In this autobiography of a voice, the earliest stories are gloomy tales of existential despair, full of flashing neon signs, fly-specked mirrors, and characters whose eyes could be likened in various ways to black holes. How McClanahans writing evolved into the ribald comedy for which he is well-loved is a mystery unveiled in his fascinating ars poetica, Empathy Follows Sympathy . McClanahans nonfiction includes firsthand accounts of the hippie culture into which he dove headlong upon arriving in California. From that era comes Grateful Dead I Have Known , a long prize-winning meditation about Jerry Garcia and the fanatical devotion of his fans; an insiders portrait of beat hero Neal Cassady; and a chronicle of a bus-journey reunion with buddy Ken Kesey and other Merry Pranksters--long-hairs now become gray-hairs. Whether reflecting on the once-radical urgency of a generation now aging, or a childhood that fellow Kentuckian Wendell Berry describes in his afterword as an ordeal of provinciality, McClanahan writes with warmth and hard-earned wisdom.

Ed McClanahan, a native of northeastern Kentucky, is the author of several books, including The Natural Man and Famous People I Have Known. He is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, two Yaddo fellowships, and an Al Smith Fellowship. He has taught at Oregon State University, Stanford, the University of Kentucky, the University of Montana, and Northern Kentucky University. He lives in Kentucky with his wife.