This work perhaps is best described as the quintessential Twentieth Century fin de siecle novel of Los Angeles, and possibly the only one. Particular to Los Angeles in setting and story, its occurrence of intersecting cultural, economic, political and artistic crosscurrents is not. Its narrator and gallery of characters are too willing pawns in the battle of high and low, individuality and expectations, art and commerce, survival and resignation and the liberation of hedonism versus its peril to the soul. As the Nineties dwindle down, the waning days of one era and the precipice of a new one...