The power in Riders of the Purple Wage results mainly from Farmer's brilliant wordplay and his tender portrait of the relationship between Chib and his grandfather. Chib is exceptionally intelligent and moral, but like many young people, is uncertain of his role in society. Thus, he has joined the "Young Radishes," a group of radical young artists, and with them, struggles to find his artistic identity amid the contradictions of Bird City. The Young Radishes are profoundly influenced by Omar Runic, a poet and holy fool obsessed with Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). (He styles his hair to resemble the Pequod, Captain Ahab's whaling ship, and he has a tattoo of Melville on his chest.) Runic loves the ocean but can never experience it as Melville did, because the nineteenth century's wild, uncharted nature does not exist in Bird City. Thus, he and the Young Radishes rail against God...