About a month ago, because of an obscure but still binding decree made under Napoleon III, all the children were taken from Paris. Bureaucrats drove them away in thousands of buses. In their absence, we laughed our way through three-hour dinners. …

Peter Frampton was a talented guitarist, a solid songwriter, and a decent singer. He had a handsome face and long blonde curly hair. For a moment he was the biggest rock star on earth. He grew up in the London borough of Bromley. His grandmother gave him his first musical…

George was the deputy manager of a small bank branch. He sat at a desk eight or nine hours a day. He was getting flabby. Sometimes he said to himself, “George, you should do some push-ups and sit-ups,” but he never got around to it. …

Once I was a skinny reporter-in-training. I smoked cigarettes. I wore smudged glasses. I got my breakfast from a street cart. When I wasn’t in the newsroom, I was either drunk at the Film Center Café on Ninth Avenue or asleep in a $90-per-month apartment in Union City, New Jersey…

A writer is never not working — In the 1920s, six writers came together as part of what would become known as the Frango School — named for the cafe where they drank and laughed in the days before it all went wrong. The writers in this circle worked in fish markets or canneries to get by…

Three of four days before I started writing this, I was driving down a highway, listening to “Silly Love Songs.” More than listening, I felt like I was merging with it. A scan of my brain would have revealed something that looked like a city lit up at night. …