Product Description
Running the Light (Hardcover)
Author: Sam Tallent
Format: Hardcover
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 across the American Southwest, he travels from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living, in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father – comedian is the only title Schafer has left.
Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when opportunity doesn’t come – or worse – it comes and goes?
In ‘a majestically bleak, hilarious and bruising tour of regret, delusion and the detonation of the soul’ (Sam Lipsyte), Tallent hurls you into an absolute mess of a man’s life as we search for the mercy he does not want.
‘A thrilling, nauseating and painfully real depiction of what happens as youth, talent and charisma sour’ — MEGAN NOLAN
‘Anyone wondering where The Great American Novel went: this is it on bail’ — DBC PIERRE
For custom orders and quotes: shop@schoolspace.co.za
© 2026 Schoolspace. This product description is the exclusive intellectual property of the publisher, protected under copyright law. Unauthorized use, adaption, or copying is strictly prohibited.
