Justine, Joe and the Zen Garbageman

'From the East Village to West Hollywood, from avant-garde poetry to pre-internet pornography, these stories - touching, scabrous, brutal - tell it like it is. Matthew Licht's effortlessly inventive language, dark and tender, sexually charged, free-wheeling, whimsical, regretful, rummages through the cultural detritus of our crazy mythos, and comes up sweet and headily evocative as roses.' -Charles Lambert, author of Any Human Face and The View from the Tower

Justine's a famous poet. Joe's a self-styled Private Investigator without a clue. The Garbageman has cleaned his mind through immersion in filth. What he has to offer his clients, and even his enemies, is serenity. Three characters in search of a reader: you.

'Nobody can push an envelope harder or further than Matthew Licht, though he's not all shock value. There's also intelligence, wit and surprising craft here.' -Dian Hanson, author of Naked as a Jaybird

'Matthew Licht is an original and a rarity. His writing is smart, warm, engaging but also contains a healthy dose of New York "Fuck you!".' -Geoff Nicholson, author of Bedlam Burning

'His goal is to disturb rather than enlighten, to impale human folly and absurdity, to unpeel the intellectual bankruptcy of our times.' -John Thackray