Sex and Rage: A Novel

Etienne said, holding out his tended hand, “You are Jacaranda Leven.” Max, the joke on himself, nearly collapsed with laughter as he recounted, tears streaming down his face, the “potatoes au gratin” line and the “Phoenix” touch.

Empty Barge Blues Maybe it was what Gilbert said. Maybe Max, once Jacaranda softened up and wouldn’t even risk blue paint anymore, had found bluer pastures, leaving Jacaranda ashore.

From the very start, Jacaranda was the big one with the large head who, till she was three, had to be swathed in pink for people not to say, “My, what a nice healthy boy you’ve got there . . .” April was a girl, a girlish girl with curly brown curls and a rosy-cheeked smile, delicate bone structure, and a small head. Neither Jacaranda nor April loo

There was art all over the walls. Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, a David Hockney swimming pool, and a huge pornographic watercolor by John Altoon. In the front to the right, where people came in, was a carefully framed photograph by Julian Wasser of Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a naked girl. The contrast between Duchamp’s dried-out ancient little

Her drinking problem was in robust condition, while Shelby would get halfway through one can of beer and not even finish it. The Forty-Seventh Monday By the forty-seventh Monday morning, Jacaranda knew how “the book” was going to be, what it was going to be called, and how, by snagging like crochet all her little wayward pieces together, she could

She really believed that the great religions of the world so far had come into being before anyone had grown up by the ocean. She believed in the ocean. Jacaranda believed that the ocean was a giant lullaby god who could be seduced into seeing things her way and could bring forth great waves.

It was hard to believe, afterward, that it had taken only one day—the fifth of July—and two hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine, to straighten out the most major flaws of both Jacaranda’s and Sunrise’s life.

Max’s laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher. It was a dare—he dared you not to laugh with him. He dared you to despair. He dared you to insist that there was no dawn, that all there was was darkness, that there was no silver lining, that the heart di

“Well,” Jacaranda said, “I’m the black sheep of that family. It’s like trying to get out of the Mafia.” “Nobody leaves the Mafia,” Janet said.