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In telling the story of his own accidental "coming of age," English professor Bradley Butterfield tells the stories of a whole cast of lovable, if fallible, characters from his childhood and of the Denver he grew up in from the dawn of disco to the Reagan era. IDIOT BOYS is a relentlessly funny, heartbreakingly sad, and ultimately philosophical look at the particular idiocy of boys and the universal stupidity of man. Each chapter, or "Exhibit," represents a rough archetype of idiot boy behavior and a stage in young Butterfield's quixotic quest to figure himself out and become the hero of his own movie. Butterfield's narration meanders between every phase of his youth, from pre-school to his first semester in college, but there turns out to be a method in this seeming madness as it builds to a gut-wrenching climax involving repressed memories surrounding his mother's death and the inevitable dissolution of those childhood friendships he thought would last forever.

Bradley Butterfield is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Pay him a visit at bradleybutterfield.com if you'd like to read his observations about parenthood, politics, and literature, or to post an idiot boy story of your own.