Includes index

The Misunderstanding -- The Frozen River, Part I -- iPod on the Tracks -- The Stuff of Life -- The Bad News Bears and Breaking Away -- The Kinks at the Garden -- The Lost Glove -- On Moving Out -- Falling Out with Father Figures -- The Laundry Room -- Usand Them -- The Topographical Soul -- Negative Space -- The Purple Krama -- The Rights -- Loose Teeth -- Degas at the Gas Station -- Thanksgiving Panic -- The Pink Comma -- How I Found My iPhone in New Orleans -- The Two Thousand Dollar Popsicle -- On Finding a Spot -- Saying Goodbye to Now -- Remembrance of Snows Past -- Repeat, Memory -- The Perils of Precocity -- Drain You -- Her Party -- Napoleon on the Back Stairs -- The Egg Cream in Mid-Manhattan, -- Somebody's Mother Is Waiting in the Lobby -- ThatTime My Band Opened for Blur -- Death of a Movie Theater -- A Few Words About Jerry Stiller -- Loitering with Intent at Manet/Degas -- The Rights -- Evacuation -- The Frozen River (Reprise)

"Degas at the Gas Station is a collection of personal essays in which Thomas Beller explores his life from childhood to parenthood to mature middle age. The book is fundamentally about fatherhood-the mysteries of becoming a father as well as the mystery of the author's own father, who died when Beller was barely ten years old. Beller is ever curious about the people and phenomena he comes across, which allows him to digress from his own experiences and paint vivid sketches about the people and spaces of the New York City of his childhood and his current home in New Orleans"--