True Stories of the Philosophical Theater

An eighteen year old chameleon leaves philosophy and a small town for New York City in 1981 and finds himself for two years immersed in bohemian life at work in a bar on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. The story continues through colorful relationships and jobs and an unusual marriage, as the young man deliberately pushes himself towards madness in order to experience life once again “Apparell’d in celestial light.” The experiment proves to be a destructive success and he is tossed about through several historical calamities while learning fast that the mad breakthrough was just a beginning. Embracing world philosophy again, he travels alone to India for a six month visit, but it ends up a sixteen year journey, the latter thirteen years with no exit from Asia, exiled on a continuous migratory path filled with conflict, love, comedy and a passion for wisdom and goodness and true identity. The story closes at the beginning of 2009, a year after the return (but not alone) of the seasoned protagonist to America.
Many stories have already been told of self discovery and coming of age in the sixties, and rightly so. But this book, not beholden to any doctrines, orthodoxies, fads, or black and white morality, follows the path of someone who was a child in that time who must navigate through the aftermath in the eighties and beyond. He encounters many renowned radical teachers, but concludes that all received doctrines and new ones are inadequate for living a life of truth. This nonfiction novel speaks for many from a time which lacked any fixed sense of “generation,” and proves that the contemporary philosophical novel can be as much about people and places as it is about ideas.