Debauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh.
Over the course of seven spun-out days, he travels from hell gig to hell gig across the American Southwest in search of a reason to keep living. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray is the answer to a tragic question: What happens when opportunity never arrives? Or - worse - when it comes and goes?
'A thrilling, nauseating and painfully real depiction of what happens as youth, talent and charisma sour, Running the Light is the best novel I've ever read about comedy, but also about a particular strand of relentless hedonism. Sam Tallent is that rare thing, a funny person who can convey his funniness in fiction and do it alongside prose that will break your heart too.' *Megan Nolan*
'Running the Light is a majestically bleak, hilarious and bruising tour of regret, delusion and the detonation of the soul. In Billy Ray Schafer, Sam Tallent has created one of contemporary fiction's more memorable self-destroyers, and it's a harrowing delight to witness him evade and then perhaps finally confront his truth. If there is a comedy club in hell, and they have a merch table, this is the only book on it.' *Sam Lipsyte*
'Sam Tallent is one of the true originals. He's as much myth as man, like a character who wandered off the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel. But he's very real and full of real integrity that shines through in all his work.' *Chris Gethard*
