Sublime

“Ah,” he says. “There she is.” “Who?” “You,” he says simply. “In full Technicolor.

“If you’re ever in Cody, Wyoming,” said Billy Pilgrim behind his white linen screens, “just ask for Wild Bob.”

Trout doesn’t really exist. He has been my alter ego in several of my other novels. But most of what I have chosen to preserve from Timequake One has to do with his adventures and opinions. I have salvaged a few of the thousands of stories he wrote between 1931, when he was fourteen, and 2001, when he died at the age of eighty-four.

“Damn. I’ll post you this collection of essays, Inside the Whale.” “Thanks.” I fluked an 8, a 9, a 10, and acted like it was nothing special.

And don’t get me started about the “talking head.” A brilliant element of direct address to the camera and crew that the creators, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, perfectly lifted from documentaries and reality shows and then twisted to their own comedic ends. In a handful of lines, a character could 1) move the plot forward, 2) reveal somethin