“Prague in the ‘90s was like Paris in the ‘20s” was the animating through-line connecting the funny-luminous-dangerously absurd stories in Wild East. Some of the stories were culled from magazines, and some were commissioned specifically for this collection. At the time of publication Boris Fishman was a young staffer at The New Yorker, and we spent a day together running around New York visiting literary agents to beg their clients’ work on the cheap. The New Yorker name got us the appointment, and Justin, Charles being a new indie press got us the discount. The launch party and reading we threw at KGB Bar in the East Village lingers in memory as an archetypal event, as perfect an example of the vodka-soaked hipster-literary evening as Oklahoma! is an example of American musical theater. To the best of my recollection.