For many of us, there was one book that affected us deeply at a very impressionable time in our lives, adolescence. This book both signaled the autumn of our innocence and spoke to us profoundly about the hopes and disillusionments of life to come. That book is Catcher in the Rye. Considered one of the best novels every written, the story of its reclusive yet genius author, J.D. Salinger, is still shrouded in mystery. Many people don't realize that Catcher in the Rye was the one and only novel Salinger ever published, that he lived the second half of his life in complete isolation, or that the cultish-popularity of its character, Holden Caulfield, was the twisted inspiration behind the murder of John Lennon and the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan.

Here is the remarkable story of J.D. Salinger and Catcher in the Rye;


Early life.

1. Jerome David Salinger was born January 1, 1919 in New York to a comfortably affluent family of European and Jewish descent.

2. He went to an elite private high school, where he was an average student, then New York University and later Colombia University later on.

3. He started calling himself “Jerry” in high school, while his family always called him “Sonny.”

4. In 1941, Salinger dated the young debutante Oona O’Neill, daughter of the famous playwright Eugene O’Neill. Salinger was head over heels in love but later on she abandon him for Charlie Chaplain. They got married, though he was her senior by many decades, Salinger was embarrassed and crushed.

5. In November of that same year, Salinger sold a story called “Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” to the New Yorker, which featured the character Holden Caulfield. However, it was shelved when the war broke out and editorial needs changed, and wouldn’t appear in the magazine until 1946, after the war. A few other stories featured Holden Caulfield, even 10 years before the Catcher in the Rye was published.

Wartime.

6. J.D. Salinger’s comfortable, safe, and predictable world was shattered when he was drafted into WW II in the spring of 1942, only a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

7. His first action was during the D-Day Invasion at Utah Beach.

8. He served all the way through to VE Day (Victory in Europe Day,) including fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, where he saw the heaviest of combat and most of his units slaughtered.

9. Salinger actually started writing Catcher in the Rye as he served during the war, and he carried 6 chapters of the original manuscript with him as he rushed the beaches during D Day. He later said that the will to preserve those chapters is what kept him alive.

10. Friends of his from his unit always joked that they’d get nothing done when out on patrol because Salinger always insisted they pull over so he could write more of Catcher in the Rye.

11. The one and only photo of Salinger writing his only novel comes from while he was serving overseas in the war.

12. During his time fighting in WWII, he arranged a meeting with Ernest Hemingway, a big influence of his, who was working as a war correspondent. Hemingway was impressed with Salinger and his writing and they remained in correspondence.

13. In April 1945 as the Germans surrendered, Salinger’s unit liberated a Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. What he saw there changed him forever. He later told his daughter, "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live."

14. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital after the war for combat stress reaction.

15. After the surrender, Salinger stayed in Germany for six months where he was assigned to work with the Counterintelligence Corp during the “Denazification” of the country.

Post-war.

16. In Germany after the war, he met a young woman named Sylvia Welter. Even though she was a former member of the Nazi party, they fell in love, were married, and she came accompanied him back to the U.S. But the marriage lasted only 8 months until it was annulled and Sylvia returned to Germany.

17. After the war, Salinger wrote with renewed gravity and determination. He was obsessed with the New Yorker Magazine and submitted numerous short stories to them, all to be rejected. He was published elsewhere but considered the New Yorker his manifest destiny.

18. He was finally published again by the New Yorker in 1948 when his story, “A Perfect Day for Bananfish,” was released after a year of editing. The story hit it big and Salinger was vaulted to national prominence.

19. In 1949, a movie version of his story, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" was released, called “My Foolish Heart.” The movie was a flop and Salinger hated it, vowing never again to allow a film to be made from one of his stories.

Catcher in the Rye

20. Catcher in the Rye was released on July 16, 1951 by the publisher Little, Brown and Company.

21. It was an immediate success. Within two months it had been reprinted eight times, and Catcher spent 30 weeks on New York Times bestsellers list.

22. It was J.D. Salinger’s one and only published novel.

23. It’s been translated into all of the world’s major languages and sold around 65 million copies. It still sells about 250,000 copies per year, even 63 years after its release.

24. It’s considered one of the best American literature, along side “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck and “Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain.

Backlash.

25. However, it’s attracted its fair share of criticism. In 1960, a teacher in Oklahoma was fired for teaching the book in his class. Between 1961 and 1982, the Catcher in the Rye was the most banned book in the U.S.

26. It’s been estimated that there are 237 uses of the word "goddam" in the book, 58 of "bastard," 31 of "Chrissake," and six of "fuck."

27. It also contained subject matter pertaining to sexuality, homosexuality, suicide, and defying authority. That was all extremely controversial subject matter for the 1950’s (and 1940’s, when it was written.)

28. In 1978, it was banned in high schools in Issaquah, Washington as part of an "overall communist plot.”

29. By 1981, it was both the second-most most taught book in U.S. public high schools and also the most banned book.

Reclusion

30. In 1953, Salinger moved from his apartment in New York City to a simple house on a mountain in Corning, New Hampshire, where he’d live the rest of his life.

31. Salinger lived in seclusion in Cornish, preferring a life of total privacy though he kept careful tabs on the outside world.

32. After the initial success and critical acclaim of Catcher in the Rye, the book’s popularity hit a lull in the late 1950’s. However, in the 1960’s the book experienced an explosive revival, as it became the manual of youth rebellion for the counterculture generation.

