Adam Wilson

"Bankers prowl Brooklyn bars on the eve of the stock market crash. A debate over Young Elvis versus Vegas Elvis turns existential. Detoxing junkies use a live lobster to spice up their love life. Students on summer break struggle to escape the orbit of a seemingly utopic communal house. And in the title story, selected for The Best American Short Stories, two film school buddies working on a doomed project are left sizing up their own talent, hoping...

It's a long way from a basement apartment in a Montreal suburb to a new life on a fictional planet, but that's the destination our unnamed narrator has set his sights on, bringing readers with him on an off-beat and often hilarious journey. Along the way, he writes poems, buys groceries at the dollar store, and earns minimum wage at a dead-end supermarket job. In between treatments for his cystic fibrosis and the constant drip-drip-drip of disappointment,...