ONE EVENING, while I was practicing, Margot called me at home and asked me for a favor—perhaps I should say “another favor.” . . .

     “We’re not ready to have the whole school know that you’re honing your little skills, honey,” said Margot.

BACK IN MY ROOM AGAIN, I hit on the idea of practicing with marbles instead of peas. I was a little beyond the age of playing with marbles. Among the other kids my age at school, marbles were no longer in favor.

“THAT WAS DELICIOUS, Mom,” I said. “Thanks.” I stood and began removing the dinner plates.     “What on earth are you doing?” asked my father.

SO I DID begin practicing at home, but it wasn’t easy. I knew that my parents weren’t going to consider rolling peas a suitable occupation for my spare time, so . . .

     “Rolling peas?” I had the feeling that a joke was coming.     “Try it,” said Martha.

ONE DAY I was in the cafeteria at the new junior high school, making my way along the steam table in a line with the other scholars, collecting the various components of my lunch . . .

ALTHOUGH THE THREAT of atomic warfare hung over us constantly when I was a boy in Babbington, New York, clam capital of America, we didn’t think about annihilation all the time. Sometimes we worried about war and rumors of war, it’s true, but at other times we had other thoughts: . . .

     If I were still working in the novella form, this short book would have had three parts: “Abed with Twins,” “Driven to Abstraction,” and “In Your Own Words.” . . .

     There I went, into an alley I had meant to ignore. As my work on this book progressed, as I kept poking my way a bit deeper into that alley, I found that I wasn’t alone . . .