In my bouts of insomnia, I have picked up books about the wee hours, like Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark and Haruki Murakami’s After Hours, to help me through the night. And, one of these nights, I might even venture into the real night myself. Perhaps a cab ride to a cocktail lounge like White Star, which reminds me of Murakami’s Tokyo, on the Lower East Side. This darkly lit bar with just a few hanging star-shaped lamps is intimate and dreamy enough for a late-night drink alone to satiate my sense of adventure after dark.