Weike Wang Reads “The Dreamdrive”

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2:15Weike Wang:This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Waikie Wang read her story, The Dream Drive, from the May 25, 2026 issue of the magazine. Wang, who was chosen for the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 list in 2017, has published three novels, Chemistry, which won the Penn Hemingway Award, Joan is OK, and Rental House. Now here's Waikie Wang.

2:56The night it began, he'd had an unremarkable meal of chicken and rice. Sure, the chicken was dry, flavorless, and the rice wet, also flavorless, but he had not found the meal particularly bad, and after imbibing a large glass of cold filtered water, he'd experienced no gastrointestinal bloat. He'd done little of note after the meal. He'd sat on his sofa and watched TV. Innocuous cooking shows, the news, Jeopardy. Yet those to whom he kept telling this story, his sister, his mother, his then-girlfriend, and later his doctors, continued to press him for more detail. Along with the water, could he have, unbeknownst to him, swallowed a toxic amount of psychedelics?

3:45Could the chicken from which the thigh and breast meat came have consumed weeks earlier? a toxic amount of psychedelics. And what about the television? Did it give off TV waves? Or the sofa? Sofa waves? One doctor said that some psychedelics are fat-soluble and can live indefinitely in one's fat cells, which unless they succumb to liposuction, never go away, and often grow. Did you know this about fat cells? He asked, texted his mother, his sister, and his then-girlfriend. They were all on the same group chat. Yes, these women knew. Another doctor focused on the sofa waves, which more specifically were gravitational waves.

4:31All objects emit gravitational waves, the doctor explained, and should those waves interact unfavorably with those of the self through the calibrated physics of destructive interference? Did you know this about gravitational waves? He asked, texted, his mother, his sister, and his then-girlfriend. His mother did, for she'd often warned her children not to stand near microwaves. His sister did, for she had a hobby of reading people's tarot cards at dinner and on weekends collecting crystals. His then-girlfriend did not, for she was a theoretical astrophysicist. In lay terms, she tried to convince the others that gravitational waves are distortions of spacetime caused by huge things like black holes, and that these waves have nothing to do with waves of the self, which do not exist.

5:24A sofa is a black hole, he replied, a comment at which his sister and his mother, but not his then-girlfriend, laughed. He'd had bouts of insomnia before, A string of days, weeks. Drugs didn't work. No dosage of melatonin, Ambien, or Trazodone. And no quantity of alcohol. But sometimes this worked. Rise and read in dim light the most boring book you can find, like the one he had on European horse breeding. And sometimes this worked. Lie down in the bathtub with a shower set to very hot. Feel the scolding water pound your chest. That was where his then-girlfriend found him one dawn, drenched, naked, thinking him either dead or worse, suicidal, she'd screamed, which inopportunely woke him up.

6:13But this stretch of insomnia was so radically different from the others that he refused to give it the basic name. Lots of people experience insomnia, almost one out of three, yet his current state was unique, wholly individual, and thus deserving of a cool compound word as cogent as space-time. Between drive dream and dream drive, he settled on the latter. And henceforth, this was how he described his soon-to-be routine malaise to his mother, his sister, his then-girlfriend, and later his doctors. Each night, he went into the dream drive. He would think he'd fallen asleep, but would wake up driving.

6:53And while driving, he would panic, believing that if he had just woken up, then he must have fallen asleep at the wheel. And he would drive, drive, drive, in this panic, in this fog, as the road was always foggy, until he once again fell asleep at the wheel, and then he would wake up in his own bed, panicked that he had not slept, had never slept, would never sleep. And when his eyes shut again, he would wake up driving, further panicked that he had once again fallen asleep. Each morning he awoke, not the term he would have used, exhausted, having not slept, his then-girlfriend would argue that he had, and having driven all night before falling asleep at the wheel.

7:36The drive was the dream, but the dream was also the drive. His mother asked if there was ever anyone in the car with him. His sister asked if he was certain that he was in a car. Was it gas or electric, stick or automatic? Could it be a truck or a train or a tractor? And had he remembered to turn on the headlights? When driving in the Dream Drive, he had limited range of motion. His hands were at ten and two, his face fixed, staring straight ahead. It was fear that hindered movement. Fear that, should he look away from the road, he would either hit a cement barricade or pass out yet again. But one night, he forced his eyeballs down toward his dashboard and the middle console.

8:23It was indeed a car that ran on gas and was manual. The stick shift induced new fear. He did not know how to drive stick. Yet the car was still in fluid motion. He awoke in his bed, covered in sweat and shouting. Another night, he peered into his rearview mirror at the back seat. It held a booster, but no child. The empty phone block with adjustable armrests induced more fear. Where had he left this child that was not his? And did this child know how to drive stick? He awoke again in his bed, covered in sweat and sobbing. His then-girlfriend decided that it was time for her to sleep elsewhere.

