Life's Work

“Life’s Work is one of the best books about television I’ve read. It’s funny, discursive, literate, druggy, self-absorbed, fidgety, replete with intense perceptions… . You finish feeling you’ve really met someone. Milch was his own best creation.”—The New York Times“David Milch’s memoir is a heartrending cry from the horizon line of consciousness, a hilarious yarn of the truth-telling variety, and a brutal case history of addiction and self-destruction, written in the most gorgeously humane voice I’ve encountered in a work of nonfiction in a long while. I can think of few recent books that have pulsed with life this transparently, this powerfully.”—Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm “Like the best memoirs, Life’s Work is intimate, exquisitely observed, and intense. But unlike most—and what sets it apart—is the heartbreak it embodies, the finality it signals. This is David Milch’s farewell, and it will rock you.”—Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief “A wise, sly, hilarious, and poignant account of a life’s work in hard drugs and hard television.”—Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Netanyahus “A master class … a brilliant memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 

David Milch graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, where he won the Tinker Prize. He earned a MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. He worked as a writing teacher and lecturer in English literature at Yale. During his teaching career, he assisted Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks in the writing of several college textbooks on literature. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Atlantic and Southern Review. In 1982, Milch wrote his first television script for Hill Street Blues. Among other credits, Milch created and wrote the shows NYPD Blue, John from Cincinnati, Luck, and Deadwood.