Summary

Part 3: Prisonaires

Part 3, Chapter 1 – Dylan now begins narrating the novel from a first-person perspective. He is now working as a music reviewer and living in Berkeley, while seeing a black girl named Abigail “Abby” Ponders, but the relationship appears stale. Dylan tells her he will be headed to Anaheim to have dinner with his father, who is to be a guest of honor at ForbiddenCon, a science fiction convention. Abby is angered that Dylan did not think to tell her sooner. She also confronts Dylan about his love of depressing music by black artists and about a small display he has of things from the past, such as the ring, one of Mingus’s afro picks, a pair of Rachel’s earrings, and a book of black-and-white photographs inscribed “For D. from E.” She demands to know why Dylan is obsessed with...