Electric Sleep

2008-04-06T13:05:00.001-07:00

The advent of Rudy Wurlitzer’s long-awaited new novel The Drop Edge of Yonder (an early draft of which Jim Jarmusch ripped off for Dead Man, apparently) has me pondering all things Western—from the Lone Ranger radio series to El Topo and the Blueberry comics to Blood Meridian to PT Anderson’s recent masterpiece There Will Be Blood. For the record

2008-03-25T15:03:00.001-07:00

Should you find yourself in an airport before a transatlantic flight with nothing to read, I suggest you pick up a copy of Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia. The book starts off as an alternate history of naturalism in the early 20th Century, and then turns into something more like The Matrix, if The Matrix were retold on a cosmic scale and ended with a war in heaven fought between four-armed

2008-03-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

Around this time last year, I queried The Believer about interviewing Dean Karnazes, the ultra-marathoner. My letter read, in part:"...Wired Magazine recently described Karnazes as "The Perfect Human." He is a legendary endurance athlete, and the author of a best-selling memoir entitled Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner. He won the Badwater 135 (a death-defying race run in

2007-11-28T10:57:00.001-08:00

SOME NOTES FROM, AND ABOUT, APE CAVELast Super Bowl Sunday, Jane and I went caving beneath Mount St. Helens. There were numerous switchbacks as WA-503 wound its way up the mountain. After each, MSH loomed larger and larger ahead. Needless to say, it’s active. These days, on occasion, smoke pours from the top as the volcano rebuilds its lava dome. To someone acquainted with Vesuvius, it’s an