Chapter Ten

Inventing a New life

At age 40, Robert Ludlum reinvented himself as an author of best-selling mystery novels

          Today’s corporate world is forcing hundreds of thousands of people to change, whether they want to or not. The lifetime job with a retirement party at the Yorkshire Pub, a gold watch, and a few gag gifts are now more part of folklore than reality. Depending on which statistic or tabloid you read, the average worker may hold six to ten jobs during a lifetime and is often forced to make drastic changes in his or her skills and lifestyle.

            Sometimes life itself and age force people to make changes – personal illness, the death of a loved one, retirement. We’re all reading from the same book.

            Making a change often involves taking a risk. And sometimes those risks are very real if you try to change your life for the wrong reasons or without considering what you are doing to yourself or to others who love you.

            An extreme example appeared recently in Ask Amy, Amy Dickinson’s newspaper advice column.

            A woman wrote to ask for help in dealing with a good friend – a woman who has just run away from a 20-year marriage as a result of a new e-mail romance she had started with a high school acquaintance. This acquaintance lived across the country and when the woman seeking a new life tried to set up dates with him, he at first accepted and then backed out of them.

Rather than get the “message” clearly telegraphed by this man, she then made reservations to fly out to see him. He told her bluntly that she would have to stay in a hotel, she could not meet his teenage children, and further more, he would not get involved with a woman who had just separated from her husband.

Incredibly this information made her like him more because he is “such an old-fashioned guy.”  She then started divorce proceedings, started on a diet, and had plastic surgery.  And she has scheduled her trip out to see her reluctant suitor.

Doesn’t that remind you of the song refrain, Looking for love in all the wrong places? She is trying to reinvent her life for all the wrong reasons in all the wrong ways.

However, there really are very good reasons why people should – or sometimes  - must reinvent their lives.  Often it may involve reasons beyond their control.  Some must take steps to remove themselves from intolerable situations, such as spousal abuse or situations involving child abuse.

            Alan Kay’s ideas are considered by many to be the forerunner of the laptop computer and the Microsoft operating system. He summed up his philosophy very simply.

            “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

            Three people come quickly to mind when I think about those people who successfully Reinvented their lives for all the right reasons, in all the right ways  – Robert Ludlum, James Michener and Frances Mayes. All became best selling authors who completely wrote new chapters for themselves.

            The late Robert Ludlum built a new career for himself as a best selling author by observing people at all stages of their lives and then turning them into heroes or villains in novels such as the The Osterman Weekend, The Bourne Identity and The Parsifal Mosaic.

            To gather these impressions and constantly meet new people, he and his wife Marian traveled all over the world.  He talked of a man he had known in New York some years before, “a very well known man, a very successful man.”

            Then he told me this story.

            “I was down in St. Thomas one day, taking out a boat. Suddenly I saw this man who looked familiar. ‘John?’ I shouted at him.

            “After a long pause, he said something strange. ‘I used to be.’        “Then I began to remember things about John. He wanted to get away from the rat race. I began to remember facts about him. He had a very successful career in advertising in New York, making $100,000 a year. That was really big money in those days and still is today. And he literally threw it all away. He had done a little sailing in Connecticut but was still an amateur. His new dream – he wanted to run a charter boat in the Caribbean.

            “So he decided to start at the beginning. He went to a Patrol School the Coast Guard runs in St. Thomas. He learned an entirely new profession. While at school, he became a disc jockey, making a $100 a week. And he lived in a little shack called Joe’s Place that he rented for $20 a month. When he finished his course, he bought a boat, mortgaged just like a house. Now he’s considered one of the most effective people on the island.  A complete life change.

            “I found several people who had changed their lives by escaping to the islands. Later I used that fact in The Bourne Identity. When one of my characters wanted to get away, he joined the charter people in the Caribbean.

            “I am always interested in people who have decided to leave one lifestyle for another.  I think it can be adolescent unless you really think it through. We all have that vivid dream sometime, to become someone else or do something else. I have found more people who’ve done that than we ever thought. It can be a fascinating thing as long as people are not hurt in the process. Unfortunately often people are hurt.”

            We talked about ways people can change their lives gradually and safely, using changes in his own life as examples.

“When I got out of college in 1951, I wanted to become an actor. I worked pretty consistently in plays and doing voice-overs for TV commercials until about 1958. Then somebody said to me, ‘Did you ever think of becoming a producer?’   

