“A funny, sexy, far-fetched coming-of-age story” from the award-winning, New York Times–bestselling author of City of Night (The Washington Post).
John Rechy—described by Gore Vidal as “one of the few original writers of the last century”—delivers a riotous bildungsroman that pays homage to the classic eighteenth-century picaresque.
Loosely inspired by Fielding’s Tom Jones, The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens follows the journey of handsome Lyle Clemens as he travels through the religious fundamentalist world of Texas to the gambling palaces of Las Vegas and the enticing traps of Los Angeles’s mythologies.
As Lyle approaches adulthood, everyone wants him to be something he’s not. His beautiful mother wants to make him into a reflection of the cowboy who abandoned her; a group of avaricious fundamentalists plot to convert him into “the Lord’s Cowboy” to rouse their televangelical empire to new frenzied heights; and the lovely Maria wants him to fulfill her varying fantasies of “true love.” When Lyle leaves home to make his own destiny, he encounters a gallery of charlatans and wistful souls, quirky gamblers, aging starlets, and wily pornographers.
The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens is “a potent compound of both sex and rapture . . . sly, smart, sexy and laugh-out-loud funny, but it is also tinged with sorrow and ultimately elevated into the realm of magic” (The Los Angeles Times Book Review).
“Ambitious and very funny . . . a tall tale, a simultaneously sweet and vicious satire of contemporary America . . . a comic tour de force and, at the same time, a truly heartfelt book.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
John Rechy is the recipient of two coveted literary honors: PEN-USA West's Lifetime Achievement Award (which he was the first novelist to receive) and the Publishing Triangle's William Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of twelve novels, among them the Los Angeles Times best-seller The Coming of the Night, City of Night, Numbers, Rushes, The Sexual Outlaw (all from Grove Press), as well as The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez and Our Lady of Babylon. An NEA recipient, he is also the author of several plays, essays, and short stories. John Rechy lives in Los Angeles.