“On the Road,” Jack Kerouac “This book became my band’s template. To explore the country and do it all — having a great big time — on our terms, and no one else’s. Hooray! Followed by “The First Third” by Neal Cassady. The muse speaks, writes, smokes, drinks, seduces.”

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“Dhalgren,” Samuel R. Delaney “Where I learned in eighth grade, I think, that in the future you could have unbridled sci-fi sex with every man and woman within reach, without guilt, fear or weirdness, and have great end-of-times adventures. Just like my dreams! Fantastically futuristic!”

“Breakfast of Champions,” Kurt Vonnegut “Introduced me to irony and self-deprecating humor. I can’t say I learned the lesson well, but…a B- for effort.”

“All Families Are Psychotic,” Douglas Coupland “He is one of our great futurist lights and this is all the proof I need to make such a claim.”

“Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov “His humor and grasp of humanity and language thrill.”

“Play It as It Lays,” Joan Didion “Which weirdly, through a Jack Pierson photograph and a gift from Douglas Coupland, became maybe the genesis of, and one of the three horns of my ongoing obsession with sculptural replicas and obsolete forms.”