Hooked on the First Line: Mastering Memoir

[00:00:00] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. I think the hardest thing to write in any kind of book essay article are the first line and the last line.

[00:00:27] Because the first line gets your attention and the writer is competing with TikTok and all social media and now AI and TV and everything. And the last line has to go boom.

[00:00:40] Like what you read was just worth it and here's the last line to really put the imprint in your brain about what you just read. Yeah, I can't think of any satisfaction without a last line that's great. Yeah. I talked about Dennis Johnson's book of short stories.

[00:01:00] It's like for me, the master of the last line. But almost every great book I've read as like you could tell the author put a lot of thought, I mean put a whole book's worth of thought into that last line. Well, you know what?

[00:01:14] Maybe I should have another podcast about last lines. We should definitely do an episode or two about last lines. Did I tell you this right like one time and I feel sorry for her. This was like in 1994. I read a book with such a great last line.

[00:01:29] I described the entire plot summary of the book to my girlfriend at the time just to tell her the last line thinking that she would be as excited about it as me. I feel sorry for her.

[00:01:39] I mostly spent an hour describing this book just so I could tell her the last line and she was like, wow, it's a great last line. But thinking back on it, I'm sure she did not care at all about the last line. Was this the Golden Glove Boxer?

[00:01:54] No, no. This was pre that. This is like my grad school girlfriend. So, well, you're doing good James. You're doing good. You found the right woman. Yeah. You know, I actually have never met your wife. Did you find the right woman? You will. You will.

[00:02:11] We're all going to get together. Yeah. I, you know, there's always these tournaments in Charlotte almost every weekend. It's like this, I would say it's the second best chess club in the US right now. Charlotte? Yeah. Charlotte. Why?

[00:02:26] I think some very good enthusiasts move there and encouraged other like strong grandmasters to kind of be names for the club. And there's like tournaments all week long every day. There's tournament tonight. Come on up. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:44] There was just a really good one actually, a very strong one that a former coach of mine played in and they have one every now and then called Alto. Which means, now I'm forgetting what it means. And it's basically the T.O. means 21.

[00:02:57] So everyone's got to be over 21, which is good because older people don't like playing against kids because the kids are just zooming up the ranks and are obnoxious about it. So Charlotte has an over 21 tournament that's very nice. Wow.

[00:03:12] So over 21 is considered like a golden oldies these days? Yeah. Well, there's also older, there's also older than 50. Once again, I am the Georgia over 50 champion. There's the over 50 tournaments, which are even better for someone like me.

[00:03:28] But then again, I'm trying to get good against the latest generation. That's my goal. So it's not good for me if I only beat people over 50 years old. I won't have achieved my goal then. No, you got to pull this off.

[00:03:40] We're going to take this as far as we can. Yeah. You know what's funny? Again, you were recommending to me the movie Big George Foreman and it was a great movie. I did not know George Foreman's story.

[00:03:52] You know, the most we know about George Foreman is really from the movie about when he and Muhammad Ali fought in Africa. And that was very much in favor of Muhammad Ali. He was incorrectly so he was a big underdog. He's a big personality.

[00:04:05] He's a larger than life personality. The way he got Africa essentially the whole continent chanting for him to win was pretty remarkable, but it was nice to see George Foreman's side of that. And I'm glad they made that movie. Yeah.

[00:04:22] And few people realized unless you're looking closely at the details, Foreman's fight with Ali is like a landmark at the center of his career. He seemed unbeatable at the time. I think he was something like 38-0 with 36 knockouts, something like that. 40 and 0. He was 48-0 with 38 knockouts.

[00:04:50] And then he falls victim to the rope of dope and can never seem to recover because it did something to him psychologically. And he was the quintessential bully in the ring who just imposed his will and he could hit so hard.

[00:05:13] They just took people out in a round or two. And when he couldn't take Ali out, Ali got to his mind, was talking to him. You got it? How could Ali handle all those punches? George Foreman was huge.

[00:05:28] And you see his punch was like, I mean he knocked the punching bag off the thing that was holding it up. Like how did Ali, who was smaller, handle just those massive punches? Well there was an interesting line in the movie where they were preparing for the

[00:05:45] fight and I think it was George who asked about Ali, who's like a handsome guy. And somebody said, ah, those pretty boys can't take a punch. And that was the thing that few people knew about Ali because his float like a butterfly

[00:06:02] stings like a bee and he was moving around the ring very hard to catch so people didn't perceive that he could take a punch. But in that fight he obviously knew what he was going to do and he had seen tape.

