RL's Dream Walter Mosley, Walter Mosley was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and currently lives in New York City. "RL's Dream," from which this piece is excerpted, is his first non-mystery novel and tells the story of an aging guitarist who got his start playing with Robert Johnson. "The blues is the pain of having no name and $2 less than you need to survive," says Mosley, "but you're singing anyway--and in song there is life. "RL's Dream" will be published in August by W.W. Norton
Heat Mari Sunaida, Mari Sunaida is a Los Angeles writer, performer, producer, director and co-president of Pacific Asian American Women Writers West. She is currently working on a new play, "Scenes from an Interracial Marriage." "The Sacramento River Delta has always interested me," Sunaida says, "epecially the isolated communities of Japanese and Chinese. I wanted to evoke it in an earlier time, and write about a woman's experience there."
Adventures in Regret IV David Foster Wallace and David Foster Wallace, David Foster Wallace lives in Bloomington, Ill., "more or less in the middle of a cornfield." He is the author of a novel, "The Broom of the System," a story collection, "Girl With Curious Hair," and a book of nonfiction about rap music, "Signifying Rappers," written with Mark Costello. "Infinite Jest," from which this piece is excerpted, is due from Little Brown in February, 1996. "Part of the book is about tennis, and part of the book is about drugs," says Wallace, "and I learned all sorts of stuff about both things that I didn't expect. I know that's very lame."
What's Career 'Failure' Today May Mean Success Tomorrow JUDY B. ROSENER, Judy B. Rosener is a professor in the Graduate SChool of Management at UC Irvine. Her new book, "America's Competitive Secret: Utilizing Women as a Management Strategy," will be published this month
My 9-Iron Lies Over the Ocean SHIRLEY SLATER and HARRY BASCH, Slater and Basch travel as guests of the cruise lines. Cruise Views appears the first and third week of every month.
CALIFORNIA : The Withering Away of State Government Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior associate at the Center for Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate School and a political analyst for KCAL-TV
THE WORLD : IRAN : How to Lose Friends in the Persian Gulf Shibley Telhami, Shibley Telhami, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is on leave from Cornell University, where he is director of the Near Eastern Studies Program. He just returned from a trip to the Arabian Peninsula
PLATFORM : The Human Race JANET CHOI, JANET CHOI of San Gabriel teaches English conversation to Japanese and Chinese students. She commented on reports that all people are descended from a common ancestor: and
THE WORLD : CHINA : Is U.S. Playing the Taiwan Card by Granting Its President a Visa? Xiao-huang Yin and Tsung Chi, Xiao-huang Yin, an assistant professor at Occidental College, is an associate of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard. Tsung Chi, also an assistant professor at the college, is a frequent contributor to Chinese-American newspapers on China and Taiwan