Acquainted with the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark - Softcover

Dewdney, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582345996 ISBN 13: 9781582345994

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2005

Synopsis

In twelve chapters corresponding to the twelve hours of night, Christopher Dewdney 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 infections curiosity, a lyrical, intimate tone, and an eye for nighttime beauties both natural and man-made, he paints a captivating portrait of our hours in darkness.

About this title

About the Author:

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.

From 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.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1582345996
• ISBN 13: 9781582345994
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288