Benny Wise was very smart, but not always wise. Thus, when he went out to Really Hospital on Waight Island (a major geriatrics center in Eccentric City), and made certain ambitious promises to the patients in residence there, he didn't quite know what he was getting into. This was not the limit of his idealism, however. For the rest of his life -- and he lived a LONG life -- he was involved in movements of one kind or another: the children's revolution, the women's movement, the struggle for a democratic ocean, the left-handers' movement, and finally -- the logical outcome, it seemed -- the fight that took place under the slogan, "Impotency Power " Eventually, however, the promises he had made, as a young man, at Really Hospital, would come back to haunt him. ...Welcome to Benny's world; please, meet some of his friends: Phyllis Stick. Jarrod Crowbar, Erca Stampings, Admiral William Brakkist, Scot Frey, Jimmy Demond, Mao Festo.... BENNY'S MISSION does more than invent a plot with some characters; it creates an entire new fictional world, and fills it with surprise and intrigue, color and laughter.

RESTAURANT captures the entire life of a small seacoast tourist town (there is an uncanny resemblance to Provincetown, Massachusetts) as it goes through one of its zany, madcap, laughter-and-tragedy-filled summer seasons.

Sometimes, one sentence of speech, or of fictional dialogue, contains so many meanings that an entire chapter of background (in this case, foreground) is needed to unpack, and explain it. In this novel, a casual reference to "creddlebones," spoken from one lover to another, opens up an entire world of history and scholarly meaning.