From the author of the classic City of Night comes a captivating, wickedly entertaining novel in which an irrepressible young hero is set loose in the religious-fundamentalist world of Texas, the gambling palaces of Las Vegas, and the enticing mythos of Los Angeles

The internationally renowned novelist recently described by Gore Vidal as "one of the few original writers of the last century" re-creates himself yet again with a witty bildungsroman that pays homage to the classic eighteenth-century picaresque. Loosely inspired by Fielding's Tom Jones, it sends the charming, handsome Lyle Clemens on an adventure from fundamentalist Texas to the contemporary wilderness of Los Angeles.

Raised in Texas, the son of a Miss America aspirant and an unknown father, Lyle Clemens approaches adulthood and notices that everyone wants him to be something he's not. His beautiful mother wants to make him into the cowboy who abandoned her; a group of avaricious fundamentalists plot to convert him into "the Lord's Cowboy"; 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, dreamy showgirls, wily pornographers, and fake magicians; and is seduced into an aging starlet's mad comeback scheme during a rambunctious Academy Awards ceremony. Through it all, Lyle becomes himself. The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens is a hilarious, bittersweet, and wise book that establishes once again John Rechy's great storytelling gifts.