Fizz by Paul A. Toth (Bleak House Books, 184pgs., $16.95)

Fizz is a picaresque novel about Ray Pulaski, resident village idiot in search of his place in the world. With this novel, we are introduced not only to a startling and original protagonist in the guise of Ray, but the emergence of a startling talent in the guise of Paul Toth. His writing, at times, echos both the grittiness of Goodis and the wit of Bukowski in a neo-Voltairian comedy of manners.

Ray is a goofball and a neighborhood joke -- the kind of guy we all knew back in high school who talked to his food in the lunch line and seem to have a "kick me" sign surgically attached to the back of his shirt. In an effort to transcend his role as neighborhood joke, Ray recreates himself as Ray Style, a guy who entire personality seems based on bad pulp writing and lounge lizard cliches, which is about the extent of Ray's understanding of cool. This, of course leads to the perpetuation of Ray's rep as neighborhood doofus and the creation of yet another personality, Ray Proper, a foppish, mild-mannered oaf. Ray Proper, of course, just gets Ray into more difficulty and leads Ray on a personal, cross-country odyssey to find his only surviving relative, Aunt Missy, a woman whose legend has grown to mythic proportions in Ray's mind and who, he believes, holds the key to solving his identity crisis.

Ultimately, this book is less about Ray's identity crisis, than about America's identity crisis, in which its citizenry is often cut off from the outside world, lost to provincialism and cut off from a culture of its own with mass media as its only link to the outside world.

-- Reviewed by JCE