The Wonderstruck essays are unapologetically optimistic and have been predicated on a profound belief that life is not entirely random... and that the intention of the universal and infinite works itself out through the interactions that we have with one another and all the world around us.

Long before I discovered the film Wonderstruck on a day filled with serendipity and synchronicity, my mind and soul had been rehearsed for acceptance of the wondrous because of the consumption of art. I grew up on a steady diet of high-quality films, literature, and music. And as you probably know, if you have lifted this tome to read, art of all kinds is filled with turns of joy, rapture, and chills.

I was further inculcated by formal study of the arts: poetry, literature, and film. I later taught literature, film, and theater at the college level, and also worked as a movie and pop-culture reviewer for twenty years.

So, yes: I have been predisposed to find wondrous things in art and artists themselves. As my writing became more creative and less clinical, I also came to grips with the idea that I, too, am an artist, not merely an appreciative member of the audience.

My approach to writing is now more personal, and the joy, rapture, and chills from the dramatic turns have become more intense. The essays in this collection demonstrate that intensity: documents of divine appointments and magic moments rather than reviews or critiques per se.

And yet I hope that the words I say about these works and their makers lead you to seek some of them out for yourself.

Everything that you read in these pages is 100% true, if much of it wildly improbable. I have lived my questions, as Rilke once recommended to a young poet, and these essays are a record of my progress, gradually, without perhaps even noticing it, toward living into my own answers.