Weike Wang on Recurring Dreams and Loneliness

This interview was featured in the Books & Fiction newsletter, which delivers the stories behind the stories, along with our latest fiction. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.The protagonist of your story “The Dreamdrive” is a man who, every night, dreams that he’s driving a car and wakes up feeling as though he hasn’t slept at all. How did this idea come to you?

I have insomnia, and last year it was at an all-time high. When I can’t sleep, I am a prisoner of my brain and body and spirit. The experience isn’t hard to explain—every second adds to the anxiety, an irreversible ratchet of madness—but it is hard for someone who has never gone through it to fully comprehend. Often, people tell me, “You could exercise more, exhaust yourself,” and I do, I run every day—around three miles—but nothing shuts down the factory. I am doomed.

My husband sleeps well, but, one night, he had a nightmare that he was driving recklessly in an unknown place. I felt that I would much rather have that nightmare than be awake. Sleep deprivation leads to REM deprivation, which triggers, when you finally do sleep, something called REM rebound, which can manifest as continuous dreaming. I imagined such a scenario for our protagonist, in which he would both suffer and be enlightened by the dream. Insomnia has no logic, it offers no recourse, and, at some point, when I’m in it, I just have to accept that I will suffer. But this story has a happier, less futile ending.