Baxter, Charles, 1947- <br/><br/>
The soul thief 
/ Charles Baxter 
 - 1st ed 
 - New York  : Pantheon Books  , c2008. 
 - 210 p.  ; 23 cm. 
<br/><br/> Nathaniel Mason is a graduate student in early 1970s Buffalo. At a beer party one autumn night, he meets the mysterious Jerome Coolberg, "a virtuoso of cast-off ideas." Coolberg quickly becomes obsessed with Mason, going so far as to steal his notebooks, his clothes, his girlfriend, and, finally, his memories and identity. But what exactly is Mason's identity? In Baxter's (The Feast of Love) view, everyone in Buffalo's student ghetto is a poseur, trying on different identities as though they were a change of clothes. Several decades on, in the book's second half, Mason is living a colorless existence in the Midwest, while Coolberg has transformed himself into a National Public Radio star who encourages people to narrate personal stories on the air. In a surprise ending, we learn that Coolberg played a much bigger role in Mason's life than we'd originally been led to believe. 
<br/><br/><label>ISBN: </label>9780375422522 
<br/><br/><label>LCCN: </label>2007018119 
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Topical Terms: </label><br/>Graduate students----Fiction
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Geographic Terms: </label><br/>Buffalo (N.Y.)----Fiction
<br/><br/><label>LC Class. No.: </label>PS3552.A854  / S68 2008 
<br/><br/><label>Dewey Class. No.: </label>FIC BAX