[00:06:20] Early in George's career there were a couple of fights where he had to go to the distance like 10 rounds and George was gassed at the end. And so he obviously had a plan that if I can make this guy punch himself out early

[00:06:38] I'll be able to take control toward the end of the fight, which is what he did. Very risky strategy though. Like he basically put his arms in front of his body and he probably moved fast enough

[00:06:49] that he could absorb a lot of the blow plus being on the ropes allows you to relax a little bit like you're not worried about falling if you're on the ropes. Well people at ringside were wincing.

[00:07:02] I remember watching the fight on closed circuit TV in St. Louis, Missouri people were like crying out of fear that because he wasn't moving it was like dance, dance, move. And it was just we couldn't really see that he was had his hands in front of his face

[00:07:24] and just a little opening for him to say that all you got George that what you got. And you know Forman's just wailing away hitting his arms, his side, his belly if

[00:07:34] he could get in there and Ali just took it took it took it and then on the third or the fourth round all of a sudden the punch would come straight from Ali and hit George in the face.

[00:07:47] And you think like wow what's going on because George is throwing these wild circular shots but Ali's was straight to the point. And then in the eighth round connected knock Forman down Forman was exhausted couldn't get up fight ends and he is just not the same.

[00:08:14] And the interesting thing about the movie to me was how it showed how he changed his character. He instead of being this demon that had all the people channelling against him. He went on to own that George Forman grill and be seen with a big

[00:08:42] smile on his face. You know Ali was the funny one early on but George learned to take a little of that with him and that's what enabled him to have to come back at a very late age.

[00:08:56] You know and it's interesting like there's categories like sports and also I don't know how to describe these industries but like math where the peak age of a mathematician and this peak age of someone you know an athlete is probably around mid 20s like 25.

[00:09:14] So like the peak age of someone playing major league baseball is probably around 25 peak age of a boxer is probably around 25 give or take. Mathematician peak age where you do your biggest work is around 25 and then the

[00:09:29] peak age for a writer though is and like the peak age for a historian is in their sixties because you know yes you could write a flashy sharp you know eccentric experimental novel in your 20s that uses all the you know flourish and new

[00:09:48] techniques and so on out of the sharpness of your brain when you're 25 but what really makes like a deeper novel is when you're older and you have a lot of experience and you're able to integrate things you've read from other books

[00:10:01] and ideas and and really make a work of art. And the same thing for a historian you've read some and absorb so much history you're able to see oh the development of the air conditioner is what created urbanization in the south.

[00:10:14] So now you're going to include that in a history that no one else has ever included before and you know it's interesting like I wonder for an athlete how do you like George Foreman it was very hard for him to go past that

[00:10:30] peak age and realize that oh this he's going to start losing now. Yeah interestingly what he had to do is go on a comeback trail after he gained more than 100 pounds and he'd been he lost all of his money through no fault

[00:10:53] of his own it was basically according to the movie ripped off by kind of a shady business manager. I'm going to I'm going to question that a little bit having had experience with this because everybody in my house while we're watching the movie was

[00:11:09] like oh you know you shouldn't have gone with that guy and I agree his business manager lost all his money but I think what happened was he was simply a bad business manager. He wasn't like he didn't steal the money there's no evidence that he

[00:11:22] stole the money and this was during a time 1973 where the U.S. economy was in a recession the stock market crashed like 30 percent. So I think he just made the best that were too big.

[00:11:33] He had never been in an environment like that and admittedly he was a bad business manager that George Foreman shouldn't have picked. The guy was an alcoholic when George Foreman met him but you know I think it's hard to judge.

[00:11:47] Yeah I don't want to seem like I'm judging and I never met the guy I didn't and you know also license is taken in a movie. Yeah so I don't know if George actually strangled him when he found out

[00:12:04] and he caught up with him and then he was torn because by that point George had found God and Jesus wouldn't want him to be strangling the guy. Yeah so you just see his movement from this force of nature that

[00:12:28] just had this tormented background to somebody who needed to learn how to smile how to be kind and that's when he loses all his money and has to go back to boxing after the age of 40.

