Just start your engine. Go. Carl Black is an intellectual and an artist, a traveller and an unapologetic womanizer. A motorcyclist. He burns for the bohemian life, but is trapped in a railway worker's prosaic--and at times humiliating--existence. Set in 1959 in and around Halifax, Nova Scotia, the novel vividly recounts Carl's travels and romantic exploits as he tours the backroads of the East Coast and courts a bevy of beautiful women. The Motorcyclist is a portrait of a black working-class man caught between the expectations of his time and the gleaming possibilities of the open road. In vibrant, energetic, sensual prose, George Elliott Clarke brilliantly illuminates the life of a young black man striving for pleasure, success and, most of all, respect.