“You’d never expect this abomination of a man to write such beautiful prose, but Sam Tallent has done it. . . . Wow, what a book!”—Shane Gillis, stand-up comedian
“Running the Light is a majestically bleak, hilarious, and bruising tour of regret, delusion, and the detonation of the soul. In Billy Ray Schafer, Sam Tallent has created one of contemporary fiction’s more memorable self-destroyers, and it’s a harrowing delight to witness him evade and then perhaps finally confront his truth.”—Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask
“A hell of a novel, too fucked-up to miss.”—Ron White
“A thrilling, nauseating and painfully real depiction of what happens at length as youth, talent, and charisma sour, Running the Light is the best novel I’ve ever read about comedy but also about a particular strand of relentless hedonism. Sam Tallent is that rare thing, a funny person who can convey his funniness in fiction and do it alongside prose that will break your heart, too.”—Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation
“It reads like a heightened satire of a life on the lowest tier of show business, but I’m here to tell you, it all rings true.”—Marc Maron, stand-up comedian
“Chaotic bliss . . . vivid, electric . . . reads like cinema.”—The Denver Post
“Sam Tallent is one of the true originals. He’s as much myth as man, like a character who wandered off the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel. But he’s very real and full of real integrity that shines through in all his work.”—Chris Gethard
“Running the Light absolutely nails the despair, futility, indignity, and perverse beauty of a life given over to stand-up comedy. The sad and the funny bleed so effortlessly into one another that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry or check yourself into rehab. It ought to be required reading for every open-micer in America.”—Adam Cayton-Holland, author of Tragedy + Time
“It feels unfair to compare a first-time novelist to masters like Denis Johnson and David Gates, but it’s all here: despair, fury, nihilism, tenderness, lyricism, hope, dark new insight into the human condition. . . . As bleak and electrifying as anything by Cormac McCarthy.”—Mishka Shubaly, author of The Long Run
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