33. After that, he had many young readers, soul searchers, malcontents, voyeurs, photographers and reporters seek him out, though he unceremoniously dismissed almost all of them.  

34. Salinger became an avid follower of Buddhism, and later a practitioner of Zen Yoga, Hinduism, and even Dianetics.

35. While he lived in Cornish, he produced mostly short stories and some novellas, with the New Yorker Magazine holding a first-right of refusal for all his work.

36. He went through several relationships with much younger women, which usually ended in disaster as he treated them poorly and alienated them completely, preferring the solitude of his typewriter and the characters he created.

Dark days.

37. Salinger became a victim of his own fame as Catcher in the Rye reached iconic status. He withdrew more later in life as there was speculation he never fully recovered from his experiences during the war.

38. He dealt with numerous lawsuits to suppress unauthorized biographies, tell-all’s from past flames, and scathing memoirs, including one from his own daughter.

39. Producers in the movie business never stopped hounding him to make a big screen adaptation of Catcher in the Rye. Jerry Lewis was obsessed with playing the part of Holden Caulfield and over the years, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Tobey Maguire, and Leonardo DiCaprio all tried to make the film adaptation, though Salinger never wavered.

40. On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman gunned down John Lennon of the Beatles in front of the Dakota Hotel in New York City. At the crime scene, Chapman was found with a copy of Catcher in the Rye he’d bought that day. Inside was the inscription, "To Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement." He later professed that he killed Lennon because of the book.

41. In 1981, John Hinckley, Jr.'s shot President Ronald Regan and others in his entourage. He stated that he attempted the assignation to impress actress Jodie Foster, who he was stalking. When they searched Hinckley’s apartment, they found a well-read copy of Catcher in the Rye.  

42. In 1989, Robert John Bardo stalked and then shot to death actress Rebecca Schaeffer at her Hollywood home. He was carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye when he was arrested.

Later in life.

43. J.D. Salinger published his last original work in 1965 and gave his final interview in 1980.

44. On January 27, 2010, J.D. Salinger passed away of natural causes at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.

45. But his story continues; in his will, Salinger left specific instructions to publish the bulk of his unreleased work on a timetable between 2015 and 2020. There is speculation that very well might include a follow up to Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield. 

Have you ever seen an old war movie?  There's always a scene when a group of soldiers is pinned down by the enemy, surrounded by hostile gun fire and trying to escape against all odds.  There always comes a point when they make a break for it (and someone yells "Cover me!") and always one guy who leads the rally.  He charges the machine gun nest, throws himself on a grenade, or launches his body across the rolls of barbed wire so that his brothers in arms can make it through.

Writers - I want to be that guy for you, the one who throws himself onto the barbed wire so you may get on.

I hope this doesn't happen literally, of course, but I do want to help you go from Point A with your writing (wherever you are starting) to Point B (wherever you want to go with your writing, OTHER than having the sole goal of being on the Oprah Show.)  And no, I'm not selling you anything.  I swear, nothing at all, no hidden agenda - there's too much of that bullshit in the world already, I just honestly want to help you.

Why the hell do I want to do that?  Good question. 

When I was coming up as a writer and didn't know my ass from my elbow (and I'm not so far removed from that) it all seemed so overwhelming.  On a strict education budget (of 0$) I Googled every single article and blog I could find about writing.  There was some great info, but most of them were selling some form of book coaching or marketing plan.  I get it, we have to eat.  But when I tried to reach out to other authors, I was met with so much pretension and snobbery it sickened me.  

I mean, it's just ART, right?  Creation.  No matter how inexperienced or technically unaccomplished you are, or God forbid if you choose to self publish, if you have something to SAY, a human story to tell that SOMEONE will enjoy, then fuck all the ivory-tower attitude bullshit.  

Luckily, I had an amazing amount of help from the self-publishing firm I went through (I'm not even going to mention their name so you don't think I'm selling something, but hit me up if you want a recommendation.)  I won some and lost some, actually I lost a lot more than a won by about a 1,000 to 1 margin, but stumbled forward to a very humble modicum of acceptance for my work, and also a budding career as a pro blogger.

I now get emails and Facebook messages from people all the time saying they are considering writing a book, too.  Go for it, I say.  I support you 100%, and I'll even tell you everything I've learned (for free) so you may have a smoother learning curve than I did.  I will, essentially, throw myself onto the barbed wire for you, so that you may get on with it.

One caveat - if you want to be a writer or write a book, you have to write.  Not just talk about it, but do it.  Every day.  If you want to be a planner, not a writer, then I can't help you.  

So I've put together a small catalog of the blogs I've documented about writing.  Granted, I'm not the best writer you'll ever meet, and surely there are much smarter and more accomplished teachers out there, but you won't find someone who cares about OUR art form and encourages you to write your heart out more than me.  So dig in, and enjoy.

Norm  :-)

10 reasons why authors should love one-star reviews.

I'm more excited to write this morning than usual because I just received my first one-star review for South of Normal.  Yes, I do mean I'm excited in a good way, and no, "one-star," is not a typo.  Let me explain why, and offer how one-star reviews are actually nothing to stress about as an author.

I checked into my Amazon.com page this morning and saw a new review had been posted.  That’s usually a good thing, but this reader gave the book one star.    

The review was titled "horrible on EVERY level..."

10 TIPS TO WRITING BOLD, FUN, AND LOVABLE CHARACTERS...DOWN TO THEIR SHOELACES!

Of all the elements of a good story, none are as important as your characters. They are so essential to your story taking life that every single sentence in your story needs to do one of two things:

1) Advance the action, or

2) Develop the characters.

