The following essays appeared first in The Stranger: “Seattle, 1974”; “Loitering” (as “The Crime That Never Was”); “Whaling Out West” (as “Whaling”); and “Casting Stones” as (“Mary Kay Letourneau”). “Seattle, 1974” also appeared in The Eleventh Draft: Craft and the Writing Life from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Frank Conroy. “Any Resemblance to Anyone Living” and “Misreading” (as “True Believer”) appeared first in Tin House. “Documents” and “Catching Out” (as “Train in Vain”) appeared originally in The New Yorker. “American Newness” (as “Modular Homes”), “Winning” (as “Brick Wall”), “One More Paradise” as (“Biosquat”), and “Orphans” were first published in Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors. “Brick Wall” also appeared in Harper’s. “Doo-Wop Down the Road” was published in Camela Raymond’s much-loved broadsheet, The Organ. “Salinger and Sobs” appeared first in With Love and Squalor, eds. Kip Kotzen and Thomas Beller, and was subsequently collected in The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature, ed. J. C. Hallman. A portion of “This Is Living” was published in Money Changes Everything, eds. Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell. “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” first saw print in an anthology called The Clear Cut Future.