We each have one, a literary canon, and we make it ourselves, not out of what is respectable or prestigious or prominent or lasting or moral or even well-made. We make it out of enthusiasm, out of what we love. A sustained thread of enthusiasm, to which I try to connect myself, conjuring it up when I’m writing, from the books I have with me, on the

In this whole book I’ve tried to lay out my canon for anyone who might be interested, little pieces entangled necessarily with little pieces of my life, because of this ecstasy.

from the window of this guestless guest bedroom the two of us could see the clear, circulating beam of a lighthouse across the dark sea and sky. It was admittedly beautiful, but it was three in the goddamn morning.

The more little scraps that resonate with me, the more I know that my own scrappy efforts are, somewhere likely invisible, being chewed over, until the scraps do not seem so little after all, but something quite large and peculiar I can imagine and remember and describe here on paper, even if it’s appreciated only by one or two people who for

romantic love as path to mutual hatred

I don’t believe literature can harm anyone, and I certainly don’t think any book causes trauma. But why don’t I? If I believe literature can heal, even save people’s lives, then it seems suspect to dismiss wholeheartedly any claim that this enormous power might somehow cause distress.

Maybe he should have known better, but he didn’t, and neither did I. He was a grownup, though, and I wasn’t, so I can be forgiven for not really knowing what I was doing. But in fact I was a grownup, technically—that’s why he’d asked my age straightaway—and I did know what I was doing; it just isn’t what I’d do now, which is what I’d say about

Is there a word for what happened? I call it a mistake, just a mistake. It does not feel big enough to be, say, a disaster. Everyone notices a disaster, and this had been a secret, an experience that zipped closed, invisible and tidy, when it was over. If I looked for him, if I found him and asked him, I assume he would say the same thing, shaking

The off-center digressions, the unreliable philosophy, the belief in literature as a desperate cure for ennui—all of the hallmarks of Lemony Snicket were right there, alongside my stumbly gothic novel.