Drinking up the Sea contains six novels subtitled A Hurley Hexalogy. Included are The Last Existentialist, in which a ninety-year-old philosopher is on his way to accept an award; Auteur, the story of boy meets girl as interpreted by an art cinema director; Villas and Horizons, where an obscure copywriter compares his visions with those of Nietzsche and Tiberius; Under the Greywacke Arch, wherein the search for the meaning of aesthetics is interrupted by visits from tiny characters out of our cultural past; Smudge, showing how distinct pairs of philosophical concepts can be merged; and Walking in Beauty, a guide of the bleak aesthetics of one of the nation’s oldest cities.