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I spent my my youth alone, watching life go by The excerpts below are diary entries I wrote in the fall of 1972.  Two months earlier, I had celebrated my twenty-third birthday. As I reread what I wrote long ago, it surprised me how well I understood that my fears were smothering me. I knew I had to defeat them but had no idea how to do it. I tried changing jobs or moving to a new apartment. I even tried moving across the country, thinking a fresh start in a new city woul

Talks with myself helped clarify my thinking Into 1975, I was twenty-six and worried about what I should do to earn a living. Friends who'd found their niches early on left me in awe. Who me? A writer? As for me, I did have a vocation, I now realize -- I wanted to be a writer -- but had discounted it as an impossible way to earn money. I read fiction hungrily and revered authors but doubted I had the talent to write novels. Had I been savvier about the business worl

No, I have never committed a crime, let alone two, but I have endured periods when I was treated like a prisoner. My parents were my first jailers, imposing strict controls on my life from a young age. I arrived in Montreal, Canada, from Italy in the fall of 1952 with my mother. We were joining my father, who had traveled ahead to prepare the way. I was three. They had fled their impoverished mountain village at a time when all of Europe was still reeling from the ravages of