Go the Fuck to Sleep
Encyclopedia
Go the Fuck to Sleep is a book written by American author Adam Mansbach
and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés
. Described as a "children's book for adults", it reached No. 1 on Amazon.com
's bestseller list a month before its release, thanks to an unintended viral marketing
campaign during which booksellers forwarded PDF
copies of the book by email.
, "Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, Go the — to Sleep". Following his post, friends of Mansbach responded enthusiastically, so that Mansbach began writing what was then only a hypothetical book. Mansbach had the illustrations for the picture book
done by a friend, illustrator Ricardo Cortés (a contributor to The New York Times
), and approached Akashic Books
, a book publisher from New York.
Go the Fuck to Sleep was subject to an unintended viral marketing campaign after PDF copies of the book, presumably from advance copies sent to booksellers, were distributed via email. While the book was originally scheduled for release in October 2011, by the end of April the book had hit No. 2 on Amazon.com
's bestseller list, and by May 12 the book was No. 1. In the meantime, the publishing date was moved up to June, and the publisher increased its first printing to 150,000 copies. Akashic, which acknowledged the importance of social media
in popularizing the book ("it's a miracle from the heavens for us"), is trying to prevent piracy
of the book. The rights for the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth
were acquired by Canongate
. The film rights
have been optioned by Fox 2000.
The audiobook company Audible.com
has published an audiobook version of Go the Fuck to Sleep, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson
. The CD has a total running time of just over 7 minutes, which includes an unabridged reading of the book by Jackson, a brief introductory monologue by Jackson explaining why he decided to record the book, and approximately 2 minutes' worth of introductory and legal matter (spoken copyright notice, etc.).
Go the Fuck to Sleep is written as a "children's book for adults". While it has the writing style of classic children's bedtime stories
, it also includes the parent's profanity as commentary on the tricks used by Mansbach's daughter to avoid having to go to bed.
Positive initial response to the Facebook posts was matched by positive criticism from reviewers. Macy Halford, writing for The New Yorker
, said "the book is super funny, and the art, by Ricardo Cortés, is perversely sweet, so sweet and genuine that it made me cringe." Some of the reviewers chimed in from experience, as did Sarah Western Balzer, writing for Here Is The City. After citing a stanza in which the parent comments on the child's supposed thirst ("I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying. / Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep."), she says: "It goes on a bit too long, and by the end, he's kind of in a rage. But then, putting a two- or three-year-old to bed can be totally fucking enraging at times."
According to Mark Rotella, an editor at Publishers Weekly
(and father of two), this is one of the books "that are less earnest about raising your child. They help parents step back and laugh at themselves a bit ... It's more like a parenting book for when the parent is inconsolable in the middle of night and frustrated." The publisher for the UK and the Commonwealth, Canongate, likewise pointed to the book as a parents' book: "This book perfectly captures the familiar and unspoken tribulations of putting your child down for the night. In the process, it opens up a conversation about parenting, charming and enraging as it can be, and chimes a note of solidarity with tired parents everywhere."
at the official launch of the book at the New York Public Library
. Kevin Pollak
, doing a vocal impression of Christopher Walken
, read the story on the Kevin Pollak's Chat Show
.
As part of a rapidly growing internet meme
, Australian actress Noni Hazlehurst read the book to camera in the style she formerly used on the children's television program Play School
. She immediately offered to record a reading of the book after being sent a copy by the publisher.
and Nancy Tillman, saying "Except for the profanity laced throughout, the book has the same kind of lilting lullaby as Eric's, and the art style is the same as Nancy's." Both books contain very similar illustrations of sleeping tigers. "I really have a number of feelings about this because to me it's about the mainstreaming of vulgarity
in American culture," Metaxas has said. "It's funny, but it's just wrong. ... Innocence
is constantly punctured, lampooned, and when you have something really, really beautiful like a lullaby for children that there's something that kind of saddens me that we have to turn it into a joke. ... Are people going to look at my book now, and is it going pollute their ability to enjoy what I have written?"
