He is soon sucked into the lives of the townspeople, which, as we say, are pretty dull. Dorothy doesn't particularly like the gloomy Randall, but nonetheless helps save him from dying in a freak football accident, paving the way for him to marry Marcy and doom her to a life of tedium. If you're wondering what the point of all this is, the answer is none. At least, none that I could discern. McNeal, who taught creative writing at Cal and Stanford, flexes his writing muscle to produce some lyrically beautiful passages, dark, moody and brooding, but little of it holds together.
Characters come and go, never to be heard from again.
Louise, who is a lot more interesting than Randall and is the life of the first 30 pages or so, disappears from the narrative far too early, and with her departure, the spirit of the novel sags. But if it's plot you want, with a beginning, middle and end, and all the loose ends tied together, you'll want to skip Goodnight on the literary map and head straight to Lincoln. You can buy this book online at Barnes and Noble.