Insomnia

by Virgilio Piñera

Virgilio Piñera era un escrito cubano. En el Insomnio es uno de sus mini cuentos. Relata la historia de un hombre que no puede dormir.

"En el insomnio" fue escrito en 1946 y publicado en octubre de ese año por la revista "Anales de Buenos Aires" que dirigía Jorge Luis Borges. Posteriormente se incluyó en la compilación "Cuentos fríos" de 1956.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Horror

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Virgilio Piñera Llera was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist.
Among his most famous poems are "La isla en peso" (1943), and "La gran puta" (1960). He was a member of the "Origenes" literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group. In the late 1950s he co-founded the literary journal Ciclón. Following a long exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Piñera returned to Cuba in 1958, months before Fidel Castro took power.
His work includes essays on literature and literary criticism, several collections of short stories compiled under the title of Cold Tales, a great number of dramatic works, and three novels: La carne de René (Rene's Flesh), Presiones y Diamantes (Pressures and Diamonds), and Las pequeñas maniobras (Small manoeuvres). His work is seen today as a model by new generations of Cuban and Latin American writers. Some believe that his work influenced that of Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote in his memoir Before Night Falls of Piñera's time in Argentina and friendship there with Witold Gombrowicz.
The magazine Unión posthumously published autobiographical writing by Piñera in which he discussed how he concluded he was gay. However, his work can not be reduced to his open discussions on homosexuality in a time when such a topic was taboo, especially in the Spanish Caribbean. Piñera's literary and cultural perspective went beyond sexuality, to express concerns on national and continental identity, philosophical approaches to theater, writing and politics. This focus drew fire from the Spanish American literary establishment of his time, including Cuban poets Cintio Vitier and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, and leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
Due to Piñera's social points of view and especially to his homosexuality, he was censured by the revolution, and died without any official recognition. As more of his work has been translated into English, Piñera's work has been rediscovered by American academia as a testimony of 20th century resistance against totalitarian systems.

Reviews

[Adina ( catching up..very slowly) · Rating 2 out of 5]

A flash story written by a Cuban writer. Too short to mean anything except that Insomnia seems to be na awful affliction. Read in The Black Water Anthology.

[Connie G]

It's a common euphemism to say someone has gone to sleep when they died, but it's totally the opposite. Sleep is healing and restorative, and death is decomposition. I do feel sorry for anyone with such severe insomnia that they would take drastic measures. Are the events in the story reality or part of a dream?

This work of flash fiction is so short that I really can't rate it. It's from the anthology "Black Water" which I'm reading with the Short Story Club.

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an amusing anecdote, although if you suffer from insomnia, you might not find it funny.
Only 2* because it doesn’t really merit its own entry on GoodReads.

Manguel presumably included it in his anthology because the previous two stories relate to sleep, albeit dreams. They were better and my reviews are here:
• Lord Mountdrago, W Somerset Maugham, 4*, Review HERE
• The Sick Gentleman's Last Visit, Giovanni Papini, 4*, Review HERE

As he says in his introduction to the piece, which is as long as the anecdote itself:
“If death and sleep are, in Oscar Wilde’s phrase, brothers, there is no reason why one should have power over the other.”

Short story club

I read this in Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.

You can read this story anecdote here.

You can join the group here.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very short. Very dark.

[George Ilsley · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is short enough to qualify as micro-fiction or flash fiction.

It does not amount to much. I did not find it amusing, and the details were not grounded in reality so it was hard to become involved in the plight.

This author is otherwise unknown to me.

[Klowey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have insomnia, so I found it fun because of the mix of annoyance and desperation.
And I loved what for me was the wit of the last two lines:
The man is dead but still he is unable to sleep. Insomnia is a very persistent thing.

[Larrry G · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much for the expression "You can sleep when you're dead!" (I liked the Roadhouse scene version of this fuzzy quote, as in, “I'll get all the sleep I need when I'm dead,” meanwhile time to kick some righteous arse).
But, alas, there are no guarantees in life (or death) but death and taxes, and as we (Short Story Club) have been told, even the dead may be taxed or tolled (An Injustice Revealed), and these days potentially trolled, or heritage revisited by the woke who would wake the dead.
the thing is, are there many doctors to go see say between three and six in the morning? and what kind of friends or neighbors are on speed dial at three in the morning? but there it is. nothing that particularly detracts or takes us away from the impending conclusion. but I ramble on; at this rate, soon I will miss my nap.
and so to cut to the chase, i.e. to make a long story short, but that is not quite it, but now it is.

[Misa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it in Spanish for The Short Story Club and it felt like a lame joke.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much to this one, although for so short a piece it does make one stop and think.

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much of a story, just a little bit of fun about insomnia and suicide…in Alberto Manguel’s collection of fantastic lit, Black Water.

+++++++++++++++
Read for GR short story group