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The Hunger for More: Searching for Values in an Age of Greed
Starting with the premise that America is as rich as it is going to get, the author argues that it is time to redefine success in other than material terms
- GenresNonfiction
291 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 1989
20 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Laurence Shames
40 books241 followersLaurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day’s work since.
His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West Capers--14 titles and counting!--he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record.
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames did not know Philip Roth, Paul Simon, Queen Latifa, Shaquille O’Neal, or any of the other really cool people who have come from his hometown. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a side note, both his alma mater and honorary society have been extraordinarily adept at tracking his many address changes through the decades, in spite of the fact that he’s never sent them one red cent, and never will.
It was on an Italian beach in the summer of 1970 that Shames first heard the sacred call of the writer’s vocation. Lonely and poor, hungry and thirsty, he’d wandered into a seaside trattoria, where he noticed a couple tucking into a big platter of fritto misto. The man was nothing much to look at but the woman was really beautiful. She was perfectly tan and had a very fine-gauge gold chain looped around her bare tummy. The couple was sharing a liter of white wine; condensation beaded the carafe. Eye contact was made; the couple turned out to be Americans. The man wiped olive oil from his rather sensual lips and introduced himself as a writer. Shames knew in that moment that he would be one too.
He began writing stories and longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn’t sell them.
By 1979 he’d somehow become a journalist and was soon publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. (This transition entailed some lucky breaks, but is not as vivid a tale as the fritto misto bit, so we’ll just sort of gloss over it.) In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor to that magazine.
By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books. The critical, if not the commercial, success of these first established Shames’ credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, Boss of Bosses, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing novels. Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and New York mobsters blundering through a town where people were too laid back to be afraid of them. But this part of the story is best told with reference to the books themselves, so please spend some time and explore them.
His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West Capers--14 titles and counting!--he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record.
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames did not know Philip Roth, Paul Simon, Queen Latifa, Shaquille O’Neal, or any of the other really cool people who have come from his hometown. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a side note, both his alma mater and honorary society have been extraordinarily adept at tracking his many address changes through the decades, in spite of the fact that he’s never sent them one red cent, and never will.
It was on an Italian beach in the summer of 1970 that Shames first heard the sacred call of the writer’s vocation. Lonely and poor, hungry and thirsty, he’d wandered into a seaside trattoria, where he noticed a couple tucking into a big platter of fritto misto. The man was nothing much to look at but the woman was really beautiful. She was perfectly tan and had a very fine-gauge gold chain looped around her bare tummy. The couple was sharing a liter of white wine; condensation beaded the carafe. Eye contact was made; the couple turned out to be Americans. The man wiped olive oil from his rather sensual lips and introduced himself as a writer. Shames knew in that moment that he would be one too.
He began writing stories and longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn’t sell them.
By 1979 he’d somehow become a journalist and was soon publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. (This transition entailed some lucky breaks, but is not as vivid a tale as the fritto misto bit, so we’ll just sort of gloss over it.) In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor to that magazine.
By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books. The critical, if not the commercial, success of these first established Shames’ credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, Boss of Bosses, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing novels. Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and New York mobsters blundering through a town where people were too laid back to be afraid of them. But this part of the story is best told with reference to the books themselves, so please spend some time and explore them.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 28, 2021
"Success," to an extraordinary degree, was the constant target of will and exertions in the 1980s, the glittering but indistinct Oz toward which aspirations strained. What, precisely, did the word mean? No one seemed to know, but it didn't really matter.
While written in the 80s, this book is just as important today, if not more so! Shanes asks the question, what does success mean and points out that people have this hunger for more that can never really be quenched. He asks one to think why no one has as their goal "contentment" or "serenity".
You couldn't really say what success was made of, or why it was a worthwhile goal, except by pointing to the things it bought.
I can't really do his words justice, so I will post some more quotes:
- "The kind of serenity that cannot be shattered by tomorrow's headline —has gone largely unfulfilled, and even unacknowledged."
- "Insofar as "seriousness" was equated with making a living, that was certainly true. What no one seemed to be saying, however, was that these "serious" grabs at personal prosperity were coming at the expense of precisely those civilized and civilizing privileges that prosperity was for. As adolescence contracted, there was less leisure and less disinterested learning. Lives zinged by too fast and too purposefully to be examined. People gave up the luxury of time in favor of the luxury of stuff."
He also talks about the social history of the 50s to the 80s and I found it fascinating. I would love it if a part two of this book came out comparing the 80s to the 2010s in the same way.
- John F. Kennedy, then stumping for the presidential nomination: "We have grown soft—physically, mentally, spiritually soft. The slow corrosion of luxury is already beginning to show."
- The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease. -—William James
But really, this whole book is so quotable and important. I have over 45 highlights saved. I highly recommend everyone pick this up and check it out for themselves! It's also available for free on Kindle Unlimited.
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January 21, 2021I love this book. I read it over 20 years ago and it is still relevant today.
August 25, 2007
my 1st read was a while after the 80s bubble burst - this is the "morning-after" book - now i've lived long enough to see the cycle starts again.. "success being referred to solely money, not accomplishments.. more things, more gadgets.." a more serious "chicken soup for the rat racers", it's still relevant in the age of rushing and scoring without sharing and contemplating.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews