In 2012, the Tumblr blog "Nice Guys of OKCupid" spotlighted a now-familiar archetype: the self-proclaimed "nice guy" whose progressive, sensitive façade masks entitlement, resentment, and self-absorption. Matt Gasda’s new novel, The Sleepers, animates a pretentious, Ivy League version of this archetype. Set in Brooklyn, it follows Dan—a hyper-online, upwardly mobile academic—steeped in some of the central tensions of the millennial era.
The year is 2016, and Dan is dating the beautiful but "aging" actress, Mariko, a Tisch graduate whose stagnant performances are precise but uninspired. ("Aging" in quotes because she’s only 32, yet frets over her supposed crow’s feet and fading glow.) As the 2016 election simmers in the backdrop—notifications humming ambiently across Twitter and Facebook—The Sleepers unfolds, saturated in paradox.
Perhaps the most central of those: that so-called male feminists often make the worst boyfriends—their performative wokeness a Trojan horse for ego, entitlement, and resentment. But subtler paradoxes surface, too: that Mariko, the neurotic older sister, is less professionally successful than her free-spirited sibling, Akari; that Dan, a proto-"Social Justice Warrior" online, yawns at the suffering of individuals in real life. There’s also the paradox that the meritocratic hamster wheel he builds a brand critiquing is his only source of meaning. And that his separation from it is only possible through the patrimony of a father whom he scorns, both in the abstract (deeming the nuclear family an "overrated configuration") and the concrete (his unwillingness to be a decent, communicative son).
I think—but am not always sure—that the novel is satirizing Dan. So many of his lines are cringe-inducing, with surrounding characters viscerally recoiling. Like when Mariko suggests a movie night, and he retorts that he only watches "Lars von Trier films." Or, when trying to be seductive, he drops the hilariously corny line: "I like your soul. It’s pretty fucking fascinating slash amazing," using the Reddit-brained, theatre-kid convention of saying "slash" out loud. There’s also his absurd insistence that the New York Times isn’t elitist enough. But this isn’t just performative pedantry. It’s a self-absorbed strategy to talk about himself when he should be focused on his girlfriend. "He wanted to talk about himself, examine himself before her: his ideas, politics, habits, his soul," the narrator explains. "This was part of the ruse: he would inquire into her inner life, really, her moral life, only so that he could feel justified in talking about his own." Dan is, in so many ways, an abhorrent, repulsive, narcissistic character—the embodiment of everything people hate about millennials—which the novel captures brilliantly.
But sometimes it’s hard to tell: Some of the qualities it parodies—aimlessness, overthinking, faux profundity—are qualities from which it itself suffers, taking its meanderings too seriously, and treating every intellectual ramble like a revelation. Maybe that’s the point? Maybe it’s a method performance—both mocking and embodying the preening it critiques? It’s a little too on-the-nose, too neurotic, or just in need of reining in.
Take, for example, Mariko’s overwrought monologue about "this fucking bizarre American obsession with happiness." It’s melodramatic in a way that expresses "main-character energy"—not on Mariko’s part, but of the novel itself. She proceeds to lament the loss of childhood contentment, remarking, "I’ve never been able to compensate for the love that I had then—that feeling that earth itself is love." Earth itself is love? Did Rupi Kaur write this?
If these lines are satire, the novel doesn’t do enough to make that clear. There’s too little authorial distance, in a way that’s confusing rather than clever. The blur between parody and participation, between what’s being mocked versus modeled, undermines trust in authorial control—making the novel seem a little too proud of its own self-awareness and leaving the reader unsure whether it’s in on the joke, or simply embodying it.
Still, the story is potent. Dan isn’t just a hilariously narcissistic millennial "gooner"—he’s also, like most of us, complicated. Beneath the cringe and melodrama are moments of gripping sympathy for the Greek nature of his tragic arc.
Centrally, there’s the realization that so much of Dan’s dysfunction stems from cultural narratives he’s internalized—primarily the idea that masculinity is toxic—and the consequences of living in a society that perpetuates such distortions. Case in point: Most of the female characters, on a psychosexual level, crave male leadership and dominance. Eliza pursues a teacher, and Mariko, an older director—both authority figures. Dan, passive and submissive, fails to "wear the pants," and what seems like sensitivity ultimately becomes repellant and toxic, the most destructive force in the novel.
The story also evokes James Joyce’s Ulysses. Like Leopold Bloom, Dan wanders an iconic urban setting (Brooklyn instead of Dublin), shifting interchangeably from loftiness (politics, memory, literature) to bodiliness (breakfast, sex, sweat, excrement). Like Leopold, he grieves a parent’s suicide, while tethered to a stage-performer woman associated with menstruation and fertility. But whereas Ulysses ends in affirmation—Molly’s redemptive "yes" to new life with Leopold—Dan’s story reflects the brutal entropy of postmodernism, gently reminding disillusioned readers that commitment, care, and continuity might be worth considering after all.
Ultimately, The Sleepers is a welcome elegy for "bugmen" and a reflection of the growing sentiment that marriage and family are the new counterculture. These are fitting contributions from a writer whom Vulture called the "dramatist of the Dimes Square scene"—a contrarian, post-left subculture of crypto edgelords, aspiring tradwives, and Bell Curve enthusiasts. Fittingly, Gasda’s reactionary portrayal of #MeToo—and the spiritual fallout of a culture that pathologizes masculinity—is sharp, if flawed. The novel is excessive at times, with monologues as tedious as its characters. But it’s a bold, messy, and oftentimes brilliant meditation on the shortcomings of post-liberation. Here's hoping we're emerging from that wreckage—and that Gasda will bring his sparkling dramatization to whatever comes next.
The Sleepers: A Novel
by Matthew Gasda
Arcade, 288 pp., $27.99
Nora Kenney is a writer and communications director in New York.