This book is partially about me but, to an even greater and more significant extent, it is about the larger world that I inhabit. I am speaking, in an ecosystemic sense, of a world of other people, other voices, other stories, and other books. I cannot write without these other influences by my side, urging me on; but what’s more, I cannot, in an ethical sense, imagine a world in which writing without them would be viewed as acceptable or permissible. Insofar as hanging out describes a process that unfolds in group settings and so is necessarily shared, writing, for me, constitutes a kind of hanging out with the ideas and books and writers, both living and dead, who have shaped my thinking. My writing and stories do not belong solely to me but to the whole social universe that was the compound site of their creation. I have never done anything by myself—not truly, even when I was alone or felt certain that I was by myself. Writing, though it would appear to grow from the experience of solitary reflection, is no exception, not if it’s done right.