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