Michael Greenberg entertainingly chronicles the hardships, delights, and moral dilemmas of being a writer and a New Yorker in this "darkly comic" essay collection (The New York Review of Books). To eke out a living, Greenberg doctors doomed movie scripts, peddles cosmetics on the street, and waits tables at a posh restaurant, all while raising his son on the Lower East Side. Along the way, he meets a host of fascinating city characters, including a Holocaust survivor, a repentant communist, and rats who behave like humans. Hilarious and bittersweet, Greenberg's stories invite us into a world where the familial, the literary, the tragic, and the mundane not only speak to one another, but deeply enjoy the exchange.