Richard Nixon has been elected to a second term as president of the United States. His vice president, Spiro Agnew, continues to roll up his sleeves and deal with the nattering nabobs of negativity.
Meanwhile, in New York City, if Bob Dylan can write crazy in his novel Tarantula, so too can young Johan Manootdjian, self-styled word man, in his "truth fiction," an opus in progress he is not close to showing to the world and will only finish with his death. Does he have a persona, a neighbor inquires? "Persona non grata," he replies.
Johan lives with his artist girlfriend, Sarah, in a Chinatown loft. "People in my family don't drink this way," she says, seeing his dependence on the bottle. All writers drink. Hemingway drank. Faulkner drank, Johan asserts. The uppers he also takes will remain his secret, he hopes, as will the other women and kinky sex he pursues and the underhanded means by which he provides himself with an income.
Several years into his new life with Sarah, Johan finds himself crying without knowing why. He dreams of passenger jets casually lowering onto crowded city streets, their human cargo looking on in dread of the fiery death that awaits them. Then there are the violent images his mind is visited with that terrify him to his core.
Enter Frederic Rosner, Harvard graduate and insightful therapist. His purpose: to ensure his deluded speed freak alcoholic patient, Johan Manootdjian, not crash and burn but have a safe landing back into reality.
Game on.
Only not quite a game.
