Acquainted with the Night
Excursions Through the World After Dark
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
Weaving together science and storytelling, art and anthropology, Dewdney takes readers on a fascinating journey through the nocturnal realm. In twelve chapters corresponding to the twelve hours of night, he illuminates night's central themes, including sunsets, nocturnal animals, bedtime stories, festivals of the night, fireworks, astronomy, nightclubs, sleep and dreams, the graveyard shift, the art of darkness, and endless nights. With infectious curiosity, a lyrical, intimate tone, and an eye for nighttime beauties both natural and man-made, Christopher Dewdney paints a captivating portrait of our hours in darkness.
Christopher Dewdney is the author of three books of nonfiction-Last Flesh, The Secular Grail, and The Immaculate Perception-as well as eleven books of poetry. A three-time nominee for Governor General's Awards and a first-prize winner of the CBC Literary Competition, Dewdney lives in Toronto, Ontario.
"As you read these pages, your life will change, because the way you see half of it will change. The night we're all familiar with will emerge as a fresh thing, deeper, fuller, older, younger, more evocative, more intimate, larger, more spectacular and, yes, more magical, and much more thrilling."-Margaret Atwood, Globe and Mail
"[A] felicitous literary gambol from dusk till dawn...Dewdney throws himself headlong into the deep pool of his subject."-Sue Halpern, Newsday
"An enjoyable and instructive read."-Sven Birkerts, Boston Globe
Also available: HC 1-58234-396-9 $24.95
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Noted Canadian writer Dewdney (The Immaculate Perception) celebrates the science, religion and art of night in a delightful compendium that charts the nocturnal phases planetary, human and animal of life. Dewdney writes confidently about the physics underlying sunset, darkness, lunar phases and the dimensions of night. He explores global culture's nighttime customs and associations found in bedtime stories, festivals, fireworks, sexuality, the gothic imagination, ancient myth and stargazing, among other traditions and practices. He makes several journalistic excursions: studying the work of a pyrotechnical team, accompanying a Toronto constable on night watch and offering himself as a sleep laboratory subject. Through close readings of classic bedtime stories, Dewdney perceptively analyzes childhood's special relation to night, home and security. Yet he also spends time in the adult precincts of nightlife, limning brief histories of cabaret and prostitution before describing the contemporary nightclubbing scene. A fascinating history of street lighting links it to changes in policing methods and attitudes to crime. Night is a tactile realm, Dewdney reminds the reader. Nostalgic for organic purity, he bemoans the lack of true darkness in our overlit modern world. He reports on how light pollution disturbs our circadian rhythms and how sleep deprivation can ruin one's long-term health. Dewdney is careful to thoroughly elucidate the basic neuroscience of the dreaming mind. His summarized history of dream interpretation includes Mesopotamian myth, Vedic lore, Native American and ancient Chinese and Greek theories, as well as Freud and Jung. Tautly written in a highly condensed yet personable voice, this tour of the manifold nocturnal realm is a superbly meticulous feat.
