fIdGits, Book 1: Adolessons: Growing Up in the Seventies Paperback – March 21, 2011

If Henry Miller had come of age in Central Illinois in the 70's rather than New York City in the first decade of the 20th Century and lived in the Midwest in the 70-80's rather than Paris, France in the 20-30's, how would his books have read?While one can see a modern, unpretentious Henry Miller, who not only observes but survives, in the writing of this book with fleeting hints of the humor, integrity, and self-destructiveness of Charles Bukowski without the descent into lowlife, the author, in this his second novel and the first book of a Fidgets trilogy, demonstrates a true and authentic literary voice that speaks for the second wave of the Baby Boom Generation.The Introduction quickly immerses us into the Mystery of Life and whether or not it has meaning and throws us into the black pit of an oceanic vortex of life and the existential event horizon from where we have to question is there purposeful future seed from the currents of having been after disappearance, because the main character, called Non Descript, has literally disappeared leaving only encrypted data discs behind. Once the encryption has been broken, the story begins:"I am a human being."In Fidgets Book One: Adolessons, we follow Non Descript from age 13 to age 20. While Henry Miller wove contemporary artistic literary and oil painting themes throughout his writings, Gregory Schussele uses music (how can any member of the first or second wave of the Baby Boom Generation not have memories immersed in music?), knowledge of sports, and how sports, like life, can be inclusive and exclusive without regard to talent or ability but rather dependent upon the perceptions, however factual or not, and limitations of others.Non Descript found his teenage years to be the most formative with little memory of the earlier years of his youth. So begins an adventure in relationships, fights for integrity, the defense of humor, the constant returning fascination with the opposite sex and the fantasies of its unknown mysteries, disappointment, near tragedy, parties parties parties, wasted time, betrayal, the choices made and not made, the lost and wasted opportunity in meeting the obviously simpatico from afar brunette with whom there is the overwhelming attraction of this is the one just like me and you blow it so badly it becomes a lingering regret for the rest of your life, and the mysterious beautiful blond who seems destined to weave her way in and out of his life never staying.Standing back from this the reader not only recognizes an unpretentious, modern Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, and Henry Roth, but also the fundamental elements of the human struggle represented by creative hope, grandeur of integrity, destructive avoidance, and the darkness which can be reality as depicted by Dostoevsky without the convoluted complexity.While each volume of the Fidgets trilogy displays "WARNING! Contains Adult Content and Extremely Graphic Sexual Language", this warning, as discussed by the author in his Blog at Schussprosepublishing.com, is relative to the reader. In Fidgets Book One: Adolessons, the ruminations on sex, the fantasies, the releases, and the encounters are all too real and, quite frankly, a part of life which this reader did not find offensive.Is this a perfectly written novel? I do not know of any novel which can be described as perfect, but there are novels which capture a generation, a time, an idea, the human struggle, and not just the imagination. When one finishes this book, it lingers and this reader cannot but wonder if, thirty years from now, it will be a literary classic about life in the America of the second wave of the Baby Boom Generation.