I moved straight from kindergarten ,at age 4, to graduate school to my position at Lake Forest ,at age 26. No break. No bumming around Europe. No peace corps. No corporate cubicle job. No stint as a Starbucks barrista.

I'm in a profession with a dismal success rate, in an academic field with a dismal hiring rate. And I don't write, really, about any of that - rather the institutional structures I've negotiated my way through, with healthy doses of luck, provide a breathing, parasitic glimpse into the bureaucratic monolith of the creative-degree machine.

All media is moving, at light speed, toward development through viral channels.

I moved straight from kindergarten ,at age 4, to graduate school to my position at Lake Forest ,at age 26. No break. No bumming around Europe. No peace corps. No corporate cubicle job. No stint as a Starbucks barrista.

The condition of the United States in the post-postmodern, or post-post-irony period. It's what the country will become when there is nothing left but mediated images of its substance.

Be on the lookout for global warming for God's sakes, although I don't think you can really "see" it. It's something you feel, deep inside, at the moment you have second thoughts about spraying those CFCs outside your home each afternoon in hopes of making it just a little friggin' warmer - is that too much to ask? - in your neck of the woods.

One demonstrable effect this type of work can have is in its viral promulgation. Take Kathy Acker for example: her work exists mainly through academic channels. Students are exposed to her novels, and some read her, then, on their own, but some also go to grad school: teach her, write about her, keep her going.