The Rise and Fall of Third Leg

“Anyone who’s an admirer of Richard Brautigan’s unclassifiable Trout Fishing in America will be drawn to the eccentric, wandering vision of Longhi’s prose.”—San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Longhi’s prose is carefully measured, engaging, laid-back.”—Guardian

The eighties were a crazy time in history: The Left had been crushed by the Reagan White House, most young people were not rebelling . . . in fact, many were more cynical and conservative than their parents. But amidst the widespread regression, a bizarre fungus was sprouting, and its cultural manifestation was punk rock.

The stories and novella in The Rise and Fall of Third Leg illustrate just how bent out of shape some punks were: They knew something was really wrong and rotten in America. These side-splittingly funny short stories relive the twisted glory days of homegrown DIY punk rock, from “Road Trip,” in which four benevolent urban skinheads venture forth to rural Montana for a friend’s wedding, to the title novella, which follows the absurd trials and tribulations of a small-town Delaware punk band, Third Leg, as its dreams of superstardom get flushed away in a series of hilarious catastrophes.

Jon Longhi is the author of four books, including Wake Up and Smell the Beer. His writing, which critics have compared to Terry Southern, Charles Bukowski, and Hunter S. Thompson, has also recently appeared in San Francisco Noir (Akashic Books) and Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto Press).