Life's Work

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I feel like I'm on a boat sailing to some island where I don't know anybody. So begins David Milch's urgent accounting of his increasingly strange present and often painful past. Milch's life seems destined to echo that of his father, a successful but drug-addicted surgeon. Almost every achievement is accompanied by acts of self-immolation, yet the deepest sadnesses also contain moments of grace. From betting on race horses and stealing booze at eight to being mentored by Robert Penn Warren and excoriated by Richard Yates at twenty-one, Milch never did anything by half. He entered Yale Law only to be expelled for shooting out streetlights, paused his studies at the Iowa Writers' Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca, and created some of the most lauded television series of all time. He built a family and pursued sobriety, only to lose his fortune betting horses like his father. Life's Work explores how chance encounters, self-deception, and luck shape who we become, wrestling with the pain we feel and cause, especially with loved ones, and how we continue to live. This memoir serves as a masterclass on Milch's unique creative process and stands as a distinctive, revelatory dispatch from one of America's great writers.