What happens when a high school English teacher asks a fifteen year old kid still concerned with acne and how his hair looks to read a French philosopher's essay about the absurdity of life and the inescapable quest for meaning? This is a book for anyone who has ever been a kid, who ever felt alone in the midst of family and peers and a world that seemed not his own...for anyone who has felt the pain of becoming conscious and the great joy of waking up. These are honest, humorous stories about growing far from and then finding one's father, of a ten year old's first profound disillusionment, of discovering a first real friend, and of finding one's still present past in 1970s Berkeley after having left Brooklyn, Yiddish accents and Russian Jewish roots behind. Above all it's about waking up, and staying awake.