9:05She said that she would text him, but the next morning she called him. She'd gone to her lap and slept on the sanitized floor of its common room. She'd slept so exceptionally well that for the sake of her own intellect and future endeavors, with a heavy heart but at long last a clear head, she'd decided that she could no longer be with him. It was the booster, wasn't it? he'd asked, hinting at what he thought was every woman's perennial desire for children. No, she replied. Later that day, she removed herself from the group chat. One doctor, a psychologist, went through dream theories with him to see which great thinker's mind he was in.

9:47Dreams A are physiological necessities, B help us consolidate a day's events, C reactivate neural pathways, D are wish fulfillment. Out of these theories, the last seemed the most speculative, personal, and therefore pertinent. Freud it was then. The man told the psychologist that in the real world, that mundane grind, he never drove anywhere. He worked from home, ordered delivery. He held a driver's license but did not practice. His mother was a better driver than he was. His sister too. His once-girlfriend, by leaps and bounds, miles, literally. More than 2 ,000 she'd driven with him, he the passenger tasked with feeding her seedless green grapes as she steered.

10:36Highways made him nervous, the oncoming cars liked lines of golden-eyed insects rushing to swarm him. When driving, you have to assume that other people want to live as much as you do, he told his mother, his sister, and his then-girlfriend, an assumption none found of interest as it was universally applicable to any situation. like walking outside or using a public restroom. But the assumption reassured him, since if, while operating heavy machinery, he also had to worry about the sanity of other people operating similar machinery, then how was driving different from warfare and cars from fighter jets, in which you either attack or get attacked?

11:16The psychologist found these analogies interesting. The psychologist wrote furiously on a notepad. My father, the man told the psychologist, since neither his mother nor his sister ever wished to speak about this person. My father was a defensive driver. Had his mother wished to speak about this person, she would have added his father was an aggressive driver. And his sister would have added, Dad was the worst driver in the world. Ask him how many accidents he got us into. Ask him how many tickets, how many cars he totaled. One time, I flew through a windshield. A windshield. The sister would then point to her large, dented forehead.

11:58Only in a certain light was the dent visible. It was impossible to ask their father how many accidents, tickets, totaled cars, etc. He'd left the country long ago and cut ties. Also, his sister had not, as she said, flown through a windshield. But she had shot forward in the car. Inertia, his once-girlfriend had called this, hit her large forehead against the glass, cracked the glass, and then rebounded into the back seat, where had she just buckled up moments earlier, as their father had mandated both children do, she would not have been thrown at the windshield when their father rear-ended the car in front of them while going five miles over the 45-miles-per-hour limit.

12:43Prior to the collision, their parents had been arguing. It was either about money or about why they had immigrated to an insane country that measures height and feet and distance in miles. Their mother had dared their father to crash the car. He had done as he was told. Their mother's forehead had also hit the windshield and been dented, a detail his sister conveniently leaves out. Where were you in all this? The psychologist asked. The man, then a boy, was in the back seat with his seatbelt fastened. He had felt no pain then or later when paramedics treated a cross-chest abrasion, vermilion-colored, and the width of a mountain bike tire.

13:24He had felt no pain because his parents had stopped fighting, and his sister had stopped complaining, and the car had stopped moving. So, for all intents and purposes, his father had done a good deed by ending the familial discord without killing a bystander. With their father, there had been 12 accidents, zero casualties. Did he wish to live? The psychologist asked. And the man said, for sure. With the same conviction, one might declare all families happy, and all immigrants grateful, and all sisters saints. There's no child in the booster seat because the child is you, the psychologist told him.

14:03And the man said, oh my God. Then the psychologist showed him a silver lining. After his father had left, his mother and his sister became good drivers, and that allowed the man to be a defunct one, which allowed him to charm his once-girlfriend, who pursued a hard science helmed by strong men and found, for a time, happy purpose in the act of caring for him. A less strong man. A gentle man. Wasn't there consolation in that? He left that session restored. The dream drive did not end, but he did not care. The ordeal was no longer a senseless drive to nowhere, but a sensible one to nowhere. The drive itself was the destination.

14:47This is the logic with which families delude themselves into taking road trips in the first place. And the drive was an endless solo road trip that represented all the road trips that he and his family had never taken. Since they never made it far before his father got into an accident and the car had to be towed. How American a road trip was, car ownership too, A package deal, the car, the open road, and being a sedentary but freedom-aspiring resident of this insane metric system-phobic country. Thus, one morning, after having fallen asleep at the wheel for the hundredth time and woken up in bed, the man realized that he understood his father a little better.

