Nick Tosches in January Esquire

Nick Tosches talks to Scott Raab about his new book, fear, Moby-Dick, opium, booze, and the weather.

SR: How does a writer retire?
NT: I’d retire by allowing most of my days to be as they have been for the past three months: I’ll sit on a bench, drink coffee, smoke cigars, and watch the clouds move through the sky, and watch this complete parade of idiocy around me. People speaking into handheld devices while they walk down the street and saying to the device, “I’m walking down the street now.” People are enslaved. I was just up in the country for a few days last week and it was great: no television, no telephone, no nothing. I walked through the woods, sat around, smoked. And it was lovely. I think the desire to be free has mutated, and we now live in an era when the slaves celebrate their slavery — this whole corporate concept of being part of a “team” at work….