[00:12:52] Yeah you try and make money and win back the title and it's kind of like what you're doing in a sense where you're going back to something where everyone will just look and say you're too old what are you doing like everything's changed your body won't

[00:13:11] allow this you're going to get beat up. And because he was able to change his attitude he was able and because he carefully crafted his comeback where he slowly moved from opponents who weren't very good on up the ladder he

[00:13:34] put himself in a position where he could win the title and even though he was getting beat up in that title bout he was like wise enough and old enough to use the power that was God granted from the very beginning and land one shot on the

[00:13:57] job Michael Moore and down more went and the title was his again and it's a beautiful moment and I hope you have a similar moment on your journey into chess. I hope so too and you know and look this is related to writing

[00:14:15] because I think a lot of people are considered them already considered themselves writers it's so easy to write now like the invention of the word processor in the 70s made it easier to write and then the Internet of course all information

[00:14:29] is our fingertips it's possible to publish if not books articles blogs all these things and now it's easy to self publish a book on on Amazon so suddenly everyone's a writer but just like with boxing boxing is not about fighting it's about this

[00:14:46] this more carefully crafted martial art like we see this in the beginning of that movie for instance a good street fighter like George Foreman could not handle a mediocre boxer when he first began so and it's the same thing with writing

[00:15:00] there is a beauty to the craft and that's why we're doing this podcast like on first lines like to show our appreciation for great first lines from great writers but but to understand them so that maybe other people could begin their journey to

[00:15:14] be a great writer even if you understand a little bit about the craft of a first line you're going to be a thousand times better writer than your competition I was going to ask you about this cow like do you think writing is a competitive

[00:15:44] space I think it's highly competitive to a lot of people and then other people are simply competing with themselves give me an example someone competing with themselves me okay I just I I don't read something and think

[00:16:08] oh my god I why didn't I write something better or oh I wish I wish I could have had that title I just feel like when I'm writing something especially that I deemed important like around 911 I did two stories that one you could pick up 500

[00:16:35] years from now in the words of a guy who had one of the towers fall on his head his name is Michael Wright you can pick it up a thousand years from now and know what that experience was like the time that he walked into a bathroom to

[00:16:59] get started on his day till the end of the day when like you just don't know how he's going to get through all the craziness because the building literally falls on top of his head and he's thinking that he's going to be like one of

[00:17:16] those people in Pompeii after the volcano just erupted over over the city I do I got that right as a Pompeii I'm thinking yeah Pompeii yeah and he's basically thinking that he's trapped underneath this rubble that he's just going to be

[00:17:38] laying there knowing that nobody's ever going to discover him and this is the way he's going to die and he actually lived to tell the story and there are so many stages to it and there's another story I did about being the Somalia at

[00:17:57] the top of the World Trade Center and that took me 10 years to write because I was so traumatized by the experience I was the Somalia right before the planes came into the tower and it was just too close to write at the time so I

[00:18:18] needed the space to do it and you can read it now and feel it and if I go back maybe on a different episode I'll pull it up and we can look at the first line and the last

[00:18:34] line but yeah you'll you'll see it's it has I can be very pleased with yes that was the first sentence that I wanted and that was the last sentence that I wanted and it's interesting because I I don't I picked out a few books to go

[00:18:57] over with you and like one maybe people will never have heard of it's a book called West with the night and it's written I don't know it. Beryl Markham you remember that? No. Okay so on the back this is from a letter to Maxwell Perkins

[00:19:19] this is Ernest Hemingway speaking and Hemingway asks his editor did you read Beryl Markham's book West with the night I knew her fairly well in Africa never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except

[00:19:35] to write in her flyers log book as it is she has written so well and marvelously well that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer so obviously Hemingway was a competitive guy. He was very competitive like you could tell in a movable

[00:19:55] feast which is memoir written in the fifties about his time in the twenties he was very competitive with Fitzgerald and there's another writer the one he refers to as Robert Kahn in The Sun Also Rises. John Dos Pasos is that I don't think that's based on John

[00:20:12] Dos Pasos because he was he was friend he was legitimately friends with John Dos Pasos and I don't think he viewed him as a threat but he reviewed F Scott he viewed F Scott Fitzgerald as a threat.

[00:20:23] Yeah as you can see and I don't know why you're also if you look at the back of this book there's a photo of a plane that has gone into a nosedive and smashed its nose right into the ground.

