The Correspondence

Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J. D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience-as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son-he considers how far books and learning and psychoanalysis can get us, and how much we're stuck in the mud. Inventive, intimate, restless, streetwise, and erudite, The Correspondence introduces a brave and original observer of the inner life under pressure.