“ So I learned that field and produced original theater on Broadway for about ten years. But I got bored with the pressures and the labor problems. I had worked with a lot of playwrights, and I thought, ‘I could write.’ So I wrote a humorous book about the funny things that happen when actors meet the general public who don’t know anything about actors. I named it Broadway goes Suburbia.  I sold it to a publisher who told me, ‘Actually this is just what we want.” Right after that, he said, “Of course, we have to make it much more serious. No humor. We’ll call it, ‘Blueprint for Culture.’ I ran out of the room laughing.”

            I asked Ludlum how he had made the fulltime jump into writing.

            “That Broadway book was my first attempt at writing. I thought I wanted a writing career. But I had responsibilities – my children, my wife, and you can’t chuck everything aside. But I kept thinking about it and finally got to the point where I really wanted to try it. My wife Marian, bless her heart, said, ‘You’re forty years of age. If you don’t try in now, you’re going to regret it as long as we live.’ And so together we literally blocked out eighteen months for me to write the first book. I also had a backup plan. I had made numerous inquiries to various colleges. If necessary, I could teach and then get into writing in a minor way.”

            What Mr. Ludlum was too modest (and too good a writer) to say was – “and the rest was history.”

            Robert Ludlum fell into pattern of making changes that were similar to career paths followed by many of the over-achievers I talked with. At first his changes evolved in the same general field – from acting to doing voice-over commercials to producing. Then he decided to take a more risky leap into an area he had never tried before – becoming a fulltime writer.

            But even here he followed a logical path.

            First he acknowledged the financial and emotional responsibilities he had for his wife and children.

            He set aside a definite period of time in which to fail/succeed. He involved his wife in the planning of this period.

            He had a backup plan.  If finances became tight, he could also take up teaching and do his writing on the side.

            If you’re planning to make a major change in your life, Robert Ludlum’s formula could be a good role model.

            I went to interview James Michener in Palm Beach, Florida. I had read that he had given away more than $100 million to libraries and museums. Some of these were places he had spent his afternoon hours researching the geography and history of his best sellers – Hawaii, Cheseapeake, Paradise Lost and many other great books. I expected to find him in an oceanside mansion with a Mercedes parked in the driveway. Instead I found him and his wife, Mari Sabusawa, waiting for me in a tiny modest condo apartment. I later learned that he was very careful with his money, saving it for charities.  I was charmed by the fact that they called each other by the pet name, “cookie.”

              Actually our paths had crossed some years before in Hawaii. I was an account executive for a small ad agency, working on a campaign for a Democrat named Fasi who was running for mayor of Honolulu. I knew Michener was an avid Democrat so I called to ask if he would do a radio commercial for Fasi.

            “I don’t know anything about Fasi,” he said.

            “That’s not a problem,” I told him. “I have a fact sheet and can write the commercial.”

            Michener agreed, and we met at a local radio station to record the one-minute spot.  

            When I left Hawaii the following year, friends asked me about my experiences. I mentioned casually that I had been a ghost writer for James Michener.

            During our conversation in Florida, I wanted to talk with Michener about his fabulous life and travels. He needed no prompting, telling about experiences that sounded like pages from his novel.

            “I began to travel because I was always someone who wanted to know what was going on. I lived in an extremely poor family in Doylestown, Pennsylvania – a small town near Philadelphia. A very beautiful town near the river. As a young boy I began to travel widely in that area and got to know the river very well. In those days we had barges that carried coal from the Lehigh Valley to Philadelphia, on a beautiful canal that is still there.  I would jump on a barge and ride for a day and then get another barge back home.

            “When I was fifteen, I started hitchhiking around the country. I made very daring trips, but of course that was an easy period. There was little criminality then – no particular preying on people thumbing rides. I traveled from Canada to Florida. Before I finished years later I had visited every state except North Dakota and Montana. I have never lost my desire to see different places and do different things.

            “Some years ago I made a list of places I had not been to and presumably would never get to see. There were four on the list.  Machu Picchu, which is very high and doctors said I should not go to that altitude. The South Pole, Peking and the Amazon. Everybody who traveled told me that Peking was one of the great cities of the world, and I regretted deeply that I had never been there.

“Within two weeks of making that list, I was floating down the Amazon. And two weeks later I accompanied President Nixon to Peking. And last week I was asked to lead a group to Machu Picchu. Now the only thing left on my list is the South Pole, a continent with great mountains and valleys.  I have always been attracted to the story of the explorer Robert Falcon Scott, and followed his trail through New England and New Zealand. Now I still wanted to follow his footsteps through the South Pole.

