Greek Tragedy

Land only has ''21 pages to go'' before finishing the first draft of a novel, a punk-rock love story partly inspired by one of his favorite films, ''You Can Count on Me.'' With ''Goat'' under his belt, plus a little help from his shrink and a Zoloft prescription, he insists that he's put his once-cracked psyche back together again. ''I'm fine, man, I'm fine,'' he says in his Southern drawl. ''Now especially, I'm at a better place than I've ever been.''

But shaking him up is still pretty easy. A couple of hours later, a happy, talkative stranger with a hat and a scraggly beard picks up Land's trail on a nighttime city street, looking for 80 cents and a little conversation. Land stiffens, but hands over a dollar and hurries away. ''Homeless people make me skittish,'' he confesses, out of the man's earshot. ''My experiences with random street people have not been the best.'' He thinks a minute. ''I don't like people coming up to me out of the dark -- just because, you know?''