15:31He understood why his father, in his first month in the U.S., had gone out and bought, in all cash, a fourth-hand compact auto with sticky roll-down windows, and why, although he'd had to keep moving the family into progressively smaller rental properties, his father had always made sure that they had access to a car. The car was the American dream, yet the car was also a burden, with high monthly interest payments, which put savage masculinity at odds with paternal liability. As soon as the man understood that, he also understood why his father, being the imperfect, self-destructive human that he was, had had no other recourse but to wreck it.

16:14And as soon as the man understood that, he also understood why his father, being the duty-bound, self-loathing human that he was, had no other recourse but to fix the car immediately or buy a new one. Had there been fewer totaled cars, his father might have attained home ownership. But then another cycle would have begun, burn the house down just to build it back up, and it was objectively more arduous to level and to rebuild a house than a car. The last car that his father owned had not been totaled. It was not in optimal or even suboptimal condition, but on roads that were not highways, it was drivable.

16:56So perhaps by leaving that broken but not entirely destroyed piece of equipment to their mother. Their father was trying to tell her that he still had hope. Perhaps he was saying that he believed the dream would outlast him. The man texted these early morning epiphanies to his mother and his sister in one long paragraph that began with, my father. His mother liked the paragraph so instantly that the man was certain she had not read it. His sister took four days to respond privately with two sentences. The first declared as a fact that their father was a manipulative layabout, in all caps, and that a son's sorry habit of excusing his layabout father is an imprinted form of patriarchal power and brotherhood, in all caps, that leads to the insidious gaslighting of daughters and mothers.

17:49The second asked if he was okay. I'm okay, the man replied, and the sister left that sentence on read. Since he did sleep a bit each night, he was biologically okay and not dead. But he could no longer recall what restful slumber was like. Lapsing from light to dark, slipping under into hypnosis, the sleep of the dead, no dreams, no terrors, just a pristine blink, a gone-ness that lasts the snap of a finger. only to surface, inhale, and see that by some clock magic, a third of a day has passed. That he could now perceive every passing minute was a new and unpleasant phenomenon. Was this to be the remainder of his life?

18:33Yes, maybe. In the grand scheme of sleep disorders, it could be far worse. He was delighted when the dream drive gave him a change of scenery, sections of road work, albeit with no workers, A school crossing, albeit with no schoolchildren. The delight was followed by loneliness. He was in this dream world, childless, fatherless, companionless, and indisputably alone. Sometimes it snowed, and when it did, he would roll his eyeballs upward into that black cavern and address the snowflakes. Ah, my friends. To these friends, he told stories about his father, whose name was Greg. Not that names were so important, but in the dream drive, the man thought they might be.

19:18Greg was not his father's real name. It was his chosen one. Easy to say, to spell, easy to remember, and also to forget. Greg had crashed cars, but had not had insomnia. Nor had he believed in insomnia. He'd believe that if people worked long and hard enough, if they were fatigued enough from physical or mental labor, they slept, as sleep is crucial to survival, and people who defy their own survival, insomniacs, would, under the laws of natural selection, be eliminated. In other words, Greg had thought insomnia a problem of the rich, the weak, the useless, the indulgent, the lazy. Greg for gregarious, the man joked, and the snowflakes laughed.

20:06Oh, how these jovial ice fractals resembled ash. Awake, son of Greg the Gregarious, was let down. The day was too bright, the weather too random, and events moved around him, despite him, as if he didn't really need to exist. He had friends in his contact lists, real, even gregarious people he knew and could meet up with, but never did. At work, he had become desultory, though not enough to draw notice. He realized that much of what he used to do with his once-girlfriend was listen to her vent about her work, how if she lost focus for a millisecond, that's one thousandth of a second, she'd explain, her colleagues would not only notice, but say that they'd notice and report her to their supervisor.

20:54Now, the man couldn't help but wonder, what was worse, to be singled out for decimal changes or to be ignored for integral ones? Each morning, by text, he reported to his mother, his sister, and his psychologist what he had seen the night before, and expressed keen anticipation for what he would see that night. His mother liked his texts, but rarely responded. His sister rarely liked his texts and never responded. The psychologist was a willing accomplice, even curious. There ever any chickens? he'd asked during one session. The man checked that night and the night after, seven nights in a row, he checked, only to report back that there were no psychedelic chickens crossing the road.

21:39A shame, the psychologist said, making a note. This was the nature of things, until the man mentioned, offhandedly, more as a setting detail, that in the dream drive he talked to snow. The psychologist leaned forward and clarified that the man meant snow from the sky and not a ground-level accumulation in the form of a buff snow guy or a voluptuous snow gal. The man clarified that he meant snowflakes. What would he and a bunch of shape-shifting snow people have to discuss, except the certainty of climate change and a fleeting existence dependent on temperature, for which modern civilization had three incongruous scales?