Confessions of a d-bag book marketer. (Best-seller lists explained.)

First off, let me correct that title.  It should read: Confessions of an Amazon.com Best-Selling d-bag book marketer.  That’s because, as of 8:14 am EST on April 26, 2013 AD, the year of our Lord, I joined the ranks of Amazon’s best selling authors.  

I know what you’re thinking: “Who gives a flying shiznitt?”  And I totally agree, but please grant me two seconds anyway, so I might be able to provide you insight into the highly suspect nature of best seller lists.

Ethical Considerations When Writing Memoir.

Writing a memoir can be a fun, exciting endeavor, and cathartic for the author to get their version of real life onto the page.  It also has the capacity to piss off a lot of people.  

I ran into a few complex ethical questions while writing my second book, South of Normal…

15 Tips to Rewrite Your Work to Greatness (part 1)

I am a firm believer that you write a book, but you rewrite your way to a good book.  Ernest Hemingway rewrote the last page ofFarewell to Arms 39 times.  When asked by a reporter what technical issue he was struggling with, he replied “Getting the words right.”  Well said, Big Papa.  

Personally, filling up the pages is not a problem - I can bang out about 5,000 words a day…but the problem is that only a few of those lines are actually readable!  So to craft my writing into clear, effective communication geared toward other human beings it takes me a tremendous amount of proofreading and editing. 

15 Tips to Rewrite Your Work to Greatness (part 2)

As a writer, it’s healthy to lose that image of yourself as a special prodigy who can summon other-worldly prose from the ether.  Instead, think of yourself a blacksmith.  You grab those words hot out of the fire and pin them to your work station, hammering mercilessly with all of the sweat and muscle you can muster, so you might just forge them into something useful.

Writing Your First Book?  3 Questions to Ask Before Your Get Started.

One of my biggest thrills is getting an email from an aspiring writer, who asks for advice on how to start their first book. Some of them are bright eyed and optimistic, some seasoned and cautious, but whether they’re penning a business book or the next great teen-zombie-thriller, there’s one question they all have in common:  

Where the hell do I begin?  Great question! 

The Basics of Story Structure.

All stories follow a three-part structure: the beginning, middle, and the end.  That may seem simple, but they each part requires different elements of the story at different times in order for it to work right.  When this is done well in a book or a movie you, the audience, don’t even notice.  But when something is out of place, it just feels wrong, and the whole story is uncomfortable or even objectionable.

11 Tips to Adapt Your Book Into a Blockbuster Screenplay.

Have you written a book and you want to adapt it to a screenplay?  There are a lot of commonalities to telling a good story, but other than that it's a completely different animal.  Let me walk you through some movie-making basics that aren't too technical.  

Hate Mail Can Be Fun!!!

Yesterday I was the lucky recipient of a comment on one of my blog posts, expressing mild displeasure with my new book, South of Normal.  And displeasure with my existence here on earth.  And any chance I might have of chillaxing in heaven one day.  

Granted, the comment was eloquent, passionate, and succinct, a good piece of writing in its own right.  It said:

"FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING BOOK.  BURN IN HELL YOU SONOFABITCH"

10,000 Hours.

Talent is a myth. I know, we all lionize the story of someone who comes out of nowhere and is “discovered” on natural ability alone.  That’s the plotline our media keeps feeding us, whether its on shows like American Idol, our cesspool of unreal reality shows, and even in old movies like the Natural.  But, more often than not, those overnight successes were years in the making.  So if it’s not God-given talent, what is the secret to success?  Hard work.

On Writing, My Beautiful Failure.

A few years ago, when I started down this path, I wanted to be a WRITER. It all seemed glamorous – living in the tropics and banging out a best selling novel in between rum drinking contests, bull fights, and answering fan mail from exotic female admirers.  

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Not even a little bit.  

A few years ago, when I started down this path, I wanted to be a WRITER. It all seemed glamorous – living in the tropics and banging out a best selling novel in between rum drinking contests, bull fights, and answering fan mail from exotic female admirers.  

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Not even a little bit.  

It’s been three years after I hit the reset button on my life, walking away from my comfortable existence as a businessman in California. I sold or donated all of my possessions and moving down to Costa Rica to live by the beach, bringing nothing but a laptop and a surfboard, to chase my dream of being a writer. 

Now, two books and thousands of written pages later, the secret to success has been magically revealed to me:

Hard work.

I know, not as exciting as I hoped for, but there it is. Scratching out a living penning words isn’t as much about being a WRITER, as it is about WRITING. Author Mary Heaton said it best:

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

In fact, most great writers have dedicated everything they had to the craft – and then more. They chose a life of self-imposed poverty, isolated hard work, and even ostracism from “polite” society to pursue their passion (though I believe polite society is overrated). It’s about putting in their 10,000 hours, as Macklemore raps, and then some, because they love their art so much they can’t NOT write.  

The collateral damage includes comfort, safety, material gain, friendships, relationships, and even sanity.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Ernest Hemingway.

Even though it was my lifelong dream to be a WRITER, all of that hard work didn’t sound so fun to me. Couldn’t I just skip ahead to the good parts? Still, I devised a three-year plan to lead me to the promise land of literary greatness and financial gain. Here it is: 

My Three-Year plan:

1. 1. Do it.
2. 2. Do it well.
3. 3. Do it over and over, and monetize it.

