This self-styled "novel of the sixties" traces the fortunes of a quartet of bohemians as they take fledgling steps into the new psychedelic counterculture. David Jacobi, in his early 20s, fancies himself the new Kerouac but lacks the requisite imagination. Even in his alternate incarnation as an apolitical LSD dealer he is merely a dilettante. His friend Michael Shawtry is an ascetic poet who rejects his family's wealth to follow a mixed-up philosophy created by his own isolation. The third member is Christine Leslie, 10 years older than the others, also a poet from a wealthy family. Jacobi has been intrigued by her since discovering they both used the same metaphor, "stained glass rain," in their poetry, and soon after meeting, the two become lovers. Rounding out the group is Mulligan, who travels from Berkeley to spend a few weeks in New York with his pal Jacobi and to play Cassady to his Kerouac. Lack of plot and focus mar poet Boston's ( Cybertexts ) first novel, and its most mature and thus most interesting character--Christina--is short-changed in the narrative, while numerous descriptions of acid trips and half-baked philosophies prove tiresome.
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