In July 2011, MensHealth.com published a retort to the book: a parody poem written from the child's perspective titled "Get the F**k Out of My Room" and containing parenting advice.
Adam Mansbach
Adam Mansbach is an American author and professor of fiction at Rutgers University who wrote the "children's book for adults" Go the Fuck to Sleep. Other books Mansbach has written include Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews .-References:...
and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés
Ricardo Cortés (illustrator)
Ricardo Cortés is an illustrator and author. He has written and illustrated a children's book about marijuana: It's Just a Plant. He illustrated Go the Fuck to Sleep, Adam Mansbach's bedtime story for adults, and I Don't Want to Blow You Up!, a coloring book with pages devoted to famous Muslims...
. Described as a "children's book for adults", it reached No. 1 on Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
's bestseller list a month before its release, thanks to an unintended viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign during which booksellers forwarded PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
copies of the book by email.
Background
When Adam Mansbach's daughter Vivien was two, she would take up to two hours to fall asleep. Exhausted and exasperated, one night Mansbach posted a note on FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, "Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, Go the — to Sleep". Following his post, friends of Mansbach responded enthusiastically, so that Mansbach began writing what was then only a hypothetical book. Mansbach had the illustrations for the picture book
Picture book
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...
done by a friend, illustrator Ricardo Cortés (a contributor to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
), and approached Akashic Books
Akashic Books
Akashic Books is a Brooklyn-based independent publisher. Akashic Books' collection began with Arthur Nersesian's THE FUCK UP in 1996, and has since expanded to include Dennis Cooper's "Little House on the Bowery" series , Chris Abani's Black Goat poetry series, and the internationally successful...
, a book publisher from New York.
Go the Fuck to Sleep was subject to an unintended viral marketing campaign after PDF copies of the book, presumably from advance copies sent to booksellers, were distributed via email. While the book was originally scheduled for release in October 2011, by the end of April the book had hit No. 2 on Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
's bestseller list, and by May 12 the book was No. 1. In the meantime, the publishing date was moved up to June, and the publisher increased its first printing to 150,000 copies. Akashic, which acknowledged the importance of social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
in popularizing the book ("it's a miracle from the heavens for us"), is trying to prevent piracy
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
of the book. The rights for the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
were acquired by Canongate
Canongate Books
Canongate Books is a Scottish independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh; it is named for The Canongate, an area of the city. It is most recognised for publishing the Booker Prizewinner Life of Pi...
. The film rights
Film rights
Film rights are the rights under copyright law to make a derivative work—in this case, a film—derived from an item of intellectual property. Under U.S...
have been optioned by Fox 2000.
The audiobook company Audible.com
Audible.com
Audible.com is an Internet provider of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming.Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and TV programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers....
has published an audiobook version of Go the Fuck to Sleep, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas before meeting his mentor,...
. The CD has a total running time of just over 7 minutes, which includes an unabridged reading of the book by Jackson, a brief introductory monologue by Jackson explaining why he decided to record the book, and approximately 2 minutes' worth of introductory and legal matter (spoken copyright notice, etc.).
Content and critical response
The cats nestle close to their kittens now.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the fuck to sleep.
Go the Fuck to Sleep is written as a "children's book for adults". While it has the writing style of classic children's bedtime stories
Bedtime story
A bedtime story is a traditional form of storytelling, where a story is told to a child at bedtime to prepare them for sleep.Bedtime stories have many advantages, for parents/adults and children alike. The fixed routine of a bedtime story before sleeping has a relaxing effect, and the soothing...
, it also includes the parent's profanity as commentary on the tricks used by Mansbach's daughter to avoid having to go to bed.
