As I Walked Out One Evening

Wetzel's (The Lost Skiff) memoir, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, considers the possibility that, at age 76, he is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately, he seems a prime candidate because his father and two of his father's sisters were thus afflicted in old age. Becoming disoriented in a familiar setting is the event that triggered Wetzel's concern. His doctor's diagnosis of that experience as a small stroke did not help him to accept it with equanimity. All this leads the Arizona resident to an encounter he had seven years earlier with an octogenarian who was both senile and very drunk, a meeting that made a lasting impression, perhaps because Wetzel saw it as a foreshadowing. He also relives his adolescent sexual attraction to his second cousin and adds observations about his writing career, which produced seven novels and a humorous booklet about flatulence, which he claims sold three million copies in novelty stores and made him financially independent. Those willing to follow Wetzel's random meanderings will find the book novel. (July)