Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan was a tincture of its times, a distillation of a particular culture (recent Russian-American) with a heavy scent of satire. His latest, Super Sad True Love Story travels into the future of, as the jacket states, “say next Tuesday,” to further concentrate its contemporary satire. As with all satire,…

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This Rabbit has never quite gotten Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero to equate. We read the book when it came out in 1985. We liked it for its take on the disillusioned youth of wealthy Los Angeles. We’d been around enough to know that rich kids always have the best…

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The Rabbit’s  March Hare personae means he’s still waiting for his copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice (tomorrow! tomorrow!).  In the meantime, we’re reading the reviews. As usual, novelist/reviewer Walter Kirn shines a light. He’s an admirer. Even Salon’s Laura Miller, who so hated Against the Day, finds the latest to…

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…other psychological states figure in, notably schizophrenia. Dick was a heavy abuser of amphetamines and as he progressed into the ‘70s, questions of sanity dominated his work.

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We have seen the future, thanks to science fiction author Philip K. Dick, and it looks like the present… even when it’s set in the past. No, we don’t fly around it rocket-powered hovercraft, there are no colonies on the moon let alone Mars and we don’t carry around laser…

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