At once a chess master, a linguist, an athlete and an innocent in love, Arnold passes through the racial tensions of Mansfield, Texas (home of the author of Black Like Me) in the 1950s, the anti-war movement at Harvard, and both the Upper East Side and the Bowery, meeting Noam Chomsky, Al Gore, and Leonard Bernstein in the process, and finally learning the meaning of meaning.
"In this smart, dense, cartoonish second novel from the author of Insect Dreams, a young Texan with a poisoned name comes of age on a countercultural tour of America, from sputnik to Watergate, with stops at a cross-burning, Harvard and the grassy knoll. Young Arnold meets Chomsky, gets French kissed by Leonard Bernstein and finally marries his own Eva Braun beneath the Bruckner Expressway....Estr
The New York Times Book Review
"A lively, entertaining read with several scenes that could win O. Henrys on their own."
