Hystopia

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank those veterans who, one way or another, shared their stories as I was writing this book — in particular Chet Lubeck and Gerald McCarthy.

And thanks to those who gave me support along the way: The Guggenheim Foundation, Jonathan Franzen, Jamie Quatro, Rebecca Nagel, Andrew Wylie, Mitzi Angel, Will Wolfslau, Donald Antrim, Rodger Stevens, Joanna Goodman, David Patterson, Frank and Holly Bergon, Eric Chinski, and Laird Gallagher.

Finally, I’d like to thank my father, who died before I finished but who — I hope and pray — would’ve seen that this was written in the spirit of via negativa. His belief in the wider cosmology, in the before and the after, in the permanence of grace as the fundamental light in the darkness of existence, is the gift that keeps him alive in me.