The Sidewalk Smokers Club

What's different about "The Sidewalk Smokers Club"'s battle for individual sanctity is how it is carried on within the confines of a collective effort. Lethargic sensualists, craven in their drive for publicity, the group's saving grace is that they are uncommonly kind to one another. Do we really know people like this? Probably not, which may, in the end, be what Mr. Siciliano is after.

At best unconsecrated makers of useless things, at worst a cabal of rootless cosmopolitans on the make for the big break, "The Smokers" are united behind one of their own, taking on a media giant over the publishing of some dated, nude photos. Aware that outlandish behavior garners notoriety they climb into the public eye, opening their tendencies to the approbation or vilification by a society of "watchers." They get both.

A journalist of 20-plus years, Mr. Siciliano impishly details the consensus corruption that greases America's political machine, A prolific screenwriter, his conversations crackle with the Noel Coward-like insight, sophistication and humor one might expect from a group of neo-bohemians sitting around breathing each other's insalubrious emissions."