The novels of Jason Flores-Williams ignore virtually every theme that has come to be associated with the Chicano novel since the publication of José Antonio Villareal's Pocho in 1959. His protagonists come neither from the farmlands nor from the barrio, and they are much more involved in questions of ontology, nihilism, and existentialism than in those of oppression, racism, economic opportunity, and cultural identity. While artistic and personal fulfillment are of some concern in the Flores-Williams world, political equality is hardly an issue. Instead, the Flores-Williams protagonist is a pensive antihero, an artist and philosopher with a bad attitude who hurls himself headlong into the depths of the postmodern abyss, a world in which technology is deified and in which, as a result, the individual has become isolated from both himself or herself and his or her world. Flores-Williams sees himself as being much more directly affected by...