Monks, Nudes, and Rollerskates: Life Begins at 40 [1]. Purchase it online at monksbook.com [2]. (Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0-980055306 Rocket Squirrel Press)
“When some men hit the middle age crazies, they quit their jobs, buy red convertibles, divorce, and marry trophy wives half their years. James Cortese took a different route, economically and matrimonially, by following his dreams in real-life flights of fancy. What’s more, he did it during the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s–when “respectable working men” (if, ahem, newspaper columnists are included in such lofty circles) were supposed to be above this kind of nonsense.
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Cortese’s fun-to-read book chronicles his adventures all over the map: everything from swimming across the Mississippi River, to playing Beethoven in the Grand Canyon, to roller-skating through Texas and much more, all culminating with his appearance on the CBS quiz show, To Tell The Truth.
Walter Mitty, eat your heart out.”
–Sam Venable, Columnist,Knoxville News Sentinel
more after the jump...
This funny, personal account of a mid-life crisis begins in 1959, when at the age of 40, Jim Cortese swims across this Mississippi River; spends a week as a monk-in-training at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky; enjoys another week at a nudist camp in New Jersey; whitewashes Tom Sawyer’s fence in Hannibal, Missouri; climbs the steps of the Empire State Building in New York City; camps overnight at the site of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond; fights bats at Longwood in Natchez, Mississippi; uses a battery-powered turntable and speakers to play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and half a dozen Elvis records over the Grand Canyon at dawn; borrows an organ grinder’s monkey to acquire the happy life of a hurdy gurdy man; and finally, rollerskates across Texas from Shreveport, Louisiana to Hobbs, New Mexico. A quintessential newspaper man with a healthy appetite for adventure, local newspapers provided photo documentaries of these journeys, which generously illustrate the book.
Following his death in 2006 at the age of 89, Cortese’s sons Ted, Jim, Richard, and Michael decided to honor their father’s memory and publish his book, Monks Nudes and Rollerskates: Life Begins at 40. For the many older readers of the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Caruthersville, Missouri Democrat Argus, this book will bring back memories of a bygone age of open roads and spirited travels. For younger readers perhaps encountering their own mid-life crisis, this book may just inspire spontaneous acts of youthful indiscretion.
RocketSquirrel Press is a small imprint publisher in Knoxville, Tennessee that celebrates regional culture and flavor, presenting distinctive stories and voices that shape the character of a local community.