[00:20:38] So you know this Hemingway had a marvel at this woman because she was flying around Africa in like in the thirties maybe even in the in the yeah I think it was the thirties could have been the late twenties and like delivering the mail and transporting people around

[00:21:02] like it must have been amazing for people to see this woman at the time and for her to come at the experience and I'll read you the opening line in a second was just a simple question. And in a way that's just so simple and easy and inviting

[00:21:29] that it left Hemingway saying I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an OK pigpen but she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers and

[00:21:52] that's interesting that Hemingway said that I mean a he must have really appreciated her writing and at the same time perhaps because she was a woman and he was a notable sexist he probably didn't view her as a threat.

[00:22:05] Yeah and the fact that she was flying around Africa and nose diving into the ground alone it must it must she must have really gotten his respect on every level. But the book is that good and it basically disappeared for like 40 years and was sort of resurrected in

[00:22:30] the late 70s. And I'll read you the opening line. This is a very simple question. How is it possible to bring order out of memory? Yeah that's so interesting because A it's relatable in that we all have memories and but sometimes when we're

[00:22:54] trying to organize those memories to tell a story or to tell what happened it's A our memories might be wrong and we A B we might forget C. How do we organize it so that we tell an interesting story and you know like like 9-11 being

[00:23:13] a good example. Where do you start? Do you start with the Samoyed? You know doing something in the restaurant. Do you start with you know the events of the day? I mean it's hard to take a very complicated situation or an adventure and turn it into a story.

[00:23:34] Yeah that's why a person who is not a first sentence is so important because it serves as a navigational tool. And also there's an interesting point there when she says how is it possible to bring order out of memory? Like I think the assumption always is that it's

[00:23:54] easy to bring order out of memory and yet when we really think about it you know so many times like something that happened to you Cal I just had this discussion with someone today oh remember that time we had this discussion with my wife

[00:24:08] I'll say that remember that time we you know argued heatedly about this one thing and she said no I don't remember that never happened. So it's possible for people to have completely different memories like I remember clear as day

[00:24:23] but she doesn't and it reminds me of that book Being Wrong by Catherine Schultz. You know that book? I've heard of it I've not read it. Well in her TED talk she says something very interesting and I'll ask you this question.

[00:24:36] What does it feel like to be wrong? And I'm asking you this. Probably at first you go through stages probably at at first maybe a little disbelief. OK just stop right there. That her response to that to your answer would be that's what it feels like when you

[00:24:58] realize you were wrong but actually what it feels like when you're wrong is the exact feeling that you feel when you're right because you don't know yet that you're wrong and you first say something and you're wrong you think you're right and so you don't think you're

[00:25:16] wrong so it feels the exact same way as it feels when you're right. And her point is is that people even when they're wrong they're very much convinced that they're right and this was the genesis of her book is that she would bring up

[00:25:30] experiences with people she knew and sometimes they would be completely different like one woman had said to her oh I'm always sad about my dad's funeral I remember it was snowing that day and blah blah blah and Catherine reminded her it was July that

[00:25:44] your dad's funeral it couldn't have been snowing and the girl was like are you sure I can remember the snow. And so people memory is a tricky thing and so this woman addresses that you know barrel mark on the author of West

[00:25:58] with the night the book you're bringing up addresses that immediately how is it possible to bring order out of memory and since we started speaking I ordered this book on Kindle so now I'm looking at it and she continues I should like to

[00:26:10] begin at the beginning patiently like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say this is the place to start there can be no other but there are 100 places to start and that's true for every story and so what she's doing here she's addressing

[00:26:26] right up top many things one is that this is a very comp not a complicated story but that there's lots of things that happened there's are lots of adventures we could go through and I can enter this adventure in many ways like

[00:26:42] she says there are 100 places to start for their 100 names Moana Serengeti Nungui Molo Nukura there are easily 100 names and I could begin best by choosing one of them not because it is first nor of any importance in a wildly adventurous sense but because

[00:26:56] here it happens to be turned uppermost in my logbook so she's being humble about it that you know I really don't know where to start I'm going to have to start some place any places as good as any other and then we'll begin this while the adventurous story

[00:27:13] so she's explaining the her craftsmanship and at the same time setting up the reader to realize hey you're in for a wild ride because there's lots of names notice she brings up all the names not saying oh my gosh I have so many great things

[00:27:30] to tell you about all these names she's addressing it in a different way like I don't know where to start because there's all these names and so that's our way of getting into her world a little bit yeah and well you can imagine walking