Granted, that may be the exact business plan of every hooker in Reno, but I’d like to think that my plan was (slightly) more socially ambitious, and by the end of my third year I would have “made it,” breaking into the industry and earning a comfortable living as a writer. Let me explain.

The first year I wanted to write and publish a book. It would be ideal to write the BEST book I could, but just writing one and going through the indie publishing process was overwhelming enough, without worrying about pesky little details, like KNOWING WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING. I got started in my new beachside home, Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in the heart of the rainy season when the dirt roads were a muddy mess. By the middle of the dry season, in the arid heat and the dust, the book was done. 

“Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” Mark Twain.

Writing that first book was an exhausting, scrambling process, about as far from my comfort zone as I’ve ever been. At times I didn’t think I was going to make it, or make it out of there in once piece. It was committing my soul to the page only to be trampled, documenting my ridiculous humanity for all the world to laugh at. I rushed at the wrong times, lost steam when I needed it most, and generally made every mistake I could. But, from some small miracle, the book still came out entertaining enough to pick up. 

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell.

The second year of my three-year plan was ‘doing it well.’ I actually had two choices here. Upon releasing their first book, most authors focus on selling books. They become expert marketers, and that is where they focus all of their attention. I totally understand that inclination, but standing at that crossroads, I chose a different path. I would focus on learning my craft. Sales be damned, I was going to invest all of my work and focus into becoming the best writer I could be. 

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
Allen Ginsberg.

I eschewed any chance of profit with the first book and instead moved up the coast from Costa Rica, to the charming fishing town of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to write. I sequestered myself in a cheap apartment in a local barrio, dirt alleys in the jungle living in the midst of stray dogs and roosters and the local people who made $2 a day. I was scared at first, in a third world country where some people were desperate just to eat, and many a night I slept beside a machete or carried a knife in my backpack. 

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Henry David Thoreau.

But I always made it to the dawn, and thanked God for it, sitting down at my desk to document that gratitude with vigor. The locals in my barrio sang as they hung laundry, the smoke from the cooking fires in their front yards rising to my windows on the ocean breeze. It was perfect.

“Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” Stephen King.

I did two things for those six months: I read, and I wrote. I read everything I could find ABOUT writing; character development, theme, conflict, dialogue, emotion, etc. There was no place to buy books, so I Googled these topics and read every article I could find, and then when I’d exhausted those someone brought me down a Kindle, so I could download books about writing. Pretty soon I’d read all of those, so I started reading biographies of writers.

Do you know what the common theme was? Hard work. Writers write a lot, and when they aren’t writing they read a lot, and that’s how they get better.

“If you can’t create, you can work.” Henry Miller.

So I wrote, too. Every morning I woke up at dawn (Ok, I woke up at 2 a.m. when the roosters and stray dogs started in, but I went back to sleep) and brewed some locally-grown coffee, splashed it with Baileys, and sat down at my desk, just about the time a clunky pickup truck rolled through the barrio, selling freshly-picked mangos and bananas.

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired to write at 9 o’clock every morning.” Peter De Vries.

I put on my headphones and cranked some dancehall reggae or Michael Franti or Citizen Cope, and I wrote. It didn’t matter WHAT I wrote, I just unleashed whatever was in my subconscious without letting my mind get in the way. My fingers flew around with a life of their own, blurring with the speed of a DJ spinning records. 

“Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say.” Edgar A. Poe.

One day I rescued a skinny, whipped four-week old puppy off the street. At first he was too small to walk far, so I carried him everywhere. He was black and white so I named him Panda, and I fed him milk and put him on a towel on my desk as I wrote. I said hi to the locals as I walked through my barrio into town, and the little kids abandoned their soccer ball and ran out to play with Panda. 

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”  Saul Bellow.

And then on August 1, the walls of my house in the barrio shook side to side and dishes fell as a huge earthquake rocked the town. Church bells tolled for everyone to evacuate because of an imminent tsunami, but to me it was a signal to start the first chapter. So I wrote. Three months later, when the school kids were lighting fireworks in the streets for Dia de Indepencia, my manuscript for South of Normal, was done, 1,000 pages of sunshine and snake pits.

But there was no time to pat myself on the back, because that’s when the REAL work began – rewriting and editing. So I put my head down and got busy, once again.

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.” John Irving.

Soon, everyone in town knew me, and Panda was so big and strong he was pulling ME when we strolled the cobbled streets. The abuelitas, grandmothers, in their rocking chairs on the front porch waved to me and wished me God’s blessing, and all of the little kids begged to take Panda to the beach. 

“Como esta su libro?” they would ask - how is your book? - for word got out that I was a writer. 

My last week before leaving Nicaragua our little town was infested with rich vacationers from Managua. The parties and fireworks went off all night, every night, but I had work to do. So I took Panda to the ferry and cruised over to Ometepe, cajoining islands in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, one of the only places on earth with fresh water sharks. Each island had an active volcano rising steeply from its center, and the beaches were jet black volcanic sand like crushed moonstone. Panda ran and played and I kept working.  

It was there in Ometepe that I understood the wisdom that all of those great writers were whispering to me; to write well you need to go through a process of failure, of discomfort, of displacement from the normal human condition. You need thrust yourself into a volcano, sacrificing your ego, so you can become connected to everyone and everything. Only through this ultimate surrender will you truly be able to write something important, and serve the world.  

“So you want to be a writer? Unless is comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it.  Unless the sun inside you is burning you’re gut, don’t do it.” Charles Bukowski.  

