做梦都想当Billionaire的作家们不在少数,但想成为写手的Billionaire估计就这么一位。有在Nike工作的咖啡客出来评一评,公司的运货单证是否也必须要写的押韵?:))
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Last year, I met a food-industry entrepreneur in California worth about $500 million. He had sold his business and was pursuing a rather unusual second career: He was an undergraduate. He’d never gone to college and wanted a degree that he earned himself, rather than buying through an honorarium. He wasn’t taking business or money-management classes, since he had plenty of money already. He was taking philosophy, English and history courses in an effort to become a more well-rounded person.
He also didn’t want to be known as the rich guy in the room — a la Rodney Dangerfield in “Back to School.” He kept a low profile on campus and, while friendly with other students, never talked about his wealth or business. (He also declined my request to write about him.)
“I want to be a student,” he told me. “And work and struggle like everyone else.”
The story came to mind when I read Nicholas Casey’s article in today’s Journal about Philip Knight. Mr Knight, the Nike founder and billionaire, has attended writing classes at Stanford at times in the last three years. He wants to write a novel and decided to attend various English classes, including “English 95: Form and Theory of the Novel,” which is known as the “novel salon.”
One of Mr. Knight’s homework assignments focused on Hemingway, and the 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.”
“Writing 12 drafts and discussing them with Scott Fitzgerald did not hurt this book,” he wrote. He added, however, that the book was a bit light on narrative voice.
Why would the billionaire sneaker king want to suffer the indignities of being an undergrad? With his bankroll, Mr. Knight could have jetted John Updike or John Irving to his house for private tutoring sessions. Since he’s given Stanford $105 million, he could followed the path of many of today’s top donors and received an honorary degree. (Not that he needs one: He graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1962.)
Like many of today’s wealthy, Mr. Knight prefers to downplay his wealth. He wants to be like everybody else, to be faithful to his hard-working, middle-class roots, and to be a genuine intellect. He wants people to ignore his bank account and focus on his prose. He aspires to be normal — in so far as a billionaire aspiring novelist can be normal.
As the novelist Edward Schwarzschild, who visited one of Mr. Knight’s classes, put it in the article: “He wanted to to be part of a true workshop, as an equal. He didn’t want to be CEO. He wanted to be Phil Knight, the student.”
So hats off to Mr. Knight for heading back to the classroom. At a time when “Just Do It” has been replaced by “Just Buy it,” Mr. Knight has decided to learn to become a writer the old-fashioned way.
- Re: Phil Knight Goes Back to School (zt)posted on 12/07/2007
Very understandable for someone who has conquered the business world to get a taste in the intellectual world. When job and money are no longer an issue, going back to school means sheer fun of learning. What is not to like? - Re: Phil Knight Goes Back to School (zt)posted on 12/08/2007
Still, not quite convincing an argument. Why not just simply enjoy life, like many other billionaires, while job and money are no longer of daily concerns? (