Broken Sleep
Broken Sleep: an American Dream is the second novel by American writer Bruce Bauman, published in 2015. It follows the exploits of the powerful Savant family, including rock star-cum-US presidential candidate Alchemy Savant, his half-brother Moses Teumer, and their brilliant but insane mother Salome Savant. The novel chronicles 60 years of U.S. politics and pop culture, from the aftermath of World War II leading up to a speculative 2020 presidential election. The novel touches on many topics, including rock music, postmodern art, celebrity, insanity, terminal illness, the Holocaust, and United States presidential election politics. It  makes political references to the fake news website phenomenon, the rise of a third party to save a failing two-party system, and a grass-roots movement for partition and secession in California. Its discussion of Jewish-American identity has led to its categorization as a Jewish literary novel in the vein of Saul Bellow. Plot. The novel has an asynchronous narrative structure that weaves together four major narratives: The narratives are loosely related, linked together if not by chronological time, then by common characters and themes. But the novel hints at another way its four narratives relate to one  another—namely that they were collected, compiled, and arranged by one of the novel's secondary characters, Jay Bernes, and given the alternative title "the Book of J." Jay, aka "J," is identified in the novel's back matter as the “Gifter of the Book of J,” while the character Persephone, who mistakenly self-identifies as Moses's niece, claims in the introduction that “auntie jay gave me a gift, the Book of J.” The author Bruce Bauman has also alluded to the Book of J's importance in relation to the novel's religious themes. Major characters. The book  includes more than 70 characters, with appearances by Greta Garbo and Marcel Duchamp, as well as the protagonist in Bauman's first novel, "And The Word Was". The focus, however, is primarily on the Savant family and the members of the rock band the Insatiables, as well as on several of their loved ones and enemies. Critical reception. Since its publication by Other Press in 2015, reviews have been largely positive. Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW’s Bookworm, called the telling of Moses’s journey “funny, heartbreaking and beautiful.” In a starred review, the Library Journal called the book “a  solid and captivating literary experience” that “successfully engages with eternal questions of truth and evil.” Heather Scott Partington, writing for Electric Literature, said that “Bauman manages to capture both the insatiable drive for fame and success, and the harsh reality of unrealized dreams that seem distinctly American.” PopMatters gave the book 8 out of 10 stars, calling the book “a family drama of biblical proportions.” It made book critic David Kipen’s reading picks of the month, and Shelf Awareness called the book a "mind-bending work of fiction” that "represents contemporary life’s most existential crises.” Writing for Whitehot  Magazine, art critic Shana Nys Dambrot called it a "sweeping novel of epic human flaws and unwieldy intergenerational destiny set against the paradisiacal dystopia of the late-20th century American art world.”