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摘要
摘要
A unique memoir of a "tough guy's" life,Gutsis a sharp and wry meditation on American manhood A self-confessed reckless jerk, Robert Nylen has spent the last four years grappling with Big Diseases (cancer and diabetes), an astonishing twelve broken bones, and ten surgeries. And yetGutsis not a mere chronicle of injuries, but an unsparing and hilarious memoir, war story, self-help book, and confessional. Nylen shows how a callow suburban kid growing up in the 1950s and 1960s became a slovenly, hard-partying, immature fraternity boy before growing up quickly--fighting in Vietnam, and being wounded multiple times in the line of fire. It was then that he started the real risky business--in the media world. Some of his ventures succeeded, and some failed. He exercised feverishly and often displayed a complete lack of common sense. And then he got sick with colon cancer. Hilarious and moving, this is a riveting account seen through the scope of a national obsession with toughness. Whether he's punching Razr-scooter riders in Chinatown or walking point as platoon leader in the Vietnam jungle, Nylen never backs down from a good fight--and he has the scars to prove it. From the Hardcover edition.
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Vietnam vet, cofounder of New England Monthly and a media consultant, Nylen, who died last year, shares with punchy humor and tremendous grace his tough approach to taking risks and staring down exacting bosses as well as cancer. Cherishing such stoical role models as Don Quixote and Ulysses S. Grant (as well as his own father, who spent his prime years as a DuPont executive before a traumatic fall altered his life permanently), Nylen celebrates America's admiration with gutsiness, and his own lifetime attempts (frequently foolish) to make the "Cool Guys Hall of Fame." The bulk of this memoir is Nylen's facetious though moving account of his stint as an infantry officer in Vietnam in 1968, and the men he loved and lost-the ghastly experience, he assures readers, was never accurately depicted in popular movies. Shell-shocked, married after release from the army, "simulating a normal person" and appearing unemployable, he began his accidental career as a media ad salesman starting at Look magazine, dealing with tough bosses like Bill Dunn at U.S. News and World Report and Mike Levy at Texas Monthly before embarking on his own. Diagnosed with colorectal cancer stage III when he was 60, he endured treatments, surgeries, pain and frequent accidents of his own making, but preserves his cheerful, frank, optimistic and ever competitive spirit in the face of mortal adversity. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
摘录
摘录
Chapter One Black Ice A warm day in late December 2007 proved me nuts, and an idiot, again. I was in a hurry. Had to drive 190 miles south from our western Massachusetts home to take a meeting in Manhattan and then go to a party. Hastily, I gassed my car at Neighbors convenience store. As I sped away, a pretty girl at the next pump was trying to tell me something...important. She waved Gasoline spewed sideways. My sweet Samaritan retrieved her barefoot toddler and ran away to avoid being blown up. Mortified, I tried to reconnect the line to the pump. It was like trying to cap Old Faithful with a saucer. Gas soaked me, making me a potential torch. One spark and I'd be a one-man Hindenburg. I raced inside to rinse my stinging eyes with tap water. Blearily, I watched volunteer firemen assess the risk. Mere seconds after my SS Valdez had breached on dry ground, they determined that therewasn't much chance of an explosion. The dry air had sped evaporation. The damage: roughly five hundred dollars for the pump, four bucks' worth of kitty litter to absorb runoff, and a day out of service for Neighbors' regular pump. Went home. Threw away my parka, rabbit-fur hat, and mittens. Bathed. Sniffed. Bathed again. Changed into fresh clothes. Rushed to Manhattan, eyes oozing. The sublime