My last night in town I threw a big party for the wonderful people in my barrio as a thank you, a pig roast at the very top of the hill by the town’s water tank. All of the mothers cooked and the children gave me gifts. The power went out so the DJ couldn’t play and it was dark, but we took out flashlights and someone turned on their car stereo. And then it started pouring rain but we didn’t care – we danced and hugged each other and celebrated life. 

“Suertes,” they said - good luck, and I finally realized - those people, the same one's I feared at first, had been keeping ME safe the whole time, watching out for me. I handed the children Panda’s leash and he wagged. He was a San Juan del Sur dog, and would be happiest running on the beach with them.

In some ways I think that was the best part of my life, because down there I left behind the romance of being a WRITER, and instead, fell in love with WRITING itself.  

I’m happy with the choice I made, to focus mastering my craft instead of becoming a pesky promoter interested only in sales. And I am happy with my book, South of Normal, because, although flawed and deeply imperfect, it is honest, and I gave it everything I had.

“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.”
Ray Bradbury.

Now, on the eve of its release, I shift into part three of that supremely important three-year plan: to do it over and over, and monetize it.

This is it, my chance to cash in, to re-enter polite society. I know how to do it - I’ve paid attention to all of the books and articles and blogs and podcasts about promoting yourself, getting attention, landing an agent, and making money. It would be easy for me to invest my precious time here on earth into selling books.

But I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s not in me. In that respect, I guess I’ve failed at my three-year plan, because I could care less about being a WRITER. I just want to write. 

So, if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll change my three-year plan. I think I’ll just relive my second year over and over, stuffing a backpack, heading to the airport, and disappearing once again into that big, wild unknown. I’m thinking that Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia sound good, where I’ll look for that tiny little hut on a secluded beach amidst the smiling locals. And in that perfect soulful silence of barking dogs, clacking roosters and the throng of humanity, I will write. And every morning I will stare out at the sea and say “Thank you, thank you. For this beautiful failure, thank you,” and then I’ll sit my ass down and get to work.

-Norm :-)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” William Faulkner.
 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

Uncle Hugo?


My brief and inglorious stay in Venezuela.


Venezuela, July 1999


A cabbie warned us that our beach was the worst on the island.

He was right.

It was littered with beer cans, food wrappers, and French people in banana hammocks. A sewage pipe intersected the south end of the beach, draining enough mystery sludge into the water that it stung your eyes when you swam. It was crowded with poor Venezuelan locals who guzzled back-to-back Polar beers from coolers, plastic bags with ice, and local vendors. You could barely find a spot of sand not covered with a cheap blanket and a drunken family inhabiting it. When they turned their heads left to see what was worth stealing on their neighbor’s blanket, the neighbor on their right reached over and stole their beer. Naked toddlers ran around unattended, peeing all over the place as their parents made out shamelessly. On any given blanket you had a 17.5% chance of seeing a Venezuelan titty pop out, or worse. When they got up and brushed off the sand and stumbled to the bus stop, their only goal was to go home with some beer and approximately the same number of kids they came with.

Scrawny teenagers raced scrawnier horses up and down the beach at furious speeds. They rode bareback, hugging the horses with their bare feet and clinging to the mane with one hand, the other hand used to whip the poor beast mercilessly. Everyone cheered as they raced.

One kid got thrown from his horse when it stumbled in the sand and took a bad digger. I know Shane and I could have gone to the nicer beach and sat around with the pale tourists flopping around like sea otters, but what the hell was the fun in that? We wanted local. It was no postcard, but it wasn’t terrible for the ass-end of paradise.

We took out the Frisbee and found some real estate to throw it back and forth. Everywhere we went the Frisbee came with us — it was the perfect way to amuse ourselves at any beach or public park, or even in the parking lot while waiting for the bus, and chasing after it and leaping into the air to catch it gave us a great workout. Throwing the Frisbee around also provided a perfect opportunity to meet people. Most places we went, people had never even seen a Frisbee before, and kids always loved it and grouped around us, wanting a turn. If we saw a group of hot girls we wanted to spit game at, we’d just throw the Frisbee in their direction. Either it landed near them, in which case we’d run up and collect it and chat a bit, or it would hit one of them squarely in the face and cause a nosebleed, in which case we’d get to spend more time with them manufacturing sincere apologies that it had been a complete accident, and offering to take them out to dinner to make amends. That was a win-win the way I saw it. Our Frisbee was yellow with a big smiley face on it, and we must have thrown that thing an hour or two every day. We always held it up in pictures to show where we were and yes, that we were still smiling, like a hostage holding up that day’s newspaper.

And that is how we met our strange new amigo, a chatty guy around our age who walked by and asked if he could throw the Frisbee with us. After flopping it around unsuccessfully for five minutes he suggested that we have a drink with him and his friends instead and led us to a grove of trees. Several obviously unemployed fellows stood about, and a pregnant lady in a bikini sprawled out nearby on a tree stump. He introduced us to his brother, a sketchy bastard who was skinny and balding yet covered with thick body hair, like he was a little too far left on the evolutionary chart that showed man’s progress to get his knuckles off the ground and walk upright. To make matters worse, he was sweating like a whore in church. I tried to push Shane toward him and stand closer to the pregnant chick.

