They Went Another Way

Book excerpt: A darkly comic memoir about being a working creative person in a world that is growing ever more dysfunctional, by acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist and television writer Bruce Eric Kaplan. In January 2022, Bruce Eric Kaplan found himself confused and upset by the state of the world and the state of his life as a television writer in Los Angeles. He started a journal to keep from going mad, which eventually became They Went Another Way. The book’s through line traces his attempt to get a television project set up in the increasingly Byzantine world of Hollywood. But as he details the project’s ups and downs, Kaplan finds himself ruminating not only on show business but also on today’s political and social issues, on old movies and TV shows and music, on his family, on his friends, on his past, on his failing heating system, and on all the dead birds that keep showing up in his backyard. This hilarious and surprisingly moving book is about life—about art, about love, about alienation, about connection, about ugliness and beauty, about disappointment, wonder, and hope. In short, it is about everything.