The Maniac in the Coffee Shop is a hybrid travel narrative that implements poetry with prose to create one of the strangest epic poems ever written. It chronicles Eddie’s travels to some of the worlds most diverse places, dipping into the poetic and authentic cracks of human culture. Eddie explains:Sexuality is always a part of a real manly travel narrative and I admit to following in Kerouac’s expectations. One time, I found myself in Tabasco, Mexico. I was craving hooker to put me to sleep. It is unavoidable, sometimes, the danger is enticing, it makes a man a full fledged knight errant, trampling down the virgin land. But the thing is, the only virginity of travel exists in the minds of the traveler. There is nothing pure about tourism. The Eiffel Tower and Chichen Itza are whores of the states, and their promised conquest is nothing more than a planned and paid encounter with some cultural authenticity. These are not accounts of my touring exploitation of contrived alien cultures, they are records of my encounters with culture’s authentic as I weed out the poetic trugh, to capture its meaning, deflowering my own naivety. Ill start at home, with a conquest and venture further and further away, as my own world expands and my own virginity is torn away, my consciousness is opened wide and rammed endlessly with experience.
