Why a book on John O’Brien? This idea had its genesis when I was talking to John’s mother, Judith O’Brien, after a reading by Erin O’Brien when she released her book The Irish Hungarian Guide to The Domestic Arts at a gallery located in Lakewood, Ohio (John’s hometown). It was a brief conversation with Judith, I told her Leaving Las Vegas is a book that had a tremendous impact on me, and I spent several minutes explaining why. Judith, or as I called her then, the only time I’ve met her up to the time of this writing, Mrs. O’Brien, was so appreciative that I took the time to speak with her about this but I wasn’t quite sure if she thought I was just nice or if she understood the weight, the gravity, the impact that this novel could have in the hands of the right reader. The mental template for this project is Henry Miller’s Time of The Assassin. As far as structures, if I want to talk about homecoming themes, from Hamlet to Pinter’s The Homecoming, there is also the template of Homer’s The Odyssey. If there’s a treatise of one writer discussing another, where a reader…