“Now that you have established this journal called Creative Nonfiction,” people ask, “here’s something I’d like to know: What does it mean?” It’s surprising to learn how many writers (and readers) don’t understand, exactly, the elements of the form in which they are writing. Some are attracted by the word “creative” and think that because their prose is unusual or distinctive and because the stories they are telling are true that they are writing in the genre of creative nonfiction.

Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something.

It was a walk that had already yielded plenty. I had ventured far enough from the road to stand on the shore of a lake of ferns, each cupped heavenward like a satellite dish.

A month ago my wife and I were walking our dogs on the beach. A stiff breeze was raising whitecaps and Connecticut was plainly visible. There are days when you can hardly see the coast and days when it seems to loom.

My roommate and I hang out on our narrow dorm cots with their East Indian bedspreads. Incense burns, and we are speaking wisdoms when they strike us as we drink Tyrolia Pineapple Wine and smoke Newports.

In July 1985, about two months before he died, I had my last serious conversation with my father, Alan. It was a short conversation, and it was not good. In one blow, it seemed to cancel all the gains I thought I had made in a lifetime of trying to win his attention and respect.Alan

In June Eliza’s dancing school staged a ballet version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Eliza asked me to be the Blue Caterpillar. I sat on an orange mushroom at the edge of the stage and before each dance read a selection from Lewis Carroll’s book.

Pools and pools and pools of chocolate— 50,000-pound, 90,000-pound, Olympic-length pools of chocolate— in the conching rooms in the chocolate factory in Hershey, Pa. Big, aromatic rooms. Chocolate, as far as the eye can see.