Running the Light
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Running the Light
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See moreA 'thrilling, nauseating and painfully real' (MEGAN NOLAN) novel that follows struggling stand-up comedian Billy Ray Schafer over seven spun-out days in the American Southwest
THE BEST NOVEL I'VE EVER READ ABOUT COMEDY Megan Nolan
GLORIOUSLY DEPRAVED Geoff Dyer
LIT UP MY PLEASURE CENTRES AND LEFT ME STUNNED Rob Doyle
Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight...
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?
Exceptional . . . Running the Light is Dante as gag artist, trapped in a Diabolical Comedy. Or maybe, in the end, a disgraced Odysseus searching for a way back home to contrition and forgiveness. Read it and weep
IRISH TIMES
Nothing I've read hits the psycho-chemical abyss of road life turned horribly wrong quite like this
LIAS SAOUDI
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781399632874
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 14 May 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: White Rabbit
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 36.0mm
Width: 128.0mm
Height: 196.0mm
Weight: 300g
Pages: 352
About the Author
Sam Tallent is a comedian. For the last decade he has performed more than 45 weekends per year across America, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia. His writing has appeared in Birdy Magazine and on VICE.com. Running the Light is his first novel.
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