Want Not

Miles, whose first novel, Dear American Airlines, took the form of a hilarious epistolary screed, returns with a series of interlinking stories around a theme of trash, as suggested by the implied "waste not" title. The novel touches on detritus of all kinds, from the consumer refuse found in dumpsters to roadkill, human excrement, radioactive waste, junk bonds, and unwanted babies. The characters span the full range of contemporary American culture, from dumpster-diving freegans squatting in New York's East Village to a New Jersey suburbanite in the "debt acquisition" business, who extorts payment from marginalized people to finance an upper-middle class existence for his wife and 17-year-old stepdaughter. In another thread, a linguistics professor is hired by the government to develop a system to warn future generations, who will no longer speak our languages, about stored underground radioactive waste.