Hooked on the First Line: Mastering Memoir

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the quality of people. you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altucher. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:19This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

1:36I think the hardest thing to write in any kind of book, essay, article are the first line and the last line. And 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. 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. He's like, for me, the master of the last line. But almost every great book I've read, you could tell the author put a lot of thought.

2:27I mean, put a whole book's worth of thought into that last line. Well, you know what? Maybe we 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 um and i feel sorry for this is like in 1994 i read a book with such a great last line 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 i must have spent an hour describing this book just so i could tell her the last line and she was like wow that's a great last line but thinking back on it i'm sure she did not care at all about the last line

3:10was this the golden glove boxer no no this was pre that this is like my grad school girlfriend so well uh you're doing good james you're doing good you found the right woman yeah you know i actually i've never met your wife did you find the right woman you will You will. We're all going to get together. Yeah. 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 U.S. right now. Charlotte? Yeah, Charlotte. Why? I think some very good enthusiasts moved there and encouraged other strong grandmasters to kind of be names for the club.

3:54And there's like tournaments all week long, every day. There's tournament tonight. Come on up. Yeah. 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, but it's basically the T-O means 21. 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. So over 21 is considered like a golden oldies these days.

4:35Yeah. Well, 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. 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. We got to take this as far as we can. Yeah. You know, it'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. You know, the most we know about George Foreman is really from the movie about when he and Muhammad Ali fought in Africa.

5:17And that was very much in favor of Muhammad Ali. He was incorrectly so. He was a big underdog. He's a big personality. 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, and few people realize, 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.

6:0440-0. He was 40-0. 40-0 with 38 knockouts. And then he falls victim to the rope-a-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. 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. Come on, George, is that all you got? How could Ali handle all those punches? Like George Foreman was huge. And you see his punch was like, I mean, he knocked the punching bag off the, you know, thing that was holding it up.

6:53Like he was, 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 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, you know, his float like a butterfly sting 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 early in George's career.

7:41There 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, be able to take control toward the end of the fight, which is what he did. Very risky strategy, though. He basically put his arms in front of his body, and he probably moved fast enough that he could absorb a lot of the blow. Plus, being on the ropes, it allows you to relax a little bit. You're not worried about falling if you're on the ropes. Well, people at ringside were wincing. I remember watching the fight on closed circuit TV, in St.

8:25Louis, 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. And it was just a little opening for him to say, that all you got, George? That all you got? And Forman's just wailing away, hitting his arms, his side, his belly, if 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. And you'd think like, wow, what's going on?

9:09Because George is throwing these wild circular shots, but Ali's was straight to the point. And then in the eighth round, connected, knocked Foreman down, Foreman was exhausted, couldn't get up, fight ends. And he is just not the same. 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 chanting against him, he went on to own that George Borman grill and be seen with a big 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 them to have the comeback at a very late age.

10:14You 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 twenties, like 25. 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 peak age for a writer, though, is – and like the peak age for a historian is in their 60s. Because, you know, yes, you can write a flashy, sharp, you know, eccentric, experimental novel in your 20s that uses all the flourish and new techniques and so on out of the sharpness of your brain when you're 25.

11:11But 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 and ideas and really make a work of art. The same thing for a historian. You've read and absorbed so much history. You're able to see, oh, the development of the air conditioner is what created urbanization in the South. 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 peak age and realize that, oh, he's going to start losing now.

11:53Yeah. 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 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 were watching the movie was 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.

12:39There's no evidence that he 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%. So I think he just made bets that were too big. 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. Yeah, I don't want to seem like I'm judging. I never met the guy. 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 and he caught up with him.

13:24And 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 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 to 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? Everything's changed.

14:28changed. Your body won't 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 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 jaw of Michael Moore and down Moore 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.

15:29I hope so too. And look, this is related to writing because I think a lot of people are already considered themselves writers. It's so easy to write now. The invention of the word processor in the 70s made it easier to write. And then the internet, of course, all information is at 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 Amazon. So suddenly everyone's a writer. But just like with boxing, boxing is not about fighting. It's about this carefully crafted martial art. We see this in the beginning of that movie, for instance, a good street fighter like Like George Foreman could not handle a mediocre boxer when he first began.

16:16So, and it's the same thing with writing. 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 to understand them so that maybe other people could begin their journey to 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.

