So Many Ways to Sleep Badly

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"Sycamore kicks mainstream literature in the teeth."-The San Francisco Bay Guardian

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's exhilarating new novel is about struggling to find hope in the ruins of everyday San Francisco-battling roaches, Bikram Yoga, chronically bad sex, NPR, internet cruising, tweakers, the cops, $100 bills, chronic pain, the gay vote, vegan restaurants, and incest, with the help of air-raid sirens, herbal medicine, late-night
epiphanies, sea lions, and sleeping pills. So Many Ways to Sleep Badly unveils a gender-bending queer world where nothing flows smoothly, except for those sudden moments when everything becomes lighter or brighter or easier to imagine.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the gender-bending author of the highly praised novel Pulling Taffy and the editor of the anthology Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. Sycamore writes regularly for a variety of publications, including Bitch, Utne Reader, AlterNet, Make/Shift, and MaximumRocknRoll.

Reviews

"So Many Ways to Sleep Badlyis a perfectly tidy mess, a Sex in theOtherCityonly these sexual escapades and flailing urges are truly transgressive and flamboyantly hilarious at every turn. Sycamore deftly skewers a landscape that's been completely sacked by mindless consumerism and unchecked gentrification, whether it's a Whole Foods customer whining, "Which fish is the least fishy" or an earnest yoga practitioner bragging about opening a factory in China. And hallelujah: this refreshingly frenetic and innovative second novel is unabashedly political, but without being formulaic or reductive. It is a book that has done nothing less than invent its own languageand I promise it'll still be singing to you long after you close your eyes at night."T Cooper,author ofLipshitz Six, or Two Angry BlondesandSome of the Parts

"Mattilda's brilliance makes stream-of-consciousness a lifestyle, a state-of-consciousness. This is an entire lived life's worth of heartshaking honesty, arch observation, searing vulnerabilty and craving and seeking, all in one breathtakingly poetic (and hilarious) book."Michelle Tea, author ofValenciaandRose of No Man's Land

"Like the best writers that have come beforeWojnarowicz, Lou Reed, BurroughsSycamore has boiled life and times down to a resin that you could almost grind, cut up and snort. There is no one else on this planet that could write this book. Dare I say it's a classic Yes, and I dare you to read it."Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters

"Reading a chapter of this amazing book is like when someone throws you into the deep end and you don't know how to swim. You feel like you're gonna drown, like how am I going to do this You can't breathe and you flail and start to sink, youre freezing but then you feel brisk then actually kind of exhilarated and then you are breathing not mere air but something rich and sweet and fluid, a thing a whole lot like the inside of your body. You breathe in this new elementthis frantic, fluid proseand read like you have never read before."Rebecca Brown,author ofThe End of YouthandThe Last Time I Saw You

"In 1955, City Lights published Allen GinsbergsHowl, an attack on the conformity and the alienation of that era. Now heres another great paean to a counterculture of hustlers, junkies and visionary angels to wash the taste of the Bush years out of our mouths. Instead of incantation, it is a hookers pillowbook that describes a community of physical uproar and activism based on doubt. What a tonic this books isthat people fuck with such conviction and attention to detail! Its like a treasure map of a San Francisco with orgasms instead of doubloons. . . . The map is the body, volcanic, weary, sick, fragile and tough."Robert Glck,author ofJack the ModernistandDenny Smith Stories

Author Bio

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of the novel Pulling Taffy, and the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, including Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and That's Revoling! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Sycamore writes regularly for a variety of publications, including Bitch, Utne Reader, AlterNet, Make/Shift, and Maximumrocknroll. She lives in San Francisco.