Description

The creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue reflects on his tumultuous life driven by a nearly insatiable creative energy and a matching penchant for selfdestruction Lifes Work is a profound memoir from a brilliant mind taking stock as Alzheimers loosens his hold on his own past

This is David Milchs farewell and it will rock youSusan Orlean author of The Orchid Thief

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NPR USA Today Kirkus Reviews

Im on a boat sailing to some island where I dont know anybody A boat someone is operating and we arent in touch So begins David Milchs urgent accounting of his increasingly strange present and often painful past From the start Milchs life seems destined to echo that of his father a successful if drugaddicted surgeon Almost every achievement is accompanied by an act of selfimmolation but the deepest sadnesses also contain moments of grace

Betting on racehorses and stealing booze at eight years old mentored by Robert Penn Warren and excoriated by Richard Yates at twentyone Milch never did anything by half He got into Yale Law School only to be expelled for shooting out streetlights with a shotgun He paused his studies at the Iowa Writers Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca He created and wrote some of the most lauded television series of all time made a family and pursued sobriety then lost his fortune betting horses just as his father had taught him

Like Milchs best screenwriting Lifes Work explores how chance encounters selfdeception and luck shape the people we become and wrestles with what it means to have felt and caused pain even and especially with those we love and how you keep living It is both a master class on Milchs unique creative process and a distinctive revelatory memoir from one of the great American writers in what may be his final dispatch to us all