Sketches of a Young Man Wandering

Having witnessed the demise of good literature in this country I am happy to say that a new voice has emerged, one that has overcome the desolate literary landscape of the last two decades. Apart from the recent achievements of Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) and Jonathon Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated), American literature has unfortunately been reduced to a heartless slew of genre, finance, and motivational titles. Sketches of a Young Man Wandering is the anti-genre, anti-capitalist answer to this trend. While it is certainly a young writer's debut, Bradley Fink's potential for greatness cannot go unnoticed. The book is a compilation of four stories that reveal the author's point-of-view, first as a young boy who witnesses the human footprint upon the Florida Everglades, and then as a young man who goes off from Florida to travel the world. In his first two stories the author evokes the southern tones of Faulkner and Flannery O' Connor, while making his statements clear with symbolism. Right from the start of his story Where the Sun Beats, with its hot, swampy ambience, Bradley Fink delivers a skillful plea for the endurance of our natural world.

In the title story we see a first person account of Bradley's travels, or Wanderings, as he calls them. This piece, written in the form of journal entries during a twenty-one month journey, takes us into the heart of the author, and has us empathizing with him as he finds himself lost across four continents. When we first meet him he is a disillusioned young man in Florida, who gets fed-up with the materialist culture there, and leaves America in search of something more meaningful. Along the way the narrator surfs in Canada, backpacks up through Argentina and Peru, soul-searches in Spain and Morocco, and hitchhikes through the badlands of Africa. The story is so rhythmic and honestly told that one easily forgets themselves to the tempo and sentiment of the page.

If you liked the Alchemist and On the Road, then you will certainly enjoy Sketches of a Young Man Wandering. It carries on the tradition of the travel odyssey in a new and youthful voice. The book has yet to hit store shelves but is available now at http://www.goodbookgroup.com

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