while to get started, but once she had established the first scene, Russell found that Sleep Donation had hit its stride. As a writer, her favorite experience watching fiction take on a life of its own, the moment when "the story wants to elude your most reductive, most linear ambitions for it and become something new." Russell equates the experience of writing the novella to waterskiing, and how once you stand up on the skis, there's a sense of momentum and propulsion pulling you forward.
Laughing, she adds, "I've never successfully waterskied though, so that's a terrible analogy."
But as Sleep Donation finally started taking shape, Russell began to wonder who would publish the story. This didn't feel like it could be a 300-page novel, since it is focused on a narrow cast of characters. But the ideas were larger in scope than what a short story could contain.
Enter Atavist Books, the new fiction arm of long-form nonfiction publisher Atavist. Founded by Frances Coady, in partnership with movie producer Scott Rudin and IAC/InterActiveCorp's Barry Diller, the new publisher prides itself on experimental lengths and formats. In addition to the story itself, Sleep Donation has a companion site that explores even more of Russell's playful dystopia (a quiz gauges "How Pure Is Your Sleep?", another section features a "Nightmare Index"). The extended world is for readers who want to stay in the Sleep Donation universe after the novella ends. Working with Atavist Books allowed Russell to collaborate with different artists. (The book itself has drawn a lot of attention from its gorgeous Chip Kidd-designed cover, and Russell also wanted to give a shout out to illustrator Kevin Trong and animator Derrick Schultz who worked on the site.)
Russell was also thrilled that Atavist Books allowed Sleep Donation to be born as a novella, rather than contracting it to a twenty-page story or inflating it into a full novel.
"You can read it almost all in one sitting," she says. "Hopefully it's got some of the pleasure of a short story, where it's immersive and seamless, and will maybe hit you like a dream."
Sleep Donation exists outside of so many things: specific genres, conventional lengths, even the physical world. And if it the story contained is, as Russell says, supposed to be like a dream, it's one that lingers.
Hat tip to Michael Schaub for discovering the missed connection.