Glory Hole

I'm finishing up my monstrous new novel, Glory Hole, which I've been working on, off and on, for ten years.  It's like 650 or so pages.  This is the opening paragraph:


Philip passed through Montana once.  He got off the bus in a town and you could see things different from up there.  Rain clouds in the distance.  The vapor trails looked like chromosomes.  This all happened a long time ago and nobody knows it.  Might as well have dreamed it.  1987 or 1988.  Time could be different too -- the way you think about it, the way you feel it.  Before Montana, he had a crush on a crazy.  Roger, the crazy, gave Philip a 30-page proof of the existence of God.  Time and death, it all added up.  Roger had already mailed the proof to Madonna.  He mailed her furniture, naked photos of himself, and dog shit once, during a one-sided lover’s quarrel, although Roger believed the passion was mutual.  Madonna was, at least, keeping tabs on him, sending her spies over Big Sur in airplanes and helicopters, and communicating with him through songs on the radio, her own songs, and other people’s too.  Roger was handsome, with that childish magnetism that insane people sometimes have.  Philip and Roger had both ended up in Big Sur because they’d been down to almost nothing.  Separately, passing through, they’d seen the Help Wanted sign at the gas station and store.  Roger had gotten to the point, in Oregon, that he was living in a cabin in the woods and eating dog food.  Roger was heading south toward LA to confront Madonna once and for all.  Philip wasn't headed anywhere in particular at the time.