Only Shot at a Good Tombstone

Two profane, illuminating, fantastic, pedestrian, humorously tragic days in the life of an anonymous, suburban young man in the city. For as long as there have been young people and cities, of course, the former have attempted to escape to the latter. As the story's ornery, semi-omniscient co-narrator challenges in the opening passage, "You're a goddamn fool if you expect anything new here." There truly is "nothing new under the sun" and the world in which the young man finds himself is pre-programmed without a frontier, without a sense of urgency, without even the direction historically provided by our most basic human needs. When even the poorest among us are ten times wealthier than hundreds of millions of people on the other side of the globe, what struggles will test and define us? Guided by a tormented mentor more than twice his age, a young woman he clumsily alienates and the substitute for need which we call "desire," the young man learns more than he cares to in the 48 hours we're allowed to follow him. Politics, religion, philosophy, myth and history provide the foundation for a novel likely to offend most every reader at some point, and a few readers at every possible juncture.