[00:27:42] into a bar if you've heard oh James you got to meet this this woman this is a fantastic storyteller you're going in with a passion and you can't wait to hear all these stories and that's kind of what she's doing there even though you don't know

[00:28:04] what one's a serengeti nonguei molo nakuro mean you know there's stories behind all of them and you realize that there are almost two hundred and ninety pages of these stories coming and it just makes you feel a good time is on the way

[00:28:31] and it's interesting like the way you just described like a similar setting like hey come in here there's a great storyteller I want you to meet or a great story you have to hear she doesn't say that like she is being very humble

[00:28:45] rather than saying oh my gosh these great things happen to me in ones of serengeti nonguei molo nakuro she's saying I could there's a hundred names here I could begin with any one of them she's being very humble about it later on in that paragraph

[00:28:58] she says after all I am no weaver weavers create this is a remembrance revisitation and names are keys that open corridors no longer fresh in the mind but nonetheless familiar in the heart so like if you ask me if you say to me nine

[00:29:13] eleven okay it brings up a lot of memories for everybody it brings up a lot of memories but if you were actually to tell the story your story on nine eleven there's many places I could start like for me myself I was in the world

[00:29:27] trades her in the basement or not in the base but on the first floor at the dean and deluca I had breakfast there I was I was leaving the world trades and when the plane was coming across or I could describe what my family was doing

[00:29:40] that or I could describe the exact moment when the plane passed over ahead there's you know but nine eleven is that key that opens up those memories and from there I've got to figure out where the story is how to navigate this as a

[00:29:54] story and then I want to just add she this is fascinating she plays with format so a lot of times she she's doing several things in this first page one is she's speaking in a meta level she's not writing the story yet she's writing about

[00:30:09] how she's trying to organize the memory so so all we're knowing so far is this is the story of her writing this story like how is it possible being ordered out of memory she doesn't say I was on my way to Nungway and this happened

[00:30:23] and then she plays with format again and this reminds me of Charles Bukowski's post office in a little way which we'll get to some other time but instead of just saying I'm on my way to Nengue she talks about basically it's almost like she

[00:30:39] switches to a screenplay format which starts off in this very formal almost bureaucratic way like date 13 you know 16 635 type aircraft Avro avion markings VP con journey Nairobi to Nungway time three hours 40 minutes after that comes pilot self and remarks of which there were none but there

[00:31:04] might have been and so now we're starting to get into a little bit the story and so it's very important I think this is when we saw this in the last episode it's we went from third person to first person plural which is an odd person

[00:31:26] and I forget what book we were talking about to be honest but she's doing the same thing here she's going from this meta first person hi there I'm telling a story to this very very extremely distant third person which is simply we don't even know who the person

[00:31:43] is she's describing almost like it's a form what the trip was and the type of aircraft and the date in this very formal way and then suddenly we get back to remarks of which there were none and the of what she doesn't

[00:31:59] say none she say of which there were none and then finally boom but there might have been and now we know we're in for the ride and get this you turn the page and here is a sentence kind of worthy of a

[00:32:15] first sentence she says none way may be dead and forgotten now it was barely alive when I went there in nineteen thirty nineteen thirty five and so you're wondering what happened there what if this place may be impossible to retrieve and unless I

[00:32:45] read this like I'll never get there and and she's saying unless I write this it might not be a memory for anybody anymore that's so so when she starts off how is it possible to bring order out of memory she might be talking about her memories

[00:33:04] but she's also implying that none way itself might just be a memory and in fact none way is I didn't I didn't know what none way was none way doesn't exist anymore so how do you bring order out of a place that is basically she even says

[00:33:20] maybe dead and forgotten and it was barely alive and then she starts off with almost like a history lesson the way James Missioner like when he writes his book Alaska he writes about what it was like in the dinosaur ages and then how he

[00:33:35] goes all the way back and she's saying none way essentially you know she describes geographically where it was again this very odd formality for a story and then and then she contrast that with you know it was a weary and discouraged prospector

[00:33:51] one day saw a speck of gold clinging to the mud on the heel of his boot and that story that prospector is what separates none way from Nairobi because none way became a place because it became a place where people searched for gold I'm assuming and so

[00:34:06] we start with this history rather than her story we only know about her is that she went there in 1935 we don't know why yet but we know we know more about this prospector started a country because he probably started a gold rush there

