...living according to a plan—college, job, promotion, buying a house, marriage, child one, child two, setting up a 401K, retirement, dotage and death—I’ve never seen the sense of it. In fact, my own writing career began with the rejection of such a planned life—with, in other words, a revolt, a revolt inspired by reading. In light of the materialistic mania and money-making prospects of the 1980s, when I came of age, this revolt seemed, to many I knew then, a senseless risk. In retrospect, though, I see it as my first step toward independence and pursuing the profession I was meant for, toward becoming alive.