Conscious and Unconscious in America: Part Two Second City Unconscious

Conscious and Unconscious in America: Part Two, Second City Unconscious is a bold, reflective, and sharply observed literary journey into art, improvisation, memory, and the hidden forces that shape American life.

Through the voice of Michael/Richard, Richard Thomas explores what it means to live as an artist in a culture that often rewards obedience, performance, status, and safe ambition over truth. Moving through Second City, the West Bank Café, Los Angeles, New York, film, theater, friendship, betrayal, and personal reckoning, this book blends memoir-like reflection, literary fiction, cultural criticism, and philosophical essay into one searching narrative.

At its center is a question every serious artist eventually faces: What happens when your inner life no longer fits the world that once claimed to understand you?

With fierce honesty and dark humor, Thomas examines improvisation as more than performance. It becomes a way of seeing, remembering, resisting, and becoming fully conscious. The book speaks to artists, writers, performers, thinkers, and readers drawn to unconventional literary work about creativity, self-discovery, American culture, and the cost of living truthfully.

Intimate, challenging, and deeply original, Second City Unconscious is for readers who believe art is not escape, but a way to confront life more clearly.