CRUST and its epigraph

Epigraphs are always important for books but in the case of CRUST, the Duchamp quote -- "Everything man handles has a tendency to secrete meaning" -- is particularly so because the book's metaphor is so singular and banal. My hope is that readers will keep Duchamp in mind as they read because the book is less about the comedy of nosepicking than the information it secretes and, further, the way in which such secretion -- in the context of the book as well as the information-plagued world in which we live -- will always neutralize itself. What is the effect of such neutralization? Are we buried by information or free of it at last?

PICO IYER CONFIDENTIAL

"This book has Zen scribbled all over it--surely anyone can see that. It’s trying to push us past our silly inhibitions and reservations. That, to me, is what its defiance and fearlessness are all about. After discussing Zen, beautifully, in AMBIVALENT ZEN, you embody it, with a furious vengeance, in this one. Don't talk about the latrine; become it. I've seldom seen a document so powered by Zen spirit, taken to the limit. It speaks to me of all the lessons a student in that tradition might learn but never act on."

Denis Haggerty

Peggy Ann Taylor

Peggy Ann Taylor, at the instant which Time Magazine called “the death of a taboo” and USA Today, “the death of
television.” Though a lifelong practitioner, Taylor says of this moment that it was “completely spontaneous..."