It was stormy and dark the night of Jim’s birth. The wind howled out of the barren western plains, and tree branches flailed like enraged birds against the windows of the small Missouri hospital.
“My God,” Jim’s father had said, when the nurse handed his newborn son to him for the first time. His hands trembled and voice was tinged with apprehension. In the next room, Jim’s mother sobbed softly, her body convulsed with pain. “Do you suppose that baby’s normal?”

At Princeton, Jim was an erratic student, easily bored, who spent his time daydreaming and arguing with his professors. Nevertheless, he is now quite unsympathetic to his students who act the same way he did, seeing them as undisciplined and lazy.

Jim’s few remaining friends believe he is well-organized and compulsive, but in truth Jim leads a chaotic life devoid of self-discipline. He prefers hanging out with buddies, swilling margaritas, and watching “Airplane” on Netflix, to grown-up dinner parties with napkin rings and assigned table seating. This preference was a source of concern to his ex-wife.

Today Jim lives and writes on a hundred cactus-ridden acres of Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with three dogs, six chickens, a very tolerant spouse, and a friendly courtyard bull snake named Beatrice.