John describes his memoir as an account of growing up uncool in the rainshadow of the hippies. It’s the story of what the non-heroes were doing, the people whose struggle for acceptance didn’t have a happy ending and aren’t movie material. As one reader put it, “There is nothing more fascinating than a desperate, yearning, misanthropic humanist. For when he's done with you in the purgatory of Pleasant Hell you'll feel braver, wiser, more alive and cleaner than you've ever been. None of which, of course, he intended. Just make sure you ask him not to take his shoes off.”