16:54look as a manager of people as an employer as an entrepreneur and as even an investor in startups i can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire the best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

17:38And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Altature. then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altachirk. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

18:13What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future? When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses, building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. I was going to ask you about this, Cal. Like, do you think writing is a competitive space? I think it's highly competitive to a lot of people.

18:55and then other people are simply competing with themselves. Give me an example of someone competing with themselves. Me. Okay. I just, I don't read something and think, oh my God, why didn't I write something better? Or, oh, I wish I could have had that title. I just feel like when I'm writing something, especially that I deemed important, like around 9-1-1, I did two stories that one, you could pick up 500 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 from the time that he walked into a bathroom to get started on his day till the end of the day.

20:10You 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 those people in Pompeii after the volcano just erupted over the city. Did I get that right? Is it Pompeii? I'm thinking Pompeii. Yeah. And he's basically thinking that he's trapped underneath this rubble, that he's just going to be laying there knowing that nobody's ever going to discover him as 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 sommelier at the top of the World Trade Center and that took me 10 years to write because I was so traumatized by the experience.

21:13I was the sommelier right before the planes came into the tower and it was just too close to write at the time. So I 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 line, but you'll see 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 picked out a few books to go over with you. And one maybe people will never have heard of. It's a book called West with the Night.

22:13And it was written by Harold Markham. You remember that? No. Okay. So on the back, this is from a letter to Maxwell Perkins. This is Ernest Hemingway speaking. And Hemingway asked his editor, did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's logbook. 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 Feast, which is memoir written in the 50s about his time in the 20s.

23:05He 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 Passos. Is that? I don't think that's based on John Dos Passos because he was legitimately friends with John Dos Passos. And I don't think he viewed him as a threat, but he viewed F. Scott Fitzgerald as a threat. 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. So, you know, this Hemingway had a marvel at this woman because she was flying around Africa in like in the 30s, maybe even in the, yeah, I think it was the 30s.

24:00Could have been the late 20s and like delivering the mail and transporting people around. 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 with just a simple question. And in a way that's just so simple and easy and inviting, 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 okay pig pen. But she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. That's interesting that Hemingway said that.

25:00I 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. Yeah. And the fact that she was flying around Africa and nose diving into the ground, you know, alone, 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 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 but sometimes when we're trying to organize those memories to tell a story or to tell what happened it it's a our memories might be wrong and and we we a b we might forget c how do we organize it so that we tell an interesting story.

26:17And, you know, like, like 9-11 being a good example, where do you start? Do you start with the sommelier, 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. Yeah, that's why 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? I think the assumption always is that it's easy to bring order out of memory. And yet, when we really think about it, so many times, like something that happened to you, Cal, Well, I just had this discussion with someone today.

27:10Oh, remember that time we, I had this discussion with my wife. 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 two people to have completely different memories. Like I remember clear as day, but she doesn't. And it reminds me of that book, Being Wrong by Katherine 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. What does it feel like to be wrong? And I'm asking you this. Probably at first, you go through stages probably.

27:52At first, maybe a little disbelief. Okay, just stop right there. Her response to that, to your answer would be, that's what it feels like when you 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. When you first say something and you're wrong, you think you're right. And so you don't think you're 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 experiences with people she knew.

28:38And 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, 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, Beryl Markham, the author of West 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.

29:13So now I'm looking at it. And she continues, I should like to 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 a hundred places to start. And that's true for every story. And so what she's doing here, she's addressing right up top many things. One is that this is a very, not a complicated story, but that there's lots of things that happened. There are lots of adventures we could go through. And I could enter this adventure in many ways. Like she says, there are a hundred places to start for there are a hundred names, Mwanza, Serengeti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakura.

29:54There are easily a hundred 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 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 someplace. Any place is as good as any other. And then we'll begin this wildly adventurous story. So she's explaining 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 to tell you about all these names.

30:37She'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 into a bar if you've heard, Oh, James, you've got to meet 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 what Wanza, Serengeti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakuro mean, you know there's stories behind all of them. and you realize that there are almost 290 pages of these stories coming.

31:31And it just makes you feel a good time is on the way. 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 rather than saying, oh my gosh, these great things happened to me in Wanza, Serengeti, Nungwi, Molo, Nakura. 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, she says, after all, I am no weaver. Weavers create, this is a remembrance, revisitation.