Monday, September 3, 2007

Kerouac Is Back!

It's the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road, and here comes bad-boylit author Quentin Cain with a series of road-trip novels narrated in the first person by one Slick F. Worthy, presumably Quentin's only slightly less reputable alter ego.

Quentin knows how to construct a sentence, spin a yarn, and engage an audience. So I'm suspecting he's not the dropout he claims to be. I read Notes from the "G" Spot: The Uncensored Diaries of Slick F. Worthy, and it is indeed a slick, sick, and funny hunk of prose. Never mind that Slick not only has the predictable predicament of searching desperately for the legendary spot--but also, like most of us most of the time, he has a hard time just describing what he thinks it is. It's the pursuit of that ration of individual happiness the Constitution guarantees us the unrestricted pursuit of. That it evades Slick's detection isn't so much a surprise as the extent of sexual suffering and kink twisting he's willing to endure to find it.

You will want to peruse these Notes, particularly if: 1) you are a ninety-five pound weakling who dreams about being an NFL almost-ran with no money whose rough charm keeps him barely out of trouble, 2) you are bedridden and can't take a road trip just now, 3) you avoid casual sex for fear of STDs or because all your pickup lines fail but you're curious about what might happen if you actually went home with a hooker, or 4) if you wonder what sense Jack Kerouac might make or not make of post-digital society.

Quentin promises another Slick novel sometime soon. But he might also do well to brag that he's descended from that other Cain (not the Bible guy--James M.). Then he could do a noir story and call it The G-Man Never Asks Twice.

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