Boy with Loaded Gun

This tragicomic memoir of a boy from Itta Bena, Mississippi, and his lifelong misadventures is “a heartrending account of grown-up self-destruction” ( Entertainment Weekly ). His own mother referred to him as a “nervous child,” an “odd child.” He was the class clown—the skinny kid with a cowlick, freckles, jug ears, and an overbite. He was obsessed with sex, comic books, and beatniks. He tried to fly off his front porch like Superman only to land flat on his face. He was the boy who saved his mo