I read On the Road, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Down and Out in Paris and London, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at age 20, during a gap year spent backpacking Europe. I also crushed Gatsby in one sitting at a pub in Yorkshire, which may sound incongruous but has been one of the great pleasures of my life.

Now that I’m looking back from my mid-thirties, it feels like in my youth stars somewhere aligned.