It begins with a chance encounter with a hitchhiker named Elliot, who has the same destructive disposition that Long himself has cultivated. The two of them, after a night of booze and cocaine, begin to fantasize about being Butch and Sundance, and decide to rob a couple walking out of restaurant. The robbery goes bad, a car chase ensues, (which is nothing like the glorified car chases you might see in the movies, by the way), and both guys end up in handcuffs. This begins a long pattern of behavior for Long, who becomes a career criminal trying with unconscionable verve to achieve that heightened ideal, forgoing his reason, his sense of self, and his morality in order to do so. At best, he can only achieve a spurious success that mocks the kind of success that he could achieve if he put the same ingenuity into legitimate ventures. He concocts brilliant plans for dodging his parole officers and running underground telemarketing scams in Las Vegas. Even in modest success he is haunted by the role that he plays in life, the role of the criminal.

It’s hard to like Long throughout much of the book, and it even seems that he is looking back with the same disdain that he expects readers to feel. This, from a literary standpoint, is the book’s greatest flaw since the author frequently passes judgment, taking that liberty away from the reader and interrupting the narrative. But that does little to quell the fascinating story surrounding its author, and the extraordinary arch that it takes in its later chapters.

There is still that piece of us that loves a good caper, and I’ll admit that even when I was disgusted by depths to which the narrator stoops, the lower they were, the more I was drawn in. Long makes even the court proceedings an act of unbearable tension, given how real his fear is, and how close he’s able to get to the guillotine without losing his head. (I speak figuratively of course.) If Magritte’s intent was to give us the idea of the pipe, Long’s is to make us choke on the real thing.

Long’s final tribulation seems about as simple as saving the Titanic after it’s already upended. Having his history of malefactions stacked against him, and weighing the number of years he faces in prison with the greater burden of his own guilt makes the future absolutely hopeless. Even knowing ahead of time that the narrator is able to turn around his predicament does not diminish the suspense of the situation. It seems absolutely impossible, and yet it remains believable, and overwhelming in its dissection of humanity’s will to overcome. “The Upside of Fear” contains the most satisfying ending since “A Shawshank Redemption”.