The first time I fished for money I got burned so badly I never tried it again.

I’m back at my desk in Manhattan now, wiggling my left index finger in my ear, hunting and pecking on my keyboard with my right. Overall, very little “work” is going on.

In 1978 all the fish I cared about died. They were the biggest largemouth bass I had ever seen, and they lived in a pond ten minutes’ walk from my house on a large estate in the backwoods of Greenwich, Connecticut, perhaps the most famously wealthy town in America. We did not own the house, the estate, the pond, or the largemouth bass, but I still thought of the fish as my fish. I had found them, and the pond was my rightful hunting ground.