22:21Calvin Celsius Fahrenheit, the man said. Calvin Celsius Fahrenheit. The man repeated. So, the psychologist spoke to a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist spoke to a neurologist, and the neurologist spoke to a better neurologist, and the group of them decided that it would benefit the man to undergo an MRI of the brain. Brain waves, sleep waves, these were not what an MRI would measure, according to Google. And wisely skeptical, the man met with the two white-coated neurologists to glean with absolute clarity what kind of procedure he was getting himself into. Their white coats hung like snow capes.

23:04He wished that his once-girlfriend were still his girlfriend. He wished that he saw his mother and his sister more. MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the neurologist said, which uses a magnet, the better neurologist said, to align the body's water molecules, the neurologist said, then uses radio waves to disrupt that alignment, the better neurologist said. But please remember, the neurologist said, that radio waves travel at the speed of light and not sound. And because radio waves travel at the speed of light and not sound, they're actually light waves. Light, the better neurologist said, panning his hands upward to the LED ceiling panel.

23:50Light. The man looked down at his own hands, which felt heavy and coarse. He said that he would do his best with this information, do his best to remember. But the it, the dream drive, the scan, the waves, his presence today in this exam room and his firm but erroneous belief that he had not slept in months still felt altogether surreal. Surreal is a homophone of so real, the neurologist said. Other questions? The better neurologist asked. Since radios are often found in the same rooms as sofas, the man asked at what speed sofa waves traveled, sound or light. The better neurologist said sound, for sure.

24:36Sofa waves travel at the speed of sound. A few days later, the man was strapped onto a table that would be fed into a machine that reminded him of an incinerator. heavily sedated his head shoved into a yoke the neurologist called a head coil he was told to count backward from 10 he didn't make it to six yet between the numbers of 10 and 6 he felt he had attained nirvana how many times countless had he awake and livid dreamed in the sense of yearned to be stabbed in the neck with a horse tranquilizer. And how many times, countless, had he realized that he only thought horse tranquilizer and not bear or lion because he was still reading that book on European horse breeding.

25:26From number six downward to negative infinity, he was in the dream drive. The same car, the same fog, the same snow, the same road. Seconds passed, minutes. He could not wake from the sedation so he could not fall asleep at the wheel. He was tired from the sedation, but he could not alleviate his tiredness by falling asleep at the wheel. He was trapped. I'm trapped, he told the snowflakes. They were sympathetic. As the minutes stretched on and the drive became the longest he'd experienced, it also became boring, monotonous, with none of the panic he'd previously known, and he wondered if he had overreacted.

26:08If he had never told his mother, his sister, his once girlfriend, if he had not enforced his own terminology, vouched for his own singularity, if they had not left him to cope with it alone, and if that had not pushed him into the rooms of disease-obsessed doctors, who then pushed him into rooms with wave-obsessed machines, would it all have worked out fine? No, it would not have. He would have died. In the moving vehicle of the dream world and in the stationary machine of the real world, he was trapped, but trapped at least in two triumphs of humanity, a combustion engine, an incinerator-like magnet.

26:51Light energy harnessed in the real world was now playing through the radio of his car in the dream world in the form of melodious static that lulled him either to sleep soundly or to be sound asleep. This was progress, advancement. He was privileged, and if he had privilege, he had power. He moved his right foot to the left to a new pedal. He could only hope that this was the brake. He pressed the pedal, and as a normal car would, the car slowed, and once it had come to a stop, he pulled the handbrake. The fog was still present, the snow. But in the car's total lack of motion, in the stillness of its water molecules, which mirrored the stillness of his own water molecules, he had achieved what his father had wanted his son, his boy, his progeny, in the new country to achieve all along.

27:44He had parked the car. A memory unearthed. Remember when, on snowy, foggy mornings, on the drive to school, your father or your mother or your sister turned on the radio? And remember when you sat to the right of whoever was driving, in the passenger seat and took your index finger and drew shapes in the window condensation. And remember when your father or your mother or your sister would stop at a red light, that rouge color aglow on their cheeks, and they would puff clouds into their hands to stay warm. And remember when they looked at you and remarked on those window shapes, how funny or ugly or weird they were.

28:26And you thought, especially with your father, Greg the gregarious guardian of families and cars If only we could stay like this On red With the car, the radio, the snow All running as they were built to But not going anywhere And remember when Through the glorious marriage of light and sound waves The radio announced As you had willed it to That school was closed that day Congrats kids Grab your sleds, mitts, skates, friends Go out yonder to those bleached medals Roll those snowballs Build those snowmen Dig those snow forts Fight Conquer And remember how that message electrified you By declaring the imminent day unstructured Thus ungovernable Removed from time And remember how your father or your mother or your sister knew this too Such that once the light turned green Your father or your sister Though not your mother But especially your father Would curse at the radio at the voice on the radio.