They were drinking from a bottle of anise, a strong local firewater liquor, and filled little plastic cups and urged us to drink round after round, while yelling enthusiastically in Spanish about things I didn’t understand and didn’t care to. They refilled our cups and insisted we drink more with them since we were their new best friends. The stuff burned my esophagus on the way down and hit me between the eyes instantly. The hairy brother couldn’t wait for the formalities of pouring it into cups, so he started drinking straight out of the bottle. He was a real kook, screaming because he was half deaf in one ear from the time a stick of dynamite misfired near him in a mining accident. I tried to stay on the side of his bad ear so he wouldn’t want to converse with me, but he still badgered me with anecdotes about his days working on civil engineering projects while he was in the military. I made it very clear to the brothers that I didn’t speak Spanish, but they ignored this fact and continued to catch me up on everything that had occurred in their lives over the last 25 years. The more I protested that I had no idea what they were saying, shamelessly pointing to Shane to divert their attention, the closer they got and the louder they yelled.

Someone didn’t smell right. The hairy brother drank more and became animated, trying to headlock me. He waved his arms around like a gorilla, his eyes bloodshot and unable to focus, and tried to hug me with his dripping man-sweater. I stiff-armed him but did it subtly, trying not to be rude so he wouldn’t turn on us and cut our heads off with a machete.

The only thing that seemed to calm these bad-breath bandits was Queen. Yes, Queen the band. A transistor radio sat on the beach next to them, antennae erect to pick up the only station on the island, and when a Queen song came on they went crazy. They loved rock and roll music, they said, and Queen was, of course, the best band ever. Really? I never got that memo. They wanted us to sing along and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was either that or do more shots, so right there on the beach Shane and I belted out our best rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Will Rock You,” and “We Are the Champions.” We had to make up most of the lyrics, repeat choruses, and switch songs mid verse, but it seemed to soothe these savage beasts a little. The brother tried to clap along and stamp his feet to the beat, but the shrapnel in his head most have stricken him tone deaf as well. But as long as I kept singing, he relinquished his headlock on me. I didn’t want it to end, so Shane and I went into repeat mode, mixing up the songs and singing chorus after chorus. They tried to keep up and sing along, to what I have no idea, and I didn’t want to risk injury or a breach in my hygiene policy by stopping them.

“We swill, we swill, watch you!” they howled. Clap, clap.

“Key swill, key gill, wash you!” Drink, drink. Clap, clap. Everyone within earshot stared at them, embarrassed that these men had been appointed the drunken ambassadors of their country.

“Key argyle clampions my friend!” Dynamite Head soloed. I made eye contact with Shane to communicate our breakaway. We told them that we’d had a great time but it was getting late and we had to go. They protested. Sorry fellas, we have somewhere to be, we pleaded. They wanted to come with us. They wanted more drink, more Queen, more girls. More? Where the hell were the girls that we were supposedly enjoying now? We were finally excused after taking three more shots and promising to meet them in the same spot in an hour. An orgy of handshaking, hugs, missed high-fives, and vows that we were hermanos (brothers) ensued. We walked down the beach quickly, without looking back, and ran the second we couldn’t hear Queen anymore. Shane thought that they were trying to take a crack at us, but I thought they were just blitzed out of their minds and overly friendly. When I got back to the hotel, I took a shower with extra soap and collapsed on the bed, passing put instantly from anise and sun.

When I woke up I was in a fog, confused about where I was and how I got there. That vertigo was becoming common, because on our trip so far we’d been in a different cheap hotel, or on a flight, bus, or train every third day. I got my bearings by looking at the hotel stationery. We were at the Blue Iguana in Isla Margarita in Venezuela.

That’s right — how the hell could I forget? As I eased into wakefulness I thought about our journey so far. It had been a wild ride — only a few weeks ago I had been so innocent and carefree until everything went wrong. It had started with the rat-hole King’s Inn, quite possibly the worst hotel on earth, infested with rats, hookers, and shadowy guests who paid by the hour. After two hellish weeks there we had finally plotted our escape, booking flights to Brazil.  We arrived at the airport extra early, eager and bright-eyed to depart the country, only to get turned back because our travel visas weren’t valid.  Back to the King’s Inn. The next day we found the Brazilian embassy and fought our way to the front of the line to apply for our visas.  The paperwork would take a few days, but our escape seemed imminent save one item: we needed medical certifications that we’d been immunized for yellow fever.

I had already had every immunization known to man before I left the United States; my shoulders were like pincushions over a three-week period at the Yale medical clinic. But Shane still needed his, so the next day we grabbed a taxi and headed out to try and find a medical clinic where he could get his shot quickly. Our driver took us all over the city, but every clinic or doctor’s office was either closed or they couldn’t fit him in for an appointment until the next week. Finally, the driver said he knew of a free medical clinic that would do it, but it was in a rough barrio and gonna be a crapshoot whether we got out safely or not. He took us deep into a shit-hole hood where young thugs hung out in the middle of the street blocking cars — he said the police wouldn’t even go there. He pulled onto the curb in front of the medical clinic and told Shane that they had to run in together and get out quickly so they wouldn’t be robbed or mugged or worse. He told me to stay in the back of the taxi with the doors locked and not to let anyone in, no matter what. He pulled something from under his seat and placed it on the back seat next to me with a newspaper over it, and then they sprinted into the building. I locked the doors from the inside and pulled back the newspaper; it was a huge butcher’s knife he’d left me to fight off any carjackers. Damn, this was getting heavy.

They came running out twenty minutes later, just as the locals were starting to circle and discuss how to dispose of my body once they stole the car. We got back to the embassy, but even with his medical card it would take almost a week to process the visa paperwork. There was no way in hell I was staying at the King’s Inn that long, so we hopped the first flight we could to Isla Margarita, a resort island off of Venezuela’s northern coast where rich people from the mainland and poor island folks partied.

