Lacking Character

Curtis White's long-awaited return to fiction reminds us that the founder of one of American literature's most vibrant and innovative movements is still the King of "transcendental buffoonery."

The story begins when a masked man appears in the night at the door of the Marquis, proclaiming a matter of life and death: "I stand falsely accused of an atrocity!"

Except he's not, really; he's just trying to get the attention of the Marquis (a video game-playing burnout) to help him enroll in some community college vocational classes. And so the exchange gets badly botched, and our masked man is soon lost in a maddening America, encountering its absurdities at every turn, and cursing his cruel fate.

In a time with the crisis du jour, White asks us to remember what it's like to laugh--to be a little silly even--in order to reclaim what used to be fundamental to us: the strength to create our own worlds.