Running the Light: A Novel - Softcover

Tallent, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593978870 ISBN 13: 9780593978870

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2025

Synopsis

A bona fide "instant classic" (Doug Stanhope) novel that tells the story of a road comic crashing and burning by acclaimed comedian Sam Tallent

Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight.

Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father--comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when opportunity doesn't come--or worse--it comes and goes?

"In vivid, electric sentences that read like cinematic tracking shots," (Denver Post) Tallent hurls you into an absolute mess of a man's life as we search for the mercy he does not want.

About this title

About the Author

Sam Tallent is a comedian, novelist, and host of the Chubby Behemoth podcast. For the last decade, he has performed more than forty-five weekends per year in North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Sam has two comedy specials: Waiting For Death to Claim Us and The Toad's Morale. He also has a travel show, Wide World, on YouTube. He lives in Detroit and cooks dinner for his wife every night.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593978870
• ISBN 13: 9780593978870
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352