Straw Man

About the Book

How mutable – or divisible – is identity?  How many unknown other selves do we have locked within?  Which self do we present to the world, and why?  Is it possible to take such control of our own history as to entirely avoid living in a universe of unintended consequences?  And is someone who he “really is”, or is he who he has chosen, and is taken, to be?

Set at the staid, buttoned-up Harvard Law School of the late sixties, Straw Man explores these and related themes in a prurient, picaresque romp through the underside of Cambridge during the most tumultuous decade of postwar American history.

About the Author

How mutable – or divisible – is identity? How many unknown other selves do we have locked within? Which self do we present to the world, and why? Is it possible to take such control of our own history as to entirely avoid living in a universe of unintended consequences? And is someone who he “really is”, or is he who he has chosen, and is taken, to be? Set at the staid, buttoned-up Harvard Law School of the late sixties, Straw Man explores these and related themes in a prurient, picaresque romp through the underside of Cambridge during the most tumultuous decade of postwar American history. Vaughn A. Carney, an attorney and writer, is a native Chicagoan who was educated at Colgate University and the Harvard Law School. He serves as a contributor to the Op-Ed Page of The Chicago Tribune and to Volume.com, the HBO online magazine, and as a critic and book reviewer for the Gannett Newspapers and QBR – The Black Book Review. His work has appeared in numerous other publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Times of London and The Johannesburg Star. Mr. Carney was selected as a presenter at the 1996 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and his first novel, the critically acclaimed Swiss Movement, was published in 1998. Straw Man, his second novel, was a finalist for the Heekin Foundation Prize for Fiction.