Plausible deniability is a concept that shows up now and again in Adjustments. It might be true that the main character lives his whole life in a carefully orchestrated plausible deniability scheme.

The Keats volume Will carts around is a great little metaphor for that dynamic: the cover is bound upside down, so a guy who maybe doesn’t want to be seen as reading poetry can go ahead and read while looking like someone making light of a thing.

A little secret: the upside-down Keats volume is mine. I picked it up at a used book sale at a monastery I used to visit once upon a time, when the brothers were cleaning house. That’s a thing about writing fiction. You can start anywhere, even the tattered book on your desk, and give it a while life of its own.

I’ll have you know, Mr. Phillips, that when I was a girl, I only read Emily Dickinson on that roof. It’s no place for John Keats.