“The most beautiful place I have ever seen is Bora Bora. It is a volcano isle with a central spire and the most magnificent lagoon in the world.

“The most beautiful road I have ever taken in Apia, Somaliland. It winds along the ocean under palm trees with great mansions along the way.

“The one imperative for every traveler sometime in life is Karnak in Egypt. It really is a staggering site on the Upper Nile, as great as the day it was built. It was the last of the great buildings constructed before the invention of the arch. About every eight feet you are surrounded by towering pillars (that held up the roof, now gone).  You feel you in a forest of stone trees. It’s good to remind yourself of what tremendous work people were able to do under the most primitive conditions.

“The place I want to return to is Afghanistan, but I can’t because of the war. (At that time he was referring to the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians.)  Travelers probably have a more difficult time in that country than anywhere else. When I was there, they had virtually no hotels, no restaurants, no newspapers, no movies, no anything. Yet you lived so excitingly. And everywhere you went you met people who were as interested as you were in the culture and the sights, and you could compare notes.

“I believe when you travel it’s much more interesting to meet shepherds and camel drivers. I want to know how they make a living. How they got across the Russian border. Did they pay cash for their ropes or get some kind of credit. Those practical kinds of things.

“I believe travelers can build up a residue of responses to what they have seen. They do this very slowly, and then they have them for a lifetime. Just the way they respond to memories of music. When they get started thinking, the memories have a life of their own.” 

James Michener not only reinvented his own life. But left behind a legacy of books and ideas to encourage others who want to enrich their own lives.

A meeting in China about a proposed new Disney Theme Park in Asia gave me an opportunity to have lunch with Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, in Banff, British Columbia.

I better explain that rather convoluted sentence.

In 1999 I was program chairman for SATW’s (Society of American Travel Writers) annual convention to be held in Banff. This organization is comprised of more than a thousand travel writers, photographers and tourism executives who meet once each year in a different part of the world. An important element of each meeting is professional development, listening to and learning from experts with special insights into tourism, travel, writing or photography.

I needed a great keynote speaker for the Banff Convention and called Rick Sylvain, Manager of Print Publicity for Walt Disney Attractions and a fellow SATW Member, for his advice. Several days later he called back with a wonderful idea. Judson Green, President of Walt Disney Attractions, had agreed to talk about the state of tourism from Disney’s perspective. This was a real coup, and I quickly spread the word to SATW members because I knew it would increase attendance at the convention.

But as Dr. Leon Martel had reminded me some months before, expect change. Change is normal. About a week before the convention was to start, Rick called. Judson Green had just been summoned to an urgent meeting in China to discuss a new Disney Theme Park in Asia.  He would not be able to come to Banff and speak to us.

I went into panic mode. I would never trust Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck again. How do you find a speaker to replace the head of Walt Disney Attractions in just seven days?  I called Jane Ockershausen, then  SATW president, with the bad news. We wallowed in mutual concern and the vision of many irate members who may have signed up for the convention to hear our keynote speaker.

Then I began to think. I was not alone. Walt Disney World must be equally embarrassed and concerned by this last-minute change. It can’t be good publicity for a major tourism organization to disappoint hundreds of travel writers who came from everywhere.

I called Rick Sylvain.

“Rick, would Walt Disney World be willing to pay for another keynote speaker to replace Judson Green?”

“I’ll get back to you,” he said. In a few hours, he did. “Yes. Tell us who you want and how much it will cost.”

That afternoon I was on the phone to talent agencies and speakers bureaus in New York and Los Angeles, trying to find out who might be available in the next few days and willing to fly to Banff in British Columbia. The list was not encouraging, ranging from magicians who told jokes to “motivational speakers” who have been heard by virtually everyone who has ever attended a business convention. Then an agency mentioned a magic name. Frances Mayes, the most successful travel journalist in recent history. Her book, Under the Tuscan Sun, had been on the New York Times Best-Seller List for an incredible 110 weeks. No other travel book or journal had ever even come close to that record.

Her fee was $10,000 plus travel expenses. I was dismayed, even though I knew that top speakers often commanded that much and often much more, particularly for last-minute engagements. I called Walt Disney World immediately.

“Rick, we’ve got a terrific keynoter, Frances Mayes - for. $10,000 plus expenses.”

