“Once the last bridge is burnt, every addict becomes an island, no matter what John Donne says,” Peter Kaldheim writes in his new memoir, “Idiot Wind.” It was in this state, cut off from the people who had been in his life and owing money to an intimidating drug dealer, that Kaldheim fled New York City in 1987. Inspired by Jack Kerouac, he traveled across the country by bus and in strangers’ cars, writing short sketches about his experiences along the way. In “Idiot Wind,” Kaldheim, now 70, recounts those travels as well as his time as a teenage seminary student and his years as an editor and aspiring writer before he left New York. Below, he talks about the book’s very long gestation, the kindred spirit he sees in the singer Tom Waits and more.

When did you first get the idea to write this book?

Way back in 1987. At the time, I was staying at the Joyce Hotel, a skid row flophouse in Portland, Ore., where I’d landed after fleeing the mess I’d made of my life in Manhattan, thanks to a decade-long addiction to alcohol and cocaine.

By the time I reached Portland, after 18 days on the road, I had quite a fund of stories saved up. I shared some of them with my good friend Gerry Howard, a book editor back in New York. Gerry wrote to say how much he’d enjoyed my road sketches, and he was the first one to suggest that I expand them into a memoir. So that’s where the idea came from, but it would take another 29 years for me to finish it.

The project stayed on the back burner from 1987 to 2002. Then I was working as a chef at Montana State University in Bozeman, and had just gotten divorced after a 13-year marriage. So I had the trailer to myself and plenty of free time. I started writing chapters, but I finally gave it up because I couldn’t find the voice I wanted or the structure that seemed right for the material.