In my career as a writer, I preferred to avoid current events: I wrote young adult novels and book reviews and lifestyle journalism about health and parenting and other such evergreens.

I worked as a draftsman for the Department of Environmental Protection, and as a teacher, in N.Y.C.; at a big bank and a small ad agency, a tiny law firm and a few giant ones; as a cashier and a dishwasher; preparing deli sandwiches and stringing tennis racquets and pruning evergreens into conical Christmas-tree shapes.