In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be.

As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.

New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.

For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

The thing I love about New York is getting lost but not worrying, just wandering and wandering, knowing that there's always a subway only ten blocks away in any direction. There's always a new neighborhood to discover, a new place to lose your bearings in, and yet however alien it seems you can escape. You can always get a cab. All of life's problems can be solved by hailing a cab.

To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. . . . New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.