Acquainted With the Night is an interesting piece of literature. It's nonfiction, but it's told in the charming, benevolent, illuminative fashion of a kindly old man telling a story to his grandchildren. It's just an organized collection of miniature essays, and yet it's so much more than that - it sparkles with the glimmer of fireflies, irradiating the darkness in small, humble glows of light that highlight the beauty of night while revealing the inscrutable depths that have not yet been plumbed.
This novel-esque work of nonfiction is divided into fourteen chapters, the first and last of which comprise the introduction and conclusion respectively. The remaining twelve chapters in the middle of the book each correspond to a particular hour of a fictional night, and each hour brings a new subject for contemplation and explication. This structure, although perhaps a bit haphazard in its transitions between discrete subjects, is thoughtfully organized and pervaded by a sense of wonder, as if Dewdney isn't teaching the subject but learning about it alongside his readers.
This work is unusual in several other ways as well. Every subsection of every chapter is headed by an epigraph taken from some artistic source from any point in history. Such epigraphs are often excerpts from poems by the Romantics (especially Thoreau, Shelley, and Dickinson), but sometimes they are from other sources like the Old Testament or a quote from a scientist. These epigraphs have a strong bearing on the subject of the following mini-essay, and they are often cause for reflection even before beginning the essay. This rhythm of epigraph-essay, epigraph-essay, epigraph-essay for each chapter begins to take on an aesthetic quality on its own, like the rhythm of breathing or participation in a circadian rhythm, discussions of which fall directly in the middle of the book's rhythm (either intentionally or coincidentally). This rhythmic style gives the book an almost meditative quality, which was probably one of Dewdney's intentions.
The reception for this book was mixed due to the randomness of the chapters' subjects, but it was received quite well on the whole. His combinations of art, science, and history are admirable, as are his prose and the sense of wonder it conveys. Acquainted With the Night was nominated for both the 2005 Charles Taylor prize and the 2004 Governer General's Awards, and it won a World Fantasy Award in the Anthology category (of which, ironically, it is not one).