Positive initial response to the Facebook posts was matched by positive criticism from reviewers. Macy Halford, writing for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, said "the book is super funny, and the art, by Ricardo Cortés, is perversely sweet, so sweet and genuine that it made me cringe." Some of the reviewers chimed in from experience, as did Sarah Western Balzer, writing for Here Is The City. After citing a stanza in which the parent comments on the child's supposed thirst ("I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying. / Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep."), she says: "It goes on a bit too long, and by the end, he's kind of in a rage. But then, putting a two- or three-year-old to bed can be totally fucking enraging at times."
Cultural relevance
According to Mansbach, the frustrations he wrote about "are not permissible to talk about. We're not completely honest because we don't want to be bad parents." Macy Halford said this frustration elicits a response particular to modern parents:Whatever the cause, it is definitely the case that, when faced with a kid who refuses to go to sleep, we get annoyed, like all parents before us, but, rather than just abandoning the child to the dark and telling it that it can go to sleep or stay awake as it likes but it is staying in the bed until morning (remember Proust at the opening of Swann’s Way?), we sit there with it, reading to it and singing to it and distracting it with swirling night lights until it decides it feels like going to sleep, all the while thinking to ourselves, Go the fuck to sleep, kid.
According to Mark Rotella, an editor at Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
(and father of two), this is one of the books "that are less earnest about raising your child. They help parents step back and laugh at themselves a bit ... It's more like a parenting book for when the parent is inconsolable in the middle of night and frustrated." The publisher for the UK and the Commonwealth, Canongate, likewise pointed to the book as a parents' book: "This book perfectly captures the familiar and unspoken tribulations of putting your child down for the night. In the process, it opens up a conversation about parenting, charming and enraging as it can be, and chimes a note of solidarity with tired parents everywhere."
Celebrity readings
As well as the audio book read by Samuel L. Jackson, the book attracted several celebrity readings including by German film director Werner HerzogWerner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
at the official launch of the book at the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
. Kevin Pollak
Kevin Pollak
Kevin Elliot Pollak is an American actor, impressionist, game show host, and comedian. He started performing stand-up comedy at the age of 10 and touring professionally at the age of 20...
, doing a vocal impression of Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
, read the story on the Kevin Pollak's Chat Show
Kevin Pollak's Chat Show
For the process of certifying rough non-conflict diamonds, see Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, also known as KPCS for short.Kevin Pollak's Chat Show is a weekly interview program hosted by comedian and impressionist Kevin Pollak and streamed over the Web on UStream. The show airs live every...
.
As part of a rapidly growing internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
, Australian actress Noni Hazlehurst read the book to camera in the style she formerly used on the children's television program Play School
Play School (Australian TV series)
Play School is an Australian educational television show for children produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It is the longest-running children's show in Australia, and the second longest running childrens show in the world. An estimated 80% of pre-school children under six watch the...
. She immediately offered to record a reading of the book after being sent a copy by the publisher.
Criticism
The senior vice president and director of Macmillan Children's Publishing feels the book is a parody of Macmillan's book It's Time to Sleep, My Love by Eric MetaxasEric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas is the author of Everything Else You Always Wanted to Know About God and thirty children's books. He is founder and host of Socrates in the City in New York City, a forum for philosophical discussion.He lives in New York with his wife and daughter...
and Nancy Tillman, saying "Except for the profanity laced throughout, the book has the same kind of lilting lullaby as Eric's, and the art style is the same as Nancy's." Both books contain very similar illustrations of sleeping tigers. "I really have a number of feelings about this because to me it's about the mainstreaming of vulgarity
Vulgarity
Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social classes or social climbers...
in American culture," Metaxas has said. "It's funny, but it's just wrong. ... Innocence
Innocence
Innocence is a term used to indicate a lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, sin, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence refers to the lack of legal guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime.-Symbolism:...
is constantly punctured, lampooned, and when you have something really, really beautiful like a lullaby for children that there's something that kind of saddens me that we have to turn it into a joke. ... Are people going to look at my book now, and is it going pollute their ability to enjoy what I have written?"
In July 2011, MensHealth.com published a retort to the book: a parody poem written from the child's perspective titled "Get the F**k Out of My Room" and containing parenting advice.