I have written a number of essays for anthologies published by academic presses, who can be pretty clueless when it comes to promoting or even understanding their books beyond the narrow (and crumbling) framework of the university dissertation treadmill. Case in point is Rave Culture and Religion, a fascinating and important volume of essays on rave and post-rave spirituality edited by the Australian scholar Graham St. John, who, though I very much admire Robin Sylvan's ethnographic approach in Trance Formation, has been covering the phenomenon better than anyone else. I did a highbrow Deleuzian remix of an earlier mainstream article I had written on Goa trance circa 1994, and I was happy to see a number of other contributors, especially James Landau and Arun Saldanha, draw in Deleuzian lines of flight to the discussion as well.

In any case, Routledge, a press with a fair amount of experience publishing scholarly books that cross over into hipster scenes, had the wisdom to publish this rather vital--to say nothing of trendy--collection as a hardback with astoundingly dull cover design and a three figure sticker price. Yeah, that'll bring in the kids! So I am happy to report that, many years later, the publisher has seen fit to make a paperback version availabl, which though it is still relatively pricy and just as lamely packaged as ever, at least makes these discussions more available.

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