Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire

In deadpan first-person, Edgar, a 20-year-old pizza deliveryman in San Diego, tells within a few pages about his short stint at Humboldt State, hitching to Colorado Springs and landing a low-level job at a swanky hotel. When he receives a postcard from tropical Poisson Rouge Island that says simply, "I found your paradise, Johnny," Edgar joins his erstwhile college palthere. Teeming mosquitoes, housing that's either hideously expensive or impoverished, and the local zombies (which may be real) make the place less than idyllic, and when Edgar takes up with Johnny's girlfriend, their affair puts Edgar at the quarry end of a darkly comic version of The Most Dangerous Game . Ballantine (God Clobbers Us All ) stretches young male aimlessness and foolishness to the breaking point, spiking the thin plot with excellent car crash descriptions: "Something explodes under the hood and a hot fog spews the windshield. We skid on the turn, hop through a pothole, thump over something that feels like a dog or a corpse, and crash softly into the bush, the spiky shadows of the leaves spreading darkly over us." It's a downmarket version of Ben Kunkel's Indecision , with less surety but real vibrancy. (Aug.)