Fil Lewitt was born in Boston in 1941, went to schools in New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, San Francisco, and Pennsylvania, learning some useful stuff, particularly what and whom to avoid, as well as what and whom to approach. He has lived and worked as a gardener, dishwasher, cook, farmer, logger, Zen Buddhist monk, mill worker, store clerk, musician, designer, house builder, and, eventually, university writing and humanities teacher in both the US and Japan. Lewitt would like to help you to learn as little as he knows, not usually a painless process, which is why people read books. They hurt less than life. He now has regrooved/retired to southern Thailand with his young wife from Japan, living under enormous limestone cliffs in lush gardens near a white sand beach, where he writes, swims, and works every day in a wood bungalow home compound he designed over a period of years.