An exhilarating collection, as brash as it is wise, by one of our great storytellers

Set mainly in small, gritty American cities, each of these stories is a world unto itself. A man's obsessive visits to a fortuneteller leave him nearly homeless. Time collapses as two marriages slowly dissolve. And in the searing title story, a young man recounts the summer he spent in a mountain town, squatting in a borrowed house with a loose band of slackers, abstaining from all drugs (other than mushrooms) - and ultimately asking just what kind of harm we can do to one another.