Book excerpt: Publisher's description: "In House of Coates, writer Brad Zellar pieces together the story of legendary recluse Lester B. Morrison. Working from a handful of encounters and contradictory conversations, a sketchy paper trail and often confounding interviews with individuals who may or may not have been associates of Morrison - including Morrisons former collaborator Alec Soth - Zellar attempts to reconstruct one episode from Morrison s decidedly episodic life. In the winter of 2011 Zellar finally crossed paths with his evasive subject and was with Morrison s permission granted access to the results of an MMPI - Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - test that Morrison submitted to in August of 2009 along with the administrating psychiatrists copious notes. Finally in late December of last year Zellar received in the mail a duct taped shoebox marked PERISHABLE containing almost two hundred photographs that Morrison termed disposable documents of the approximate period in question