HOP SKIP AND A JUMP!

Hughes shares tales from his life in and around New York in this episodic memoir.

Ever since he was a kid, the Long Island–raised Hughes had a way of putting himself into uncomfortable situations. From getting arrested for breaking into the equipment shed at the nearby Girl Scouts camp to finding himself the target of a high school friend’s mother’s amorous advances, Hughes learned early on that situations can escalate quickly. This collection of short essays includes strange, funny, and poignant stories, including the author’s college summer job sailing on an oil tanker, his cocaine-filled bartender days gallivanting around New York City, and his oddly frequent run-ins with celebrities. Readers will learn about the times Hughes forced Meryl Streep to hold the elevator, spotted Paul Newman while shopping for navy beans, and the awkwardly ran into his hero, Kurt Vonnegut, outside a post office. Not every essay is comic in nature—one piece recounts the author’s elderly father’s requests for Hughes to help him die by suicide. Another describes Hughes’ desperate attempt to be declared 4F during the Vietnam War, illustrating the randomness and humiliation of the military draft. The author’s conversational prose presents him as a kind of wide-eyed experimenter, regardless of age. Here he discusses how he and a friend decided to hire a sex worker following a Bruce Springsteen concert in 1981: “It wasn’t so much the sex that had me excited but the prospect of this elicit [sic] behavior, cruising in a car and finding a girl to do it and avoid an undercover cop.” Though some of the stories are entertaining, they largely lack the kind of self-reflection and artistry most readers expect from contemporary creative nonfiction—these are barstool stories, for better or for worse.

A grab-bag of unfiltered anecdotes from the life of an impulsive man.