[00:34:23] you just got to keep reading yeah because now we're seeing layers we're seeing the trip is it her memory is the memory of Nungwe is the fact that there's a gold rush part of her story by the way she then say his name

[00:34:38] eludes the memory but he was not a secretive man so again now her memory and by the way this is a very important thing about writing like you know like I'm writing about for instance this journey I'm on of trying to get better at something as

[00:34:54] an adult something I loved as a child trying to make a comeback at something and I've had amazing adventures along the way but so people are asking me are you journaling this so that you could so that you have stuff you so you remember everything

[00:35:05] so you have stuff to write about and I specifically don't journal because if I don't remember it is probably not worth writing about you know what that is I can remember you remember I don't know if you remember the writer Harry Cruz yeah yeah Harry

[00:35:21] Cruz gosh oh what did he I remember to be honest I remember starting something he wrote but I don't think I ever finished it and this was back in the 90s I remember specifically starting these two snakes I got I got

[00:35:33] one of his books he actually has an interesting first line in his autobiography it's called a childhood the biography of a place and let's see what that first line was so here's his first sentence in a childhood the biography of a

[00:36:08] place my first memory is of a time 10 years before I was born and the memory takes place where I have never been and involves my daddy whom I never knew yeah again you gotta go unreliability of memory is such a beautiful thing because do we then

[00:36:32] read him if do you read it on why do you read an unreliable narrator because they're admitting that they're unreliable right and I guess we relate to unreliability that's why I don't journal because if all your memory is perfect then you're not really writing

[00:36:50] in the first person you're sort of writing in the third person and that third person still is I but almost seems first person but it's not really I because you're just you're rewriting something a different you wrote in a journal well let me tell you why Harry

[00:37:08] Cruz never kept a journal after I read a couple of his books I became fascinated with him and said man I gotta go I gotta go meet this guy and he he was a professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville I don't know

[00:37:32] that he was very professorial I think it was more like a bunch of students went over to his house and they might have read their manuscripts or maybe he read I was never in on any of the classes but I immediately drove down

[00:37:51] to see him after being warned that if you're going to meet him be prepared for a lot of drinking and a lot of drugs and in fact one guy was telling me about an experience he had where things kind of got out of hand and the

[00:38:14] line I remember was in this alcoholic drug phantasmic gory lossness he remembered Harry saying to him we must listen to the dark voices of the blood and so I had a little trepidation when I drove down to see Harry I didn't

[00:38:40] know where this was going and I drove straight to his house I don't even know how I got his address I might have gone over to the school and they told me this is back in early 80s and so I

[00:38:56] show up at his front door and I could see that he is like in kind of a lazy boy chair with like pretty much an empty liquor bottle on his belly and I I'm knocking and he's just like far gone

[00:39:16] he's asleep and so finally I just go in and that like as I get close I don't know if I said anything or he just his eyes open and he just like asked me what I was doing and I said you know I

[00:39:31] I just drove a thousand miles to meet you and he said boy and he just reached into his pocket I think he pulled out a $50 bill and said something like go down to the Gator Gulch and like just tell him Harry sent you and I did and

[00:39:51] they just sent me back with a carton full of alcohol and we just started to drink and the more we drank the more my senses started to head off and the more he drank the more focused he seemed to be getting at which point he started

[00:40:15] pulling out all these pills and and and I said to him Harry I think it was I was getting to the point where I realized this is going to a place like that I may never remember and I said to him how how do you write like

[00:40:37] drinking and doing all these drugs how can you remember anything and I love the line he came back with he said boy he told me he didn't keep a diary just like you and then he said when I asked why he said boy the good

[00:41:05] shit sticks yeah it's really true and by the way I'll go ahead so there you go well it's interesting because the very next section after the first section in this book the childhood the biography of a place which I love that title to the biography of a place

[00:41:24] because usually you say biography about a human and history about a place so I like how he says the biography of a place but anyway the very next section and this relates to barrel markham's first line in the book we started with the very next section in Harry

[00:41:40] Cruz book is so he tells a little story by the way in that first section after the first line there and then he says did what I have did what I have set down here as memory actually happened did the two

[00:41:53] men say what I have recorded to think what I have said they thought I do not know nor do I any longer care and so what's it what he's teaching us how to read his book is that this sequence of events are not didn't necessarily

[00:42:10] happen he's admitted he's an unreliable narrator but this is what he believes the events are the events are going to form a good story that we're going to read and whether they are true or not they're important enough to him that they're going to be important

