These Dreams of You

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Within the first nine or ten thousand words of Zan’s novel, this and that happens, most of which Zan knows he’ll wind up cutting. The story really begins when the young German skinhead follows the protagonist one night and, near the entrance of the U-Bahn, with a gang of other skinheads who call themselves the Pale Flame, viciously beats the writer and leaves him for dead in the street.

Or maybe actually he is dead. This novel being not remotely autobiographical, it’s hard for Zan to be certain. In any case, before the writer passes out, he has a kind of reverie of his memory floating away, like a balloon that Viv got for Sheba while shopping, which the girl let go just for the sensation of watching it vanish in the sky.