The Burnout

The Burnout is a novel about a young man, Clarence Fishburn—called “Fishsticks” by his friends—who spends twelve years in a college dormitory in Buffalo, New York. The narrator/biographer reports on Fishsticks’s activities with a dry yet pompous solemnity. He treats his subject as an exemplary figure and quotes canonical writers in an attempt to ennoble his ordinary and undistinguished hero. Fishsticks attempts to live by what he considers to be spiritual principles but finds that he is his own worst enemy.