Absurdist Comedy “Confessions of a Lapsed Altar Boy” Lays Bare the
Hard Truths of the Baby Boom Generation

A new novel, “Confessions of a Lapsed Altar Boy,” reveals the previously unknown details of a fictional, violent crime not committed in California in 1976 by the remnants of the Symbionese Liberation Army. After the father of Nathan Hale Plunkett, the teenaged victim of a kidnapping, declined to pay ransom or cooperate with law enforcement over privacy concerns, young Plunkett grew up to become a best-selling historian featured on the cover of Time magazine.

“I began writing this novel 20 years ago to combine my favorite elements of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the concept of eternal damnation,” said author Edward A. Novak III. “It’s an absurdist comedy of sex, manners, and historiography that takes place in the context of a young man fleeing home and childhood beliefs; coming to grips with the contradictions between the world he experiences and the world described to him by strangers; dealing with rejections in love, family, and Harvard; and seeking to write a new history of humanity so that his life can make sense.”

Set in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC, and New York City of the seventies and eighties, readers follow Nathan as he lives with the recurring aftermath of his kidnapping, forms an unbreakable triad of friendship with Milo and Cilla, successfully blackmails a federal law enforcement officer, saves his archnemesis from arrest, nearly kills a famous rock star, finds a mentor to help him finish his history, begins to envision a life spent with the woman haunting his dreams, and confesses everything to one of the authors of his disillusionment.

Review: “A Cornucopia of Literary, Historical, and Religious Allusions and Direct References for Boomers”

This is a well-constructed and well-written narrative chronicling the disappointed and disillusioned idealism of an American generation. It is chock full of mordant wit, institutional hypocrisy, inside stories, tragicomic characters, repressed outrage, sexual adventures, and history lessons from the past that feel like today. Novak is a highly skilled writer, as evidenced by his ability to create characters that the reader cares about but doesn’t like. This is not a nostalgia piece, and not suitable for the casual reader looking for entertainment but rather for those in search of something solid that will make them think and feel and wonder. (Amazon Reviewer “Old Phoenix” here)

Novak has had many professional lives, working in book publishing, consulting, higher education, the arts, and government regulatory oversight. He holds degrees in history from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He currently resides in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Tucson, Arizona. This is his first novel.

“Confessions of a Lapsed Altar Boy” is available as a Kindle e-book (here), paperback through Amazon (here), at Kitewizard Press: www.kitewizardpress.com, or you can ask your local bookstore to order a copy for you from IngramSpark.