[solid copy, mild browning at page edges and top/bottom edges of boards; jacket shows some wear at spine ends, soiling to rear panel, one tiny tear and associating creasing at bottom of rear panel]. Novel set in a neighborhood bar in lower Manhattan -- "a trifle too far north to be in Greenwich Village and a trifle too far east to be in Chelsea" -- with a narrative built around the fortunes and misfortunes of the "regulars," who "deliver up their lives to Dominick's benevolent dictatorship." Dominick is, of course, the bartender;according to the jacket copy, the author himself had "spent his life as a bartender, a job he now alternates with self-imposed writing sabbaticals." This was his first novel; near as I can tell, he published only one other, "The Death of Peterson's Wharf," the following year.