Take Five — D. Keith Mano

Welcome to the world of Simon Lynxx and to one of the great overlooked novels of the 1980s. Con-man, filmmaker (currently working on producing Jesus 2001, what he calls the religious equivalent of The Godfather), descendent of a wealthy and prestigious New York family whose wealth and prestige are in sharp decline, racist and anti-Semite (though Simon dislikes all ethnic groups equally), possessor of never-satisfied appetites (food, women, drink, but most of all, money and more money), and the fastest talker since Falstaff, Simon is on a quest that goes backwards. Through the course of this 600-page novel, Simon loses, one by one, all of his senses, ending in a state of complete debilitation through which he is being made ready for eternity and possible salvation.