Aaron Tracy

In other words, he's writing this muscular, macho prose focused on action.

His stories at this time are also filled with the pretty explicit sexual adventures of his heroes.

If you've never read these stories and only know Dahl from his kids' books, you will be shocked.

Start with My Uncle Oswald.

It is raunchy.

But here's what I'm getting at.

It takes Dahl going on the insane journey with his family that you're about to hear for him to figure out who his natural audience is and what kind of writer he is.

In 1960, Dahl and Neil welcome their third child, Theo, their only son.

With two daughters already at home, Olivia and Tessa, Dahl is thrilled to finally have a boy.

According to writer Nadia Cohen, Dahl writes pretty graphically about his excitement over the baby's boy parts that I'm not going to subject you to here.

I'll just say he compares it to an exotic flower glowing with promise and leave it at that.

Dahl immediately feels a special kinship with Theo, the only boy in a family of sisters, just like Dahl had been.

Six weeks after Theo's birth, the family moves to New York for the winter.

Dahl explains what happens next to Barry Farrell, a journalist who I'll come back to a bunch, because he practically moves in with the family during this period.

Farrell writes an entire book about what he witnesses.

I think Farrell was originally just hoping to write a cozy Sunday profile, but ended up becoming embedded with the Dahls like a war correspondent in a combat zone.

So, the family is living in New York.

Dahl is struggling to write his short stories, while his wife, Pat Neal, is on a break from shooting Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Dahl tells Farrell what happens next.

Tessa, three years old, is left standing alone on the sidewalk as Susan rushes into the street.