Infant Gardens (Penman Chronicles) by Mickey Disend

I went looking for good stories about the City, a city I love and have grown up in, when I came across this author. I have a hard time believing that he's lauded by even a few people as "the City's writer" or as someone that captures the heart of San Francisco. All of his stories, including this one, are so narrowly and dully focused upon his main character (and the character's maniacal ego) that not only does the City rarely appear, but when it does, it is illuminated through the lens of a bitter, biased, prejudicial character that has no real grasp of the heart or spirit of the City. San Francisco as a setting could convey so much—it is a dynamic, living component of every person in it. But, instead, you could plop this egocentric, confused character into any city and you’d have the same story about some random inanimate object or event that doesn’t drive the story and leaves the main character oblivious to everything else around him.
The writing is fine. It doesn't stand out to me, though--and certainly not as a voice of such a culturally and socially diverse city as San Francisco.

He's probably one of the most original voices to be heard in the SF Bay (who is alive that is). Mickey Disend's work brings me back to the tradition of the Beats: lively, deep, entrancing, sporadic, powerful. See him before he gets snatched up by a NY or LA agent. Hopefully he'll have a book out soon, or at least upload more audio, and text to the internet.