I'm very envious of getting to read SH5 for the first time. Enjoy and savor, few books mix funny, wistful, and elegiac so expertly.

Is there a natural starting point with him? Or just dive in to whatever you find at the bookstore?

You win this round, Wong, you're free to go. (Grumbles to self) slippery son of a bitch!

I feel exactly the same way! I stumbled upon him in Anthony Burgess's memoir (he loved him and joked that their last names were close enough to be related) and it has become a very different, phantasmagoric world ever since.

You love Stalin and which one? Mr. Wong, may I remind you you're under oath.

I figured Borges must be your favorite writer! Great reference.

and I really wanted to ask him about Naked Lunch since I didn't know about the "pastiche" style and thought I was supposed to understand it in a conventional narrative way, but I was scared to death that the resulting quid pro quo would be bath time!

Ha! That's too funny! Floppy-armed is a great adjective, too.

Not much to tell, really. After a Dwarves show at the Outhouse these older punks took my friends and I to a party at Burroughs house (he lived in Lawrence, KS) and it was a pretty chill environment, probably because we were just drunk and everyone else was on opiates. When Burroughs came by, he looked at the three of…

Love Jim Thompson! And, unlike, Burroughs, he never tried to have sex with me when I was a teenager 😄

Reading it directly after Native Son, as well. It definitely puts you in mid century America as a person of color more evocatively than anything I've ever read. Masterpieces.

Nothing beats The Lottery. That last paragraph…(shudder)

Yeah, wow. I don't know if you spoiler alert a 60 year old book but…SPOILERS!!!! I'm just past Tod Clifton's death and the funeral speech and, put simply, that is some of the finest prose I've ever read.

Absolutely!

Both the books (especially Transformation) have much broader scopes than just Christianity, too, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Enjoy!

Six with "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe" I think.

And Stalin/Pol Pot apologia!

Anything by Karen Armstrong, but start with Battle for God, or her book about the Axial Age, Great Awakening, maybe? Both are marvelous, and very readable. EDIT: It's Great Transformation

That book, and My Side of the Mountain, are the reason I always carried a lighter as a kid. I remember being nine or ten and thinking, "no way I don't die before I figure out fire" so I needed that safety net.

Killing vampires and a divided America? Pretty B.A.