The Drift That Follows Will Be Gradual
by Alan Rifkin
Both prequel and sequel to the author’s debut fiction collection, Signal Hill (which Kirkus Reviews called “what might have happened had Nathanael West lived on and been even more talented”), Alan Rifkin’s new novel in stories threads together a reporter’s cherished past—1980s, Los Angeles—and his mentally ill millennial son’s anguished attempt to claim his own season in the sun.
Richard Leviton is an aging romantic, twice divorced, with visions of literary grandeur. Beginning in the 1980s, a golden age of magazine journalism and a period of unmatched freedom in Los Angeles, and continuing through the convulsions of the 2010s, Leviton grows through a harrowing crucible of circumstances—romantic chaos, alcoholism, home loss, professional obscurity, and cultural transition—all while attempting to anchor his son Philip's precarious security. Meanwhile Philip, coming of age, intermittently homeless, and yearning to retrofit his existence into a generation he believes had it all, begs to experience his father’s LA, the essence of which he’s convinced lives embodied in Leviton’s eternally youthful long-time editor Bailey Kavanagh—perhaps the only woman to ever truly love Richard Leviton.
With eloquent, almost intoxicating prose, the nine linked episodes comprise one bittersweet, sometimes funny, deliciously messy journey through the ache of generational drift, the cultural rapids of the 21st century,
and the timelessness of young dreams.
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The Drift That Follows
Will Be Gradual
by Alan Rifkin
Scheduled for Release August 1, 2024
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