The Driftless Zone: Or, a Novel Concerning the Selective Outmigration from Small Cities

Readers of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were warned by Mark Twain: ""persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."" The same threat should be heeded by readers of Harsch's quirky, exciting first novel, in which storytelling takes a back seat to stylistic invention and an atmospheric rendition of small-city life. What plot there is centers on Spleen, an out-of-work, aimless sort who wanders into a relationship with a woman known only as The Sneering Brunette (and into the bad graces of Deke Dobson, her violent, mobster ex-boyfriend). Memorable peripheral parts include a maniacal, pigeon-eating hit man named Richie Buck, an obsessed police detective named Stratton and the hideously ugly Billy Verite, who lurks at the bus station trying to finger people from the pages of FBI's Most Wanted. Alongside the tale of Spleen's woes and weird acquaintances, an unnamed narrator provides running commentary on what he calls ""the Driftless Zone,"" a mysterious force in American small cities that makes for ""a high percentage of misfits, fools, various mediocrities, ineptitude, a shabby sort of grandiosity, an enlarged capacity for botching ill-conceived plans."" The glory of this cultural critique--and the rest of the novel--is Harsch's prose, full of wordplay and hilarious digressions (one of the funniest concerns a Swedish cab driver directed by the Buddha to ""turn with the wheel of life""). Connoisseurs of contemporary literature will find themselves anxious to see what Harsch will do next. (June)