THE BEAST GOD FORGOT TO INVENT. Stories

New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. First edition. Hardcover. A fine copy in dust jacket. Signed by the author on the title page. These are stories of humans and beasts, of culture and wildness, of men driven crazy by longing and of men who dream they are becoming bears. A man near the end of his life becomes part of an odd band of caretakers for a younnger man whose brain has been damaged in a motorcycle accident, the civilization shaken out of him. Watching over this unmanned man, the hero becomes mindful of his own mortality and excess of civility. In "Westward Ho," Brown Dog, a Michigan Indian, wanders the wilds of Los Angeles, tracking the ersatz Native activist with whom he fled the police in Michigan and who's now disappeared with his bearskin. Ogling girls, sleeping in the botanic garden, and working as a driver to a drunk screenwriter, he eventually comes face-to-face with his ex-friend and with the difference between the world he's been visiting and the world to which he's going home. And more. 274pp. From the estate of Beef Torrey, writer, raconteur, and close friend of the author.