There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.
“There is no literary elite in this country, unless it’s the corporate elite that runs the book business. It’s a totally different situation. What I’d say we have here is an underground that exists perennially, a steady kind of thing, and out of this movements occasionally arise and subside, but it’s always there. Whereas in France, especially, you have this series of avant-gardes which are, actually, nothing more than the cutting edge of bourgeois culture.“
Ronald Sukenick