Anybody else out there know the novel Lucky Wander Boy by D.B. Weiss?

I bring this up because I waxed a little (and plan to wax even more) literary over in Mex's "Defend Sewers..." thread, and it reminded me of this novel.

Upshot -- Amazon's got it on a bargain price, now, so anyone looking to get through a case of S.A.D. with a light-read could do worse than pick this up. I read it about two or three years ago, and distinctly remember it being quite clever. There's a lack of any sort of plot description in the listing, but the first review nails it pretty well.

Basic sketch: young, disaffected twenty-something downloads MAME and a bunch of old arcade ROMs. As he burrows himself in this new obsession, he decides to write a catalog detailing his philosophical analyses of these old classic arcade games -- one in particular stands out, to this day: the narrator's analysis of sending Pacman off the screen into one of the four tunnels, and just when he reappears on the opposite end of the screen, he sends him back, so that, ultimately, the goal is to keep the Pacman sprite completely offscreen, which he then uses as an inroads to talking about existential nothingness.

Anyway, this "Catalog of Obsolete Entertainments" leads him on this quest to find a long-forgotten, played-only-once, fictional arcade game which gives the novel its title. Which leads him to obsessing about the creation of the game, the lead designer, landing a job with the internet media company which owns the film rights, et cetera.

I might deem the novel a bit too "clever" in a derogatory sense, but overall I found it quite enjoyable, and thought it would be something worth highlighting for this crowd. If you've read it and liked/disliked, discuss -- and if not, give it a look-see, and you might find something you like.