How far would you be willing to go...for permission? Set in the crime-, riot-, and earthquake-racked Los Angeles of the 1990s, Permission tells the story of a screenwriter on the brink of success, derailed by a destructive marriage that drives him into a breakdown. Medicating his condition with a bottomless plunge into prostitutes and cocaine (his unlikely vehicles for self-analysis and personal revelation) he uses what he learns - and the new relationship he finds in this underworld - to come to terms with his nature, and to change his life. Comic and horrific, shockingly explicit yet tender and lyrical, Permission is more than a sex-and-drug-fueled fever dream -- more than a portrait of LA, the movies, and of a marriage. Rather, Marc Kristal's uncompromising, unforgettable first novel is about the ways in which we create identities that let us overcome and hide from our fears, what happens when those selves crash into their limits - and how the worst sort of chaos can lead, in the end, to the best outcome.