Sometimes I Think about It

An essay collection by a writer who may be writing under . . . the influence of genius (Vanity Fair)

In Sometimes I Think About It, Stephen Elliott gathers personal essays, reportage, and profiles written over fifteen years to tell a powerful story about outsiders and underdogs.

Moving from the self to the civic, the book begins with a series of essays that trace Elliott s childhood with an abusive and erratic father, his life on the streets as a teenager, and his growing interest in cross-dressing and masochism. These stories, which range from a comic portrait of a week spent hosting his younger brother to a brutal depiction of depression, provide a context for the essays that follow.

Stepping out into the world, Elliott tells of a man who loses his family in a rock slide in Southern California, explores the vexing realities of life in Palestine, and paints a chilling picture of a young man caught in the prison-industrial complex. The last section, The Business of America Is Business, shows Elliott s abiding interest in the spectacle of money in America, from pop music to pornography to publishing, and it concludes with an off-kilter account of the tech industry s assault on West Los Angeles.

Building on the extraordinary storytelling that characterized his breakout book, The Adderall Diaries, Elliott s search for dignity and happiness leads him to tell with great sympathy the stories of those who are broken and seek to be whole.