This helping-people business was an attractive idea, I’ll admit, because up to now I’d not done much more than be, and when I wasn’t just being, I’d caused some pain, too.

Because this is another thing your average American man in crisis does: he tries to go home, forgetting, momentarily, that he is the reason he left home in the first place, that the home is...

After a dream like that, you’re grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn’t be worse than your dream life.

When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply...

Oh no,” I said, because if our life is just one endless song about hope and regret, then “oh no” is apparently that song’s chorus, the words we always return to.