The island was a welcome break from dirty, polluted Caracas and the King’s Inn. Our first night there we went downtown to check out a crowded strip of bars. Shane noticed several girls walking together up ahead of us. He was mesmerized by a tall, super-fly chica in their pack so we followed them for a while, trying not to be obvious by hiding behind trees and pretending to read newspapers when they turned around.

We were tailing them when they stopped abruptly for one of them to answer her cell phone. Shane and I couldn’t hit the brakes in time, so we bumped into the back of them at full speed. Since it was obvious that we were going to follow them around all night like lost puppy dogs without introducing ourselves, one of the girls took pity on us and said hello. Shane talked to his tall girl and I chatted with her younger sister, who spoke surprisingly good English. It turned out that three of the girls were the president’s nieces and their family was at Isla Margarita for their summer vacation. Back in 1999 not many people had heard of the Venezuelan president, but pretty soon people started paying attention to the name Hugo Chavez in international news as he grew increasingly antagonistic toward the United States, positioning himself as the new Fidel Castro. I suspect that the girls were really in Isla Margarita for security reasons, because President Chavez was on shaky political ground in his own country when he illegally extended his term limits and quelled a political revolt by physically locking his congress out of the capitol. The girls were staying at the best hotel on the island and always had security officers hanging around. They were digging us, so we made a date to take them out to ice cream later, and then it was time for the Ciao Line.

What’s the Ciao Line, you ask? In Latin American countries when you greet someone or say goodbye, no matter whether you’ve just met them or been exchanging bodily fluids with them for years, you kiss them on the cheek. Sounds painless, right? But the president’s nieces and their friends traveled in packs, like over-populated coyotes. I should have applied Chapstick when I saw them coming. When they got up to leave, I stood still with my lips puckered, doing that fake little half-hug where you stick your butt out so your private parts have no chance of accidentally touching, and said ciao to each of them. One by one, they moved down the line and did the cheek kiss and said ciao, like a gringo conveyor belt.

We kicked it with Chavez’s nieces for a few more days.  For some reason I can’t fathom, whether she just had awful taste in me or I was being set me up for a political kidnapping, the niece I was hanging out with took a real shine to me. There was no denying that she was beautiful, and I would have loved to properly date her, buddying up with “Uncle Hugo” and the presidential family and consummating my love for her with frequent relations, but that just wasn’t going to happen because of the toothpaste all over my man-junk. I should probably explain.

Shane was our official trip doctor. Granted, there were only two of us, so the options were limited, but I couldn’t even pass ninth grade biology, so the choice was obvious. Of course, he had no formal medical training but he was a pharmaceutical salesman, so that was good enough for me. Plus, he had a grab bag of pills in his toilet bag, so I could steal a random handful and wash them down with a beer whenever needed.

In Isla Margarita I developed a rash all over my man-junk region. Now, to be very clear, it turned out to be nothing — just a bad heat rash — but I’d never had something like that before, so I was freaking out. I pride myself on being as clean as the board of health, and I knew I definitely contracted it during my time at the King’s Inn. I bought a huge bottle of rubbing alcohol to wash myself down completely whenever I even touched a local, but it quickly broke in my backpack and doused all of my possessions, making me smell like a senior center on cleaning day.

I’d been trying to self-medicate for a few days, but the rash just wasn’t going away. I remembered when I was a teenager and I got a pimple, people would tell me to put toothpaste on it at night before I went to bed and it would dry up by morning. I thought the same theory might apply here, so I slathered toothpaste all over my man-junk every morning and night. I had gone through three tubes of Aquafresh but it wasn’t working so far — although I did enjoy the minty tingle. Finally, I started to panic and couldn’t take it anymore. I booked an appointment with the trip doctor (Shane) to look at it and give me his professional opinion and hopefully some drugs to clear it up; nothing is sacred when you’re traveling around the world with someone for a year.

We were crashing the breakfast buffet at the Marriot for the fourth morning in a row, our ritual of taking advantage of the hotel’s amenities without actually staying there. No matter what country we were in there was always an ultra-modern and sparkling Marriot somewhere in town. They didn’t seem to notice when we walked in like we were VIP guests and helped ourselves to some free coffee and breakfast, read the newspaper sprawled out in comfy chairs in their lobby, lounged by their pool, and even took our time using their majestic marbled bathrooms. After a few hours we’d leave the Marriot and retreat to our shit-hole hotel down the street, feeling refreshed. So Shane and I snuck into the Marriot bathroom for my doctor’s appointment. It was embarrassing, but I reminded myself that he was a medical professional (sort of), so I dropped my trousers and he examined me right there in the Marriot bathroom stall. He looked for a second and then said, “Hmmm ... I’m not sure. It may be something.”

Yeah thanks, I could have told you that. We waited until the coast was clear to come out of the bathroom stall so no one would get the wrong idea. But needless to say, I was excluded from having any relations with the president of Venezuela’s niece because of my toothpaste. Ohhhh, if only Uncle Hugo knew.

After a long weekend on the island, we felt the calling to go back to Caracas to check on our visas. After more boxing out in line, we were told that it would be one more day. No problem. To pass the time, we hired an old taxi driver to drive us all around the city and show us the attractions — including a glimpse of the bad neighborhoods to see how the common person lived. He was hesitant, and we had to urge him again and again to drive us into these barrios. “This doesn’t look so bad,” we said to ourselves, as I snapped a couple photos of the scenery. When we turned up this one street the driver whipped the car around instantly and sped off in the other direction, tires screeching. When we questioned him why he abruptly drove off he only said, “Ladrones,” which means “thieves.” We thought he was crazy and just being paranoid, but found out otherwise pretty quickly.

