It's the early eighties and OLNEY GARKLE has returned to California after several years of itinerant travel in Europe and Asia, culminating in a failed love affair in Paris. His immediate goal is to put an end to his life of hedonism-on-a-shoestring by getting a job. With modest bills in the mailbox of a modest apartment he can then begin the book that he hopes will give vent to his greatest outrage: the triumph of politics over people, and resolve his greatest conflict: the battle between lust and spirituality. After a morning of surreal interviews, Olney repairs to THE MOON FOOD CAFÉ, one of those ubiquitous Chinese-American eateries whose menus were dittoed in the year dot. Olney has run out of the money his friends have so graciously lent him and now finds himself standing, or rather sitting, on a Naugahyde stool at the crossroads. Punctuated by a series of surreal encounters with the café's regulars, and in particular, the Chinese waitress (whose nametag reads HELGA), Olney examines in detail the events of his zany life leading to the past few weeks and his pathetic attempts to secure employment. The device of dialogues with apparently autonomous inner selves is used throughout. In the closing sections, this device is used in the form of an ongoing testy argument between Olney, representing the will to evolve out of density, and the self he refers to as THE UNC, who represents the will to rut. The book ends as Olney leaves the cafe just before it closes. His vow to make himself over--to gain insight and self-discipline through the written word, and above all, to be a positive force in the negative world--is made with great trepidation. The reader is left to wonder if he will succeed. NB. The book's title is a tongue-in-cheek adaptation of the suggestion by G. I. Gurdjieff that the gravitational forces of the moon cause sentient beings to act mechanically. Only by developing consciousness and will can independent action be achieved.