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...