YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollections   'The Enthusiast' by Charlie
Haas  June 14, 2009|Tod Goldberg | Goldberg is the author of the
forthcoming story collection "Other Resort Cities."  The
difference between your garden variety obsessive and a dangerous
fanatic can be measured in degrees: An obsessive develops an
appreciation for a particular concern or hobby and devotes a
decent portion of life to exploring the margins of this
attachment. A fanatic, however, begins to embody the obsession
until it becomes some sort of personal definition. Absolute
devotion to anything that cannot return the emotion can devolve
into disaster. It's the world of the chroniclers of this world
that veteran screenwriter and journalist Charlie Haas dives into
with his funny and often moving, if ultimately transient, debut
novel, "The Enthusiast."  Narrator Henry Bay leaves college --
and a law school future -- in search of freedom from a kind of
suburban ennui caused by familial pressures, namely to avenge
the corporate raking his fat