[00:42:27] to us like and that's how to read him is that we're reading a list of we're basically going to read a story that he thinks defines his life and that's why it's important not whether it happened or not but because this of these memories whether true or not

[00:42:43] define his entire life and are probably as close as possible to real truth as he can get and so I think I think this idea of teaching one how to read you like barrel mark I'm sort of doing that in her book by saying she's

[00:42:59] trying very hard to organize these memories and we just have to deal with it because she's going to tell them the best way possible she's teaching us how to read her and in both in both cases you have to go along you're immediately

[00:43:17] smitten and both of them are taking you to places that you have no idea of and why are we smitten like why is it important for them to tell us for instance why is it important for harry cruise to say this memory might

[00:43:36] not have happened and why is it important for barrel mark him to say to make her observations that it's hard to organize memory why don't they just tell the story I think it's what make them make some great writers now I you know what I'm

[00:43:53] going to just introduce another book here and and and and it's a book about place different very different from a child but by harry cruise is called the time of gifts by patrick lee firmer and this guy right around the time that barrel mark him was flying

[00:44:14] around her airplane in africa around kenya and what was then tang tanganyika and uh sudan this guy patrick lee firmer he got basically thrown out of school when he was 18 in england and he decides to walk from the hook of holland to constantanople 1933 wow 1933 so you're

[00:44:46] basically walking through you from from the allies to the axes right before world war two and that and it is what happens is in another case the world is never going to be the same when when he gets done with this trip and it takes

[00:45:03] three books to record it all uh the second was between the woods and the water and that's uh when he goes from hungry to romania and the third is the broken road when he goes from romania to constantanople but he is literally much like barrel mark him traveling

[00:45:27] through a place that will never be the same again because world war two is going to remake it and world is going to be different and he basically starts this book and this is very light in english a splendid afternoon to set out

[00:45:53] said one of the friends who was seeing me off peering at the rain and rolling up the window it's just i mean it couldn't be more simple but you know he's going off and you know it's raining right and by the

[00:46:13] way so so so a there's so many things in that line too a this is a friend who is basically lying to him splendid today to go off whether he's lying or just being nice we don't know but we know it's not a splendid day because he's

[00:46:29] rolling up his window and it's raining and then also this reminds me of a you know a big anyway technique you know the you know it was it was great weather but the fog is close you know that it's foreshadowing that bad things are about

[00:46:42] to happen and so his first line is kind of foreshadowing what he's not directly saying which is that bad things are going to happen and the beauty is he he's going to get through the rain with that same cheer uh there are i remember reading this book

[00:47:02] while i was traveling through hungary in the 80s before the Berlin wall came down and you know what i could say the same for myself because i mean i don't think hungary is the same place as it as it was back then for somebody from the

[00:47:21] united states to be moving through it i was like invited wherever i went and people so were very curious to practice their english and there was look this soviet union basically had dominance over this area and just to the south romania was run by the dictator chowchesku

[00:47:53] and there man people were actually scared to talk to me really because because they thought they either get in trouble yeah they it would they thought it might be a death sentence or prison certainly so it's interesting like you know one other thing i like about the the

[00:48:14] unreliable narrator and but and that last writer you talk about what was his name again can you tell me short patrick lee l e i g h firmer f e r m o r so so he is not necessarily unreliable but the fact that we now the the

[00:48:36] universe of the book has both put in our minds that it's a splendid day and then it's raining so the book itself we understand now is going to be contradictions and it with the maril barkham book and the harry cruz book we're dealing specifically with this you

[00:48:55] know with harry cruz's memory may or may not be true but it doesn't matter to me and with maril barkham we're realizing she's trying to figure out side by side with us how to organize a memory so we're kind of going on this journey with her

[00:49:11] together in a perhaps unreliable way but what i like about these things as a first sentence is that it requires us the reader right in the beginning to surrender ourselves that things are going to happen and part of this is they might be surreal

[00:49:30] so that we don't really know if they're happening or not or they might seem almost magical and or out of order in some way and but we're we're we're going to go on this journey with this author and we're surrendering whether she's reliable or unreliable we're

[00:49:45] surrendering to her direction on how to read this and that's very different from let's say a james paterson book you know about you know the latest thriller he writes and i'm not criticizing him i love james paterson books but if there's a fact wrong in a

