A talented docent explaining what we see in various rooms of the museum of his life, Philip Schultz engages us in a cinematic guided tour of the emotions and inspired souls who molded him as a writer.

He brings Hemingway’s wife, Elizabeth Bishop and Norman Mailer so close to us we can hear them breathe.

An instruction by example, his words dance lyrically across the page as he deftly touches his foot down upon the legacies of suicide, failure, shame, and vulnerable self-reflection, but takes care to not allow any of us to get our boots stuck in the mud.

His book is the personification of his tutelage: “Serious writers are archeologists of their emotional and spiritual selves, risk-takers willing to excavate what lies hidden in our post private selves….”