Mushroom-popping philosophical drifter-types take up residence in a house in the mountains.

(from The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards)

Wonderful and strange. I loved this story. I dug these wastrel characters even though in real life — which is not to say they didn’t feel real here — I would have taken them for what they were besides lost: Insensitive bastards. Really good authors can make heroes out of the jerks just by popping their foreheads open and showing us that they’re people too. Keen reminds me, a little bit, of Fuckhead, except he’s even further off the deep-end. His story is his parole board plea, and he reveals himself to be more than a little stupid and hopeless but most sympathetic.
More than anything, this put the resilient tune of “Palmcorder Yajna” in my head. That’s a Mountain goats song about tweakers doing drugs and letting their minds kinda spiral around. They’re no bad people, it’s just that most who wander are lost.
More on Robert Boswell here.