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The everyday insanity of life at a fictional literary reviewThe journal Belles Lettres has a long and storied history, which is what enticed young editor Frank Page over its threshold in the first place. But Frank did not anticipate the infighting, backstabbing, and utter oddity that are all business as usual at the respected magazine. Still, nothing can match Frank's thrill at discovering a new literary phenom.But the book industry seems to be on the decline. Integrity is going extinct as conglomerate giants gobble up smaller organs and trample innovation and daring into the muck of commerciality. At least Frank's position gives him a front-row seat at the publishing world's fight of the century, as deposed editorial icon Jonathan Margin takes on self-serving corporate overseer Newbold Press in an ink-splattered battle to the death.

A young writer-to-be embarks on a comic coming-of-age journey through the crushing mediocrity of work, the vagaries of fate, and the mysteries of sexA confused and conflicted but not altogether angry young man shares his observations, disappointments, rants, and sexual desires in a revealing series of letters to an unnamed friend. Our hero wants to be a writer, but is stuck doing mind-numbing work for an unscrupulous encyclopedia publisher. He muddles through two engagements, one to a bright-eyed Catholic virgin, the other to a woman pregnant with another man's child. And the Great American Novel he is writing—about a man named Austin who is becoming invisible—may be a bit too much for the reading public to handle. But as long as he's got his friends (like Jose, who is determined to bed and wed his cousin Rita the nun), his health (no thanks to the medical establishment that killed his father), and his libido, everything should turn out okay.Winner of the William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel—more outrageous than Catcher in the Rye and more scandalous than Portnoy's Complaint—Charles Simmons's Powdered Eggs is an unforgettable view of young American life through an amusingly jaundiced eye.

A brilliantly original examination of the many aspects that make up a life—from birth, up and over the hill, and into the wilderness of old ageA truly astonishing and original work of fiction, Wrinkles is the story of a life lived forty-four times, from childhood to adulthood to old age. It is a story of one man, a writer, who is born, who grows, who loves, who stops loving; who eats, sleeps, smokes, lies, boozes, cheats, regrets, has sex, has dreams, and lives. In short yet intimately detailed chapters, each covering a single aspect of his life from youth through old age, we get to know this person fully through the small yet telling incidents that make him who he is. He remembers the taste of a cigarette, the feel of his army uniform, the scent of a lover, the strange and unexpected touch of a college professor's hand, and so many more small experiences that can never be shaken off.At once poignant, funny, and troubling, Charles Simmons's Wrinkles is a dissection of an ordinary existence made extraordinary through reflection—a brilliant celebration of the not-so-simple act of being alive.