Not since the days of Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski has a writer launched a book so fearlessly from the uncharted interior of the male spirit. Richard Meltzer's The Night (Alone) is a daring and hilarious probe of life at middle age, and perhaps the most uncensored exploration ever published of the forces - libidinal, alcoholic, creative, perverse - that drive most men's lives.Richard Meltzer has been known for years as one of the first and greatest rock 'n' roll writers and a fiercely imaginative cultural critic. Now, in his first novel, he creates several characters very much like the author himself, and through them takes a curious and playful look at the highbrow and lowlife sides of existence, veering through years of drink, skirt-chasing, and willful mayhem to an understanding of why men do the things they do and what the things are that really, finally matter. Erotic, philosophical, desperately passionate, and coolly analytical, the novel embraces New York and Los Angeles, much unfettered sexuality, rock 'n' roll and jazz, poetry, fantasies, wordplay and mind games, and the many colors of the night. Read Less