Running The Light

By (author) Tallent, Sam
Short description/annotation:
A ''thrilling, nauseating and painfully real'' (MEGAN NOLAN) novel that follows struggling stand-up comedian Billy Ray Schafer over seven spun-out days in the American Southwest
Description:

''THE BEST NOVEL I''VE EVER READ ABOUT COMEDY'' Megan Nolan
''GLORIOUSLY DEPRAVED'' Geoff Dyer
''LIT UP MY PLEASURE CENTRES AND LEFT ME STUNNED'' Rob Doyle

''Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight...''

Debauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days, he travels from hell gig to hell gig across the American Southwest in search of a reason to keep living. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray is the answer to a tragic question: What happens when opportunity never arrives? Or - worse - when it comes and goes?

''Exceptional . . . Running the Light is Dante as gag artist, trapped in a Diabolical Comedy. Or maybe, in the end, a disgraced Odysseus searching for a way back home to contrition and forgiveness. Read it and weep''
IRISH TIMES

''Nothing I''ve read hits the psycho-chemical abyss of road life turned horribly wrong quite like this'' LIAS SAOUDI

Review quote:
A thrilling, nauseating and painfully real depiction of what happens as youth, talent and charisma sour, Running the Light is the best novel I''ve ever read about comedy, but also about a particular strand of relentless hedonism. Sam Tallent is that rare thing, a funny person who can convey his funniness in fiction and do it alongside prose that will break your heart too
Review quote:
Anthony Bourdain blew the lid off the psychic cesspit of restaurant backrooms with Kitchen Confidential. Now we have comedian Sam Tallent''s fictional tell-all Running the Light . . . Tallent writes exceptionally well . . . Running the Light is Dante as gag-artist, trapped in a Diabolical Comedy. Or maybe, in the end, a disgraced Odysseus searching for a way back home to contrition and forgiveness. Read it and weep. I did
Review quote:
Tallent''s compelling novel depicts a grim week in the life of this tragic outsider in vivid detail . . . it is not a flattering portrait. It is, however, a beautifully written one . . . A mesmerising character study of a man driving himself to oblivion: tragic, funny and unputdownable
Review quote:
Running the Light is a majestically bleak, hilarious and bruising tour of regret, delusion and the detonation of the soul. In Billy Ray Schafer, Sam Tallent has created one of contemporary fiction''s more memorable self-destroyers, and it''s a harrowing delight to witness him evade and then perhaps finally confront his truth. If there is a comedy club in hell, and they have a merch table, this is the only book on it
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Brilliant writing . . . astounding . . . One of the best books I''ve read. Ever
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You''d never expect this abomination of a man to write such beautiful prose, but Sam Tallent has done it. . . . Wow, what a book!
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Chaotic bliss . . . vivid, electric . . . reads like cinema
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Sam Tallent is one of the true originals. He''s as much myth as man, like a character who wandered off the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel. But he''s very real and full of real integrity that shines through in all his work
Review quote:
Running the Light absolutely nails the despair, futility, indignity