Taconic Parkway blurred by, its lovely scenery unseen. Stopped a couple of times to slather ointment on my aching face. Dabbed tears every few minutes. Over tea in the Soho Grand Hotel, my face afire, I told a young woman that I usuallydidn't look like a molting chameleon. Not knowing my baseline of ugliness--it was our first meeting--she lied, sweet Charlize Theron to my grotesque Hellboy. "You look fine!" Next, it was party time. Beliefnet's directors and bankers nestled in a posh Greenwich Village restaurant to celebrate the sale of the company. Steven Waldman and I had started Beliefnet in 1998 (after wecouldn't find money to start a print magazine). We changed the fledgling project into an online medium, got plenty of money, then even more money, and then we went bankrupt. I'd quit before the company declared Chapter 11 after discovering I was both irreligious and aspiritual. Long after I'd left, Steve had reorganized, raised more money, and led the pared-down company to success. On May 1, 2007, Beliefnet won a National Magazine Award for Online Excellence--despite never having published a real print magazine. Steve graciously thanked me before 2,300 hundred bejeweled, bedecked media mavens, John Waters, Edie Falco, and K. T. Tunstall in Lincoln Center. Meanwhile, I was attending to my busted ostomy appliance in themen's room. Every unpleasantness is a learning opportunity. A double-breasted tuxedo and a big, wide cummerbund effectively disguiseone's failed artificial plumbing system. (Perhaps I should wear a cummerbund everywhere: Whole Foods, Target, the Ashfield Hardware Store, and evenings with friends: festive!) Six months later, RupertMurdoch's Fox Entertainment had paid us a pretty penny--tens of millions of pennies--for Beliefnet, but then again,they'd paid sixty-five times more for The Wall Street Journal. That evening, I explained my horrid face to seven fellow board members, one by one. Like young Charlize, they pretended not to notice my ruddy, scaling skin from a potion incendiary and toxic drugs that Estée Lauderdoesn't sell. Alone, each ingredient makes you peel in red, scabby slabs. Mixed, you look insane, too. Back in western Massachusetts the next week, I asked Neighbors' proprietor, Phil Nolan, how much I owed him. He said:"It's all taken care of, Bob.Don't worry."That's whathe'd said when I pulled the s Excerpted from Guts: Combat, Hell-raising, Cancer, Business Start-ups, and Undying Love: One American Guy's Reckless, Lucky Life by Robert Nylen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.目录
1 Black Ice | p. 3 |
2 Evidence that I'm No Tough Guy | p. 20 |
3 Back in Asia, 1968; Among Things Un-Carried: No Camera, Thanks | p. 38 |
4 More Jungle Trouble: Scrolling Down the Devil's PowerPoint | p. 47 |
5 Nervous, Frowsy Nancy | p. 65 |
6 What Crawls on Its Belly and Blows Us All Up? | p. 73 |
7 Big Blond Grunts and Little Brown Kids | p. 84 |
8 Two Sergeants-One Heroic, the Elder Not So Much | p. 92 |
9 Shamming: Happy, Kinda Safe | p. 95 |
10 Instead of Bursting Hearts with Bullets, Something New: Winning Minds | p. 98 |
11 Our Personal Charm Offensive | p. 104 |
12 Gunny: Lifer Gyrene | p. 110 |
13 Mom Saves My Life | p. 121 |
14 Mom: Farmer's Daughter Turned Flapper; Dad: Squarehead Turned Bomb Maker, Fall Guy | p. 126 |
15 Me, Back in the Land of the Giganormous PX | p. 135 |
16 After the War, a Job, Finally; What's Scarier than War? | p. 139 |
17 The Third Newsmagazine ... No ... Make That Number Four! | p. 146 |
18 Tough Bosses | p. 152 |
19 Starting Up, Cringing; Raising Money; Danger on the Roof | p. 169 |
20 Tough Yankees | p. 180 |
21 From Old to New Media | p. 186 |
22 Why Kit Manages Our Finances | p. 193 |
23 The Beginning of What Proves Not to Be the End | p. 197 |
24 The Spurious Cancer-as-War Metaphor; Some Un-Ironic Heroes | p. 206 |
25 Foolishness Continues; Backwards, to Infirmity | p. 222 |
26 Becoming a Little Bit Stoic | p. 234 |
27 Enduring, Singing Endtime Songs, Rating War Movies | p. 240 |
28 Remembering the Forgotten | p. 243 |