writing quips for the Leader of the Free World. He was advised that the best way to get into the government was to take the Foreign Service examination. He passed the written exam but failed the orals. He never knew why he had failed, but he guessed that one of the examiners had disapproved when he responded to a question about his outside interests by saying, “Scuba diving and killer whales.”
A letter from a friend of his father’s got him a job at the National Geographic.
After a year of writing captions-chafing at the sight of full-time writers returning, tanned and leathery, from exotic assignments-he asked his boss how long it would take him to become a staff writer. He was told there was no guarantee he would ever
become a staff writer. The best way to demonstrate his talent to the editors, said his boss, was for him to write a free-lance piece for the magazine.
He quit his job and began to deluge the editors with one-paragraph story ideas about far-off places, but he soon discovered that before the editors would consider assigning a piece, they wanted an outline so extensive and so detailed that only someone intimately familiar with the place in question could prepare the outline. Sanders had never been west of the Mississippi, and the only place he had visited outside the continental United States was St.
Croix. He started to work on a novel. He had written nearly twenty pages when Gloria announced that-despite the diligent use of every birth-control device known to science except abstinence-she was pregnant.
Sanders first considered Wall Street during a glum, drunken evening with a college classmate.
The bull market of the mid-sixties was just beginning, and Sanders’ classmate was making thirty thousand a year for doing, by his own admission, practically nothing. Certainly, Sanders reasoned, he was no less qualified than his classmate, and he found a roguish appeal in the stories about the young “gun slingers” on the Street. He moved to New York, rented an apartment in the East Seventies, read a few books, made a few contacts, and found a job-all in less than a month.
To his surprise, Sanders liked the work. It was easy and exciting and remunerative. He was gregarious, liked to take chances with money, and his early successes (accomplished simply by following the advice of more experienced brokers) brought him as many clients as he chose to service. He was bright enough to realize that though the Dow might hit the fabulous 1,000 mark, something would eventually happen to bring the market down, so he learned about hedge funds and selling short. The slide that began in 1968 made him, on paper, reasonably well off.
He took himself off salary and became a “customer’s man,” surviving solely on commissions received from buying and selling stocks for his clients. He was very good at his job (he believed he had a special gift for sensing impending changes in the market, and he relished taking risks based on hunches), and three rival firms tried to hire him at handsome salaries. He refused, preferring the unpredictable life of the customer’s man. The fact that he never knew, from one month to the next, how much money he would make, excited him.
He viewed it as freedom. If he
failed to make a living, he had no one to blame but himself. If (as was the case) he succeeded, there was no one with whom he had to share credit.
His wife, Gloria, however, regarded this freedom, this so-called courage, as madness. She was an orderly person who did not take chances, who liked to know exactly how much money would be in each of the envelopes she kept in a file drawer labeled “budget.” There was envelopes for food, clothing, toys, entertainment, and schoolbooks.
By 1971, Sanders had two children, a co-operative apartment on West Sixty-seventh Street, and a house in Westhampton. He knew he should have been a happy man, but he was bored. Gloria bored him. She was interested in, and knowledgeable about, only
A letter from a friend of his father’s got him a job at the National Geographic.
After a year of writing captions-chafing at the sight of full-time writers returning, tanned and leathery, from exotic assignments-he asked his boss how long it would take him to become a staff writer. He was told there was no guarantee he would ever
become a staff writer. The best way to demonstrate his talent to the editors, said his boss, was for him to write a free-lance piece for the magazine.
He quit his job and began to deluge the editors with one-paragraph story ideas about far-off places, but he soon discovered that before the editors would consider assigning a piece, they wanted an outline so extensive and so detailed that only someone intimately familiar with the place in question could prepare the outline. Sanders had never been west of the Mississippi, and the only place he had visited outside the continental United States was St.
Croix. He started to work on a novel. He had written nearly twenty pages when Gloria announced that-despite the diligent use of every birth-control device known to science except abstinence-she was pregnant.
Sanders first considered Wall Street during a glum, drunken evening with a college classmate.
The bull market of the mid-sixties was just beginning, and Sanders’ classmate was making thirty thousand a year for doing, by his own admission, practically nothing. Certainly, Sanders reasoned, he was no less qualified than his classmate, and he found a roguish appeal in the stories about the young “gun slingers” on the Street. He moved to New York, rented an apartment in the East Seventies, read a few books, made a few contacts, and found a job-all in less than a month.
To his surprise, Sanders liked the work. It was easy and exciting and remunerative. He was gregarious, liked to take chances with money, and his early successes (accomplished simply by following the advice of more experienced brokers) brought him as many clients as he chose to service. He was bright enough to realize that though the Dow might hit the fabulous 1,000 mark, something would eventually happen to bring the market down, so he learned about hedge funds and selling short. The slide that began in 1968 made him, on paper, reasonably well off.
He took himself off salary and became a “customer’s man,” surviving solely on commissions received from buying and selling stocks for his clients. He was very good at his job (he believed he had a special gift for sensing impending changes in the market, and he relished taking risks based on hunches), and three rival firms tried to hire him at handsome salaries. He refused, preferring the unpredictable life of the customer’s man. The fact that he never knew, from one month to the next, how much money he would make, excited him.
He viewed it as freedom. If he
failed to make a living, he had no one to blame but himself. If (as was the case) he succeeded, there was no one with whom he had to share credit.
His wife, Gloria, however, regarded this freedom, this so-called courage, as madness. She was an orderly person who did not take chances, who liked to know exactly how much money would be in each of the envelopes she kept in a file drawer labeled “budget.” There was envelopes for food, clothing, toys, entertainment, and schoolbooks.
By 1971, Sanders had two children, a co-operative apartment on West Sixty-seventh Street, and a house in Westhampton. He knew he should have been a happy man, but he was bored. Gloria bored him. She was interested in, and knowledgeable about, only
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