The Clandestine Novelist

At the age of 24, Mike Benjamin is visited in sleep by the angel of revelation, and commanded to carry on the work of John Steinbeck. Thus begins a 15-year quest that forever threatens to teeter into the absurd. Far from being another self-congratulatory writer's memoir, "The Clandestine Novelist" is a reminder that the pursuit of art sometimes carries a ludicrous price. ""The Clandestine Novelist" is a hilarious novel with a sharply ironic edge. Mike Benjamin, the narrator, must find his way in a world that makes its artists heroes at the same time it abandons them. This is a contradiction that haunts all the Yossarians of our society."

--Tony Trigilio, author of "'Strange Prophecies Anew' Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D.," and "Ginsberg" "Evich takes us on a rollicking tour through the land of rejection letters and low-pay jobs, a.k.a. the writing life." --Pagan Kennedy