A little Franz Kafka, a little Willy Loman, this novel explores the experience of a man at midlife realizing that he's at the middle (or actually past the middle) of his life. Alternately fatalistically self-destructive and motivated to a point of near-mania, he's starting to understand that he's in the "reap what you've sown" stage in life, and he's not set himself up for the harvest he'd hoped for.