Paul Praeder—an immensely complex character with the bravado of a Hemingway hero, the literary erudition and despair of Berryman’s Dream Songs persona, and the dark, self-destructive magnetism of Conrad’s Captain Kurtz—is a new and disturbing addition to the pantheon of American literary characters. His story unfolds over his 30-year correspondence with a young poet, and it is a story of lost moral compass, in which artistic integrity is traded for commercial success, and friendship and fidelity fall to lust and greed. James Baker Hall is currently the Poet Laureate of Kentucky.