First published 2008
Pagan Kennedy collects true stories of eccentric visionaries who tried to remake the world according to their own strange logic. The centerpiece follows Alex Comfort, who wrote The Joy of Sex, as he reinvents himself as a California sex guru with an ambitious scheme to eliminate monogamy from human relationships forever. Kennedy also profiles a retired chemist who discovers how to transform barren land into fertile paradise, an ambitious wannabe dictator plotting to crown himself emperor of America, and an artist who builds his own "brain machine" using components from Radio Shack. These literary essays, most previously published in The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe Magazine, capture the peculiar determination of people convinced they can bend reality to their will. Kennedy shows how these dreamers pursue their obsessions regardless of consequences or common sense.
Genres: science, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: true-story, unconventional-protagonist
Setting: California
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
247 pages · Paperback · Santa Fe Writer's Project