Asleep in the Afternoon: A Romance

Back in print after an absence of nearly 70 years, the facsimile edition of E. C. Large's novel Asleep in the Afternoon is what we now call a 'mash-up,' made up of scientific research, social satire, and fictional flights of fancy. Sugar in the Air concludes with the novel's central character—unmistakably modeled on the author—receiving his pension and beginning work on a novel called Asleep in the Afternoon, which was the title of the novel E. C. Large wrote in 1939. This meta-fictional satire tells parallel stories about one woman's belief in sleep as a cure for society's ills and her advocacy for a mysterious new device that can induce it. The alternating tale concerns this fictional author's writing process and family life.