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Within the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on Mississippi's Gulf Coastline, largely retired architect Vaughn Williams, who is beset by the regime but believe it or not troubling difficulties of late midlife, is doing what he is able to to remain, as he says, "viable". He scans the channels, reads newspaper publishers and sites online, Googles practically everything, teaches an intermittent class at the local junior college, and concerns perhaps overmuch about his late father. When his ex-wife, Gail, is assaulted by her hot-tempered new partner, she asks him and his landlady/girlfriend, Greta, to move together with her. Perhaps a little too cavalierly, they recognize, and problems distinctly Barthelme-esque follow, including manly confrontations with the perp, lamentations of his father's life and fatality, casual moonlight drives, wagering for money, individuals using trains, and the eventual untimely introduction of Vaughn's annoyingly successful younger brother, accompanied by Vaughn's ex-wife's invitation to remarry. The tattered panorama of the post-hurricane Gulf Coastline is the perfect analogue for these catastrophically out-of-order lives, and in this arranging the players work into and out of their troubles. In the process, and en route to a satisfying group of resolutions, Barthelme's acute eye and delicate wit uncover and autopsy an interior panorama of mortality, love, regret, and redemption. The effect is his most emotionally resonant work of fiction yet - and a new reason to commemorate him as an American professional.
