The Turn – Tablet Magazine
I embraced my people, and my people embraced me. They gave me everything I had always imagined I wanted: a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university; a professorship at NYU, complete with a roomy office overlooking Washington Square Park; book deals; columns in smart little publications; invitations to the sort of soirees where you could find yourself seated next to Salman Rushdie or Susan Sontag or any number of the men and women you grew up reading and admiring. The list goes on. Life was good. I was grateful.
And then came The Turn. If you ve lived through it yourself, you know that The Turn doesn t happen overnight, that it isn t easily distilled into one dramatic breakdown moment, that it happens hazily and over time first a twitch, then a few more, stretching into a gnawing discomfort and then, eventually, a sense of panic.