Firecrackers

One of several fictional works published that same year which assayed the temerity and hedonism of the Jazz Age including F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. During 1924, a blasé coterie of pleasure-seeking sophisticates are inordinately excited by a handsome and athletic newcomer to their social circle, Gunnar O'Grady, "a youth with the appearance of a Greek Adonis." Alternately seeking and avoiding their attentions, this enigmatic individual drifts through a series of menial vocations including furnace repairman, florist, waiter, and acrobat. O'Grady becomes an object of sexual fascination to many within the circle, including a precocious young girl, a thrill-seeking wife, and a bored husband. Tensions escalate as various persons within the coterie vie for O'Grady's companionship, and O'Grady finds his own desires stymied