The art of failing

the long version

"Anthony McGowan is a man at odds with the universe. Stumbling from one improbable fiasco to the next, he patrols the mean streets of West Hampstead like some unholy cross between Columbo, J. Alfred Prufrock and a common tramp, pondering the very stuff of life itself. For McGowan that's holed socks, unsatisfactory packed lunches, broken washing machines, Kierkegaard, the eccentricities of the British Library, liver salts, Morrissey and disapproving ladies on trains."--