Rick called back within hours. “Go for it.”

That is how I came to be sitting one crisp fall day opposite Frances Mayes at lunch at the Banff Hotel in British Columbia, a few hours before her talk to SATW.  She is a lovely woman of indeterminate middle age. You can fall in love with in the first five minutes. She spoke softly with traces of Georgia still in her voice.  At lunch and later that afternoon during her talk to our group, I learned she truly was a woman who followed her heart when she made life decisions.

 I made a number of notes. Here are some of her memories about the wonderful way that she had reinvented her life.

“I had been married for lots of years in one of those marriages you never thought was going to end. But it did.”

 In Under the Tuscan Sun she recounted what she faced.

When the flying fur from the divorce ended, I found myself with a grown daughter, a full-time university job (after years of part-time teachings, a modest securities portfolio, and a future to invent.

She continued in this vein when she talked to the convention.

“I decided that I wanted something in my new life that would be as big as what I had left behind. I kept thinking of a poem by W.S. Merin.”

Send me out into another life, Lord, because this one is growing faint. I do not think it takes me all the way.

            Frances traveled from her home in San Francesco to Italy for a get-away-from-it-all vacation. “I have always loved Italy. The art. The culture. The history. The people. Italy would take ten lives to exhaust. I thought it might substitute nicely for just one man.”

Then –

“I did this crazy thing of buying a house in Tuscany that sits on the side of the hill. It has the beautiful name Bramasole.  It has thirteen rooms and when I first saw it, it was a total jungle of vines. The land was originally a vineyard and olive orchard.”

Later with her new husband Ed she began the painful restoration of this ancient relic.

“The townspeople were pleased that we were restoring the house. There were legends of it being haunted.  A sense of time and history are everywhere. The road is lined with 610 Cypress trees, one for each of the Italians from the area who had died in World War I.

“The locals traveling along the road would call up to us, ‘Are you Germans?’

“We said, no.

“Thank heavens!” they would shout in Italian.

“Italians have a different concept of time. They live in history and in time. For them World War II was just a blip away. I understand. I am from Georgia where the War Between the States just happened.

“One of our neighbors shortly after we arrived came over to invite us to dinner. We didn’t want to go because we thought it would be excruciating. Gratzi, Gratzi, we said.  We just don’t know the language that well.

‘His eyebrows shot up incredulously. ‘You eat don’t you?’

“So we did start going to the dinner parties given by our new neighbors. They would talk about Hannibal and debate which route he had taken through Rome. Now Hannibal defeated Rome in 217 B.C., and they are still talking about him. And all the time I am looking at my watch. Time is something in Italy.

“Ed and I did a lot of the work on the house ourselves, and that helped us get to know the local people much faster than we ordinarily would have. Soon they were inviting us to their mother’s 90th birthday party and bringing us jars of olive oil

“I tried very hard to learn Italian. But my text book had taught me to say,

Have you washed yourself well?

Sir, you have insulted me. I demand satisfaction.

Katherine, would you go to see if the barometer has fallen.

“I am just waiting to use that one.

“I am fascinated by words. One of those words we heard was galleggiante.  We loved the sound of that word. It sounds as it should mean gallant, elegant, gigantic.  It’s one of those words that have lots of resonance and connotations.

            “So soon Ed was beginning to say to me, ‘Frances, you truly look galleggiante. We have a galleggiante  flower growing in the garden. There’s a rusty bench that looks so stately. And we have taken to say it is so galleggiante ,

“But the real meaning of the word came to us in a much more practical way. The toilet was running and running.  Ed got up on the ladder and lifted that little ball in the water closet and the noise stopped. The ball was defective. So we went to the building supply place in town. There is no way to look up ‘Floating ball in toilet’ in the Italian/American dictionary.  So Ed drew a sketch of the toilet and pointed at the floating ball.

“Suddenly the clerk beamed, ‘Oh you want a galleggiante!’

“My house is on a steep hill with an Etruscan wall on the top, then the house, and then a steep fall down to the valley where Hannibal defeated the Romans.

“Layers and layers of time and the way Italians live in time.  It seems to me that this way of looking at things has made them reconcile history and art with a thoroughly contemporary life. It’s very important for me to think of it as a place that lives in the past. But the people who live there are very contemporary.  I think anyone who has grown up there and has had that gift of time being an actual part of their lives must have a lot of hope for the future.”