There may be quite a few of us, actually: not even fans necessarily, just onlookers — fellow humans who worry, intermittently, about the erosion of Ethan Hawke. Because he is too young, at 42, to look as weathered as he’s looked for years now, too young to have that sandpaper-scratched voice.

If you are one of us, and you happen to pick up Michelle Orange’s “This Is Running for Your Life,” your first eager impulse may be to dive in where this collection of 10 essays starts, with “The Uses of Nostalgia and Some Thoughts on Ethan Hawke’s Face.” Finally, at last: someone else thinking about Ethan Hawke’s face! But the piece feels undisciplined, self-indulgent; it gives the impression, ultimately, of being a shaggy-dog tale.