The Bitter Angels

About the Book

Meet Stanley Kosinski, a struggling Los Angeles musician preparing to visit his Dionysian friend, Alex, who is now ensconced as the manager of a residential hotel in San Francisco. Comedy and brittle social cynicism are combined into one, as the tenants who live in the X Hotel insinuate their broken lives into the protagonist’s psyches. A wild ride brimming with potential ecstasies and bitter disappointment are the catalysts, delivering up the stor y of the most disastrous v a c a t i o n i n literary history.

About the Author

In the opening pages of The Bitter Angels, the first person narrator, Stanley Kosinski, reminisces of his friend Alex; “We had the heebie-jeebie cold frost humor that resembles a New York grin. I watched him and I’m telling you, we laughed at one another and I believe the laughter saved me.” We presently find Alex working as manager of a San Francisco weekly rate hotel. Stanley, after “yet another failed music project” has reunited with Alex to “air out.” These opening chapters hypnotize the unprepared reader for the wretched events to come. Any joy or optimism is shattered in Part 2, when Stan’s second visit reveals that Alex’s personality has completely mutated into madness, due to the presence of copious amounts of crack cocaine and his vile amorally endowed girlfriend, Sena, who manipulates the dynamic of the X Hotel like a dominatrix with a whip. Underpinning this is the love that exists between Stan and Alex, albeit great forces at work to tear them asunder, thus creating the bitterest of all angels and the story of the most disastrous vacation in literary history.