[00:50:01] james paterson book that will be disruptive to our experience whereas something is wrong in one of these books it's not disruptive it's sort of part of the story that there's going to be a tinge of unreliability to it and that's a technique which i think

[00:50:16] which is a great technique yeah and not only that but from the time that you look at the cover to this book okay so we just read the first sentence i'm going to put up this cover it's a time of gifts and you see like

[00:50:33] a long road leading to a brilliant sun and the title is a time of gifts and so it seems a very happy time it looks very happy and you want to get on that road to get to the sun and then you read the first sentence

[00:50:53] and you're realizing well the sun may be there but there's gonna be there's gonna be some rain in between and all through the book is just filled with both and the kindness of strangers that push the journey on and that literally push the reader on because you

[00:51:24] it's it's not like the other books it's more like a travel book that is showing a world that is no longer here and in fact none of these worlds are here anymore right it's it's interesting that's like the very first book Merrill Barcombe

[00:51:44] she's not only organizing a memory about her story but organizing a memory or how she perceives a time that no longer exists same as this guy Patrick Lee Firmar you know and i want to just close with one one more thing like let's say someone's reading this

[00:52:00] and says well that's all good and fine for fiction and it sounds very you know sophisticated kind of fiction but i write books about business self-help books about leadership what does this apply to me well here i'll just make up you know probably a bad first line

[00:52:17] but if you're if i was to write like a book about leadership and business maybe i would start off something like you know every employee i've ever had will not agree with anything i write in this book and so now it's like well who's right are the

[00:52:34] employees right or am i right and and and why am i telling you this why don't they agree with me or i might even go even once up further like my memory of leadership might be completely different than how every employee i've ever had remembers it

[00:52:47] and so i'm directly addressing again the nature of memory in an individual's story that we all have our own perspective and yet i feel my perspective is worthy enough to read that someone might learn about leadership or at least have a different opinion about leadership

[00:53:02] and that's how it started business self-help book and my point is is that all writing requires craftsmanship whether you're writing a business book a history book a novel a thriller and i i think a lot of people are not aware of that and it's worthwhile

[00:53:21] being at least aware of that you don't have to be the greatest craftsman to write a book but just be aware that they're a skill to writing a book and they're storytelling in there and whether it's non-fiction or fiction and and respect that i'm begging you just because

[00:53:35] as the reader of these books i want you to be a better writer the the the listener i want you to be a great writer and and that's why we're doing this this podcast series but cal thank you once again for i'm i just ordered

[00:53:50] that maryl barkham book and the harry cruz book and the patrick lee firmer book so i'm looking forward to reading them well when you just get to that back cover and you read what hemmingway has to say about bro margham your you and anybody else listening

[00:54:09] is going to know that this should be on everybody's bookshelf and i would say the same about the other two books we we mentioned but you want to know something if we have another conversation on the topic i'm going to go and look at business books so

[00:54:30] i can address some of the points you were making at at the end of the conversation because i grew up reading fiction and i realized i i've come to business books later in life so i'm going to study those lines in fact when for the most part

[00:54:51] when i've read a business book i haven't expected much out of that first line right and so but look i'm now very curious to see how many people how many of the writers step up to it yeah you know it's an interesting experience doing that

[00:55:08] i've read a lot of business books because of the podcast and because of my own experiences as a business person and when i write when i wrote about business i would often try to do use a literary style and by literary i don't mean litter

[00:55:23] you know fancy literature i just mean in a writing style i always try to do that with my business related articles or books and i think that's why they often stood out and people would say like i used to write for tech crunch

[00:55:38] and often the first comment of any article i would write for tech crunch is what the hell did i just read and and then people would literally argue about my style in the comments instead of arguing about apple's earnings in the comments they would argue about like

[00:55:54] is this style appropriate for like a business or entrepreneurship blog and and i think when people discuss something like that that means it was worth it and and that's the point you know and i'll okay i'll really close this with a quote by urnist hemingway

[00:56:12] so he said this to an aspiring writer you shouldn't write if you can't write and he's not saying everybody should write like him he's just saying respect the craft and i think by doing this series it allows me and i know you cal to

[00:56:29] express our love for the craft but also maybe explain a little about the craft assuming we know anything which is a big assumption but i hope that this people enjoy this as much as i hope people enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoy doing it

[00:56:44] i certainly hope so i can't wait for the next one i will come back full of business book savvy excellent thank you