The film of MIDNIGHT COWBOY has assumed a life of its own, but the novel upon which it was based has been undeservedly eclipsed. James Leo Herlihy was one of a clutch of Sixties cult novelists who sought to chart America's loss of innocence, bringing to bear a raw, recording eye on the American novel. In depicting Buck's relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo and their lives lived on the margins of society, Herlihy takes his place among a group of distinguished American novelists, including Burroughs and Kerouac, who wrote with a new frankness about those at the edges of existence.