I also wonder whether the swoons of sentimental fiction are very much different from the black-outs that plague hard-boiled heroes. That is, I wonder how often fainting is a mode of narrative feinting, as it were, both a means of punctuating high points and of shutting down scenes before too much is revealed or characters before their emotional display crosses the boundary between high drama and maudlin excess. If one can learn anything about 19th century fiction from contemporary college parties, it’s that passing out is an adventitious species of tact. Then the subject of literary sleep disorders reaches another stage of strangeness with Edgar Huntly….