If you know aught of Wolfe or Kesey, you know I was in California over the weekend (well, tumbled off the plane yesterday morning). I thought about writing a Reading On The Road post, as I do, but I wasn't sure how much I would get read if anything. I was still vacillating half an hour before I had to be at JFK, which is uncharacteristically indecisive even for me.

On the flight out I was unseasonably plowing through Ian Frazier's TRAVELS IN SIBERIA. The in-flight TV system was broken and repeating a 40-minute loop of promotional clips of Broadway shows, shopping, actors from "Fringe" being interviewed. The man next to me hadn't brought anything to do, and about two hours in he pressed the call button and complained to the flight attendant, "Can you do something about this? It keeps repeating. I'm beginning to get irritated." The world's tallest, baldingest 5-year-old.

On the flight back I didn't sleep much but I read most of John L. Parker's ONCE A RUNNER, which I picked up on a whim at the Strand a few weeks ago. It's sort of like a FOUNTAINHEAD set in college track and/but (depending on your view of THE FOUNTAINHEAD) it improved as it went along.