I would like to thank everyone who was a part of this in any way, particularly Jeffery Renard Allen, Jeff Parker, Mikhail Iossel, and the unfailingly generous Beatrice Monti von Rezzori. I would especially like to thank those people who asked me to write about things it would never have occurred to me to write about on my own: Knight Landesman, Michael Miller, Greil Marcus, John Bertram, David Byrne, Lexy Bloom, Michael Ray, Dwight Garner, Marc Woodworth, Amy Scholder, Lee Yew Leong, Laurel Nakadate, Carl Wilson, John Freeman, and David Rosenberg; also my editor Deborah Garrison and my agent Jin Auh for their professional and personal kindness. Most deeply I would like to thank Peter Trachtenberg and Jennifer Sears for their unfailing intimate support.

Impersonal but sincere and respectful thanks are due to David Sim for allowing the public to use his wonderful Cerebus the Aardvark imagery.