Happiest Man in the World, The

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Poppa Neutrino has been a vagabond his whole life. He has improvised an existence far outside the boundaries of what most of us consider to be normality. He has been a successful street musician, a San Francisco beatnik, a raft man in the tradition of Thor Heyerdahl, and a football enthusiast who believes he has invented a foolproof offensive play. He may be right - we have to wait and see. Alec Wilkinson has spent the last few years of his life following the erratic trail and exploits of Poppa Neutrino and his band of followers (including three wives), partly because the story is so strange and partly because Wilkinson knew that in some ways we can all identify with this odd man out. The narrative builds towards the climactic plan for Poppa Neutrino's second major ocean voyage ina raft of his own manufacture, this time across the Pacific.

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Alec Wilkinson has been a writer at The New Yorker since 1980. Before that he was a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and before that he was a rock and roll musician. He lives with his wife and son in New York City.