Michael Fleisher
CHASING HAIRY is a brutal, profoundly disturbing portrait of two young men who meet as college students and develop a close, complex friendship whose underlying basis is the shared but unconscious hostility they bear toward women. Thrown together in the dormitory, they become friends as they try to cope with the freedom that comes from living away from home for the first time. The novel depicts their wild college days as their friendship grows, nurtured by their mutual devotion to the 'pursuit of the elusive hairy,' which leads them into frenetic episodes that are both reckless and hilarious. As they grow older, each surprises himself by settling down with one woman and begins to experience the gritty reality of a day-to-day relationship. The unresolved sexual tensions inexorably boil to the surface and generate remorseless, unrelenting momentum that sends both characters hurtling toward one of the most traumatizing climaxes in modern fiction. Written in a taut, naturalistic style evocative of the best of Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller, CHASING HAIRY unflinchingly explores some of the frightening undercurrents pervading-sometimes dominating-our sexual lives and will leave the reader stunned and shaken. 3