We were waiting at a red light only a few blocks down, when all of a sudden a motorcycle rolled up with two skinny tattooed guys on it. They pulled up right next to my door and started yelling, and reached through the open back window, trying to grab at me. They were trying to rob us of our cameras, wallets, and watches, whatever a tourist might have on him. I was in shock, but in a split second it was obvious they were about to get violent, and there we were trapped in the back of this taxi. All of a sudden the old man slammed the gas and took off, speeding through a red light and dodging traffic. The thieves chased us for about ten blocks, trying to catch up and pull alongside the swerving taxi, but our cagey driver eluded them, and just as quickly they peeled off when we passed a police car. We were safe.

It took a minute for my heart to stop jumping. Our driver explained that they were gang members who controlled the barrio’s drug trade with violence, robbery, and intimidation. He said that they had knives and guns and they weren’t afraid to use them. So when they saw a taxi cab in their neighborhood (which never happens) and a white guy pulling out a nice camera (which also never happens), they decided to jack us.

We must have looked as conspicuous as if a helicopter landed in the middle of your street and Donald Trump got out. The driver turned his face around and showed us a big scar that led from his cheek to the side of his mouth. He told us that he’d been carjacked before in his taxi and the robbers pulled a pistol and shot him at close range. The bullet ripped through the side of his mouth and exited his cheek.

Our luck was changing, and indeed the next morning our shiny new visas were ready for us at the Brazilian embassy. We boarded a plane the following morning with our fingers crossed, hoping we were leaving behind the Dynamite-Head brother ad-libbing Queen songs, Hugo Chavez and his nieces, toothpaste on my man-junk, high-speed chases with ladrones, cab drivers with bullet scars, the Ciao Line, the Dantean hell of the King’s Inn, and butcher knives in back seats forever. But we did remember to pack the Frisbee, just in case we wanted to hit someone else in the head, which was really just our way of saying hello.

Ethics in Memoir

Writing a memoir can be a fun, exciting endeavor, and cathartic for the author to get their version of real life onto the page.  It also has the capacity to piss off a lot of people. 

I ran into a few complex ethical questions while writing my second book, South of Normal, a nonfiction account of the year I lived down in Tamarindo, Costa Rica.  As I navigated the tangled jungle of ethics within that book, I decided to document and share a few points that might help other authors, as well:

Get their feedback – If characters will be recognizable and you actually care what they think, be respectful.  Send an email letting them know that you are publishing this project and offer to have a conversation with them if they have any issues or concerns.  Be open to listening to their point of view and making any non-essential changes  

Never compromise someone’s safety - As I wrote “South of Normal” I reached out for a friend, unfortunately a main character in the book who is locked up in a Third World prison.  He requested that I excluded certain details about his case for security reasons, and of course I complied. 

Chose your words carefully – Even changing one word can alter the whole context of a paragraph.  Showing actions or documenting a character’s dialogue straight from their mouth is a great way to show “the dirt” because the writer’s not telling you what to think, they make up an opinion for themselves.

Be fair with each character – Show the good and bad in your characters to balance them out.  Great people often have great flaws and people who do bad things are usually just misguided or hurt, not evil.  Making the bad guys likable and vice versa will also add depth and humanize your characters.

Don’t write angry – Ranting against someone and settling scores in your writing is a horrible thing to do.  But it’s also fun, and better than blowing up their car in real life, so I recommend doing it through the lens of humor, and show some sort of redemption or coming to peace with them afterwards.  Angry does not write well, and usually reflects more poorly on the writer than it does the subject.

Hold yourself to the same standard – Bash yourself.  I mean really rip into your flaws, misdeeds, and moral struggles.  The readers will see themselves in you and love you for it.  Again, humor is a great way to expose your foibles. 

Want vs. Need - Make sure private and revealing details about characters are necessary – as a rule of thumb anything that’s written should either develop characters or move the story along with action. 

Change names – the easiest way to insulate yourself against the backlash from characters in your book is to alter their names, and even relevant details.  Once that is done you’ll sleep easier telling your truth without softening the blows.

Get it in writing - Document Facebook messages, texts, and emails with information with the characters and situations in your book.  Having written documentation is your bulletproof vest against libel suits or flat out denials.  

The dark alley test – Ultimately who’s right and wrong becomes irrelevant at a certain point.  If you still have to work or interact with these people on a daily basis then ask yourself if what you’re writing is worth it if you happened to meet them in a dark alley.    

Sometimes real life is just more important than your art.  I have a dear friend in Tamarindo whose friendship I value above all else.  She is a pivotal character in the book and goes through a difficult, emotional journey, though her growth is one of the main victories by the end.  It was important for me to get her blessing, so I asked her to read certain parts of the manuscript before it went over to the publishers.  I was pleasantly surprised that she suggested only one small change, but other than that really liked it and thought I did a good job.  You never know how people will respond emotionally to their private lives being documented, so just ask.   

Some people will love their portrayals in South of Normal, some will be less than thrilled.  But I’m confident I found that small patch of terra firma where I treated everyone fairly but also didn’t set out to assassinate anyone’s character, while still staying true to the heart of the story.  Wish me luck, and I’ll see you in a dark alley soon.  

-South of Normal is due out March 1.  Follow me on Twitter @NormSchriever for updates.