Excerpts:

It was an indictment not only of a way of life I was familiar with but also - I thought rather grandly - of the Reagan eighties and, more indirectly, of Western civilization in the present moment. My teacher was convinced as well, and after some casual edits and revisions (I had written it quickly in an eight-week crystal-meth binge on the floor of my bedroom in L.A.) he submitted it to his agent and publisher, who both agreed to take it on (the publisher somewhat reluctantly - one member of the editorital board arguing, "If there's an audience for a novel about coke-snorting, cock-sucking zombies, then by all means let's publish the damn thing"), and I watched with a mixture of fear and fascination - laced with excitement - its transformation from a student assignment into a glossy hardcover . . .