At precisely 4 p.m. on December 28, 1983, I knocked on the door of Gay Talese’s five-story town house at 109 East 61st in New York City.

Journalists should report the truth. Who would deny it? But such a statement does not get us far enough, for it fails to distinguish nonfiction from other forms of expression. Novelists can reveal great truths about the human condition, and so can poets, film makers and painters.

Today my father and I begin to prepare for the Passover Seder. He instructs me in the preparation of the turkey, how to wash it and prepare the grill.

You are nuts, I said to myself as I picked up the kitchen phone. You should be taken away and locked in a clean white room, I said as I dialed the number.

By lunchtime, Daniel Judah Sklar has taught playwriting to four junior high school classes at the Emily Dickinson School on West 96th Street. That’s part of his routine. So are the three flights of stairs he trudges up and down throughout the day.

The dance resumé is the epitome of utility. Name, address that week, companies you’ve performed with, how many calories you can survive on and your age minus five years. The resumé should be typed, although boldface, bullets and fancy fonts won’t matter a damn.What will matter is making the first cut of the audition, then standing in line with 95 other dancers, all of whom are sticking out their right leg and pointing the hell out of their right foot while the USDA meat inspector walks down the row, pulling out the ground beef and leaving the chateaubriand.And

Sam, my grandfather, was a womanizer. After 12 years of marriage, he finally left my grandmother to marry a younger woman.

In the beginning there is, of course, the pregnancy: nausea, denial and finally the pee test, the undeniable color blue. There are two phone calls to a clinic in Boston: “I need to schedule an abortion.”

On the morning of June 24, 1998, Dr. Sander Diamond, a professor of history at Keuka College and a man of intense enthusiasms, sat in his home office adjacent to the campus.

“Malted barley is a process, not a thing,” Roger admonishes … again.The grain room in the basement of the Smuggler’s Brewpub smells like a horse stable. Bags of barley stacked in rows 5 feet high fill the tiny room.