Dan Barry The books beside my bed, stacked like bricks laid by an addled mason, suggest that I possess either a broad curiosity or an inability to focus. Where were we? Oh yes. The books on my nightstand. Here is a Wallace Stegner, a Colum McCann, a history of the National Lampoon. The Iliad, an Alice McDermott, and a love letter to the old New York Knicks. An Edith Wharton, a (...)