Overview

"A funny, sexy, far-fetched coming-of-age story" from the award-winning, New York Times–bestselling author of City of Night (The Washington Post).

John Rechy—described by Gore Vidal as "one of the few original writers of the last century"—delivers a riotous bildungsroman that pays homage to the classic eighteenth-century picaresque.

Loosely inspired by Fielding's Tom Jones, The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens follows the journey of handsome Lyle Clemens as he travels through the religious fundamentalist world of Texas to the gambling palaces of Las Vegas and the enticing traps of Los Angeles's mythologies.

As Lyle approaches adulthood, everyone wants him to be something he's not. His beautiful mother wants to make him into a reflection of the cowboy who abandoned her; a group of avaricious fundamentalists plot to convert him into "the Lord's Cowboy" to rouse their televangelical...