Archives.
02.03.02 - 05.25.02.
05.26.02 - 09.14.02.
09.15.02 - 12.18.02.

LUDIC LOG

A novel is in many ways a lonely, solitary endeavor. But, curiously, it is also a collective enterprise -- a seeming contradiction for which I am extremely grateful. The following acknowledgments are long overdue.

- Shout out to God. Peace to all the gods and the earths. All sala'am ale'ichem.

- Shout out to my baby mama Esther. You stayed true when I was doin' them book tours in Scandinavia, and you done a great job with Lakota, Benedict and Carleton. I'm be back with you as soon as I do the Monsters of New Sincerity Tour of Bangkok, so stay real, girl. I got crazy mad love for you, my Judean princess.

- Shout out to my OE Gary Fisketjon. Without your creative inspiration and deadly editing skillz, I'd still be in second draft. And thanks for hooking me up with the iBook, yo. I'll see you on Page Six, dog.

- Peace to all my homies at the Rockefeller Fellowship, who hooked me up with the lovely-flowin' cheddar I needed to bust this here joint. Also peace to all my niggas in the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and all the players and pimps rolling with the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Y'all done earned it.

- Shout out to my main man Bret Easton Ellis. His talent and vision shone like a beacon from the lantern in the hands of the Colossus of Rhodes, unless I'm thinking of something else. We finally did it, yo! Good luck with "The Rules of Attraction: the Grad School Years", dog.

- To all my brothers and sisters still in lock-up down in Yaddo, Saratoga and Bread Loaf, stay strong. You will be free one day. You will be heard. You will eventually receive and acceptance letter from Quarterly, or even Granta. In the meantime, heed these words: keep the trust fund rolling, keep going to the group critiques no matter how far beyond the rest of the rabble you are, and make sure you always hold on to Mort Janklow's phone number.

- Mad props to Cal-Irvine, and fuck those motherfuckin' pussies at Columbia! West say-eeeeeeeed!

- Fuck the following people for failing to recognize how aflame I am with the pure fire of passionate literary genius: Michiko Kakutani, Teffence Rafferty, Jonathan Yardley, David Lehman, R.Z. Sheppard, James Wolcott and Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. Much love to Eliot Fremont-Smith and B.R. Myers, though.

- Shout-out to my superfly agent and P-R guru Mitch Kluski, who got me the hook-up with a sweet sweet movie deal with New Line. A lot of guys woudn't go the distance like that before the book was even finished, but that's why you the man. You taught me the most valuable lesson of all: it's not the product, it's the package. Also, a big shout-out to whoever it was at Vintage Contemporaries who wrote the back cover copy for this thing. That's opened a lot of doors for me.

- Finally, most love under God and the light to all y'all who are reading these words. The readers are the ones who make the whole experience of writing worthwhile, particularly if you bought this book instead of getting it at the library like a punk. And I mean each an every one of you, even the cheap-ass ones who bought it in TPB or paperback. Don't sweat it, blood, I know what it's like to be a broke-ass piece of trash. I do it all for you, and you pay me back with your attention, and support, and ability to fill out the demographic reader survey card that comes attached in the center of every edition of my new novel. Peace.