In this 76-page novella published thirty years after he wrote it and ten years after his death, Lowry draws upon his first visit to New York City and a subsequent stay in Bellevue Hospital for the story of a delirious alcoholic and a band of eccentric fellow patients squirming against the existential confines of the city, the dingy corridors of the hospital, and the impossible allure of the ships passing on the river outside the window. In a handful of standout passages, Lowry somehow transforms the oppressive squalor and intimations of the unhappiness inherent in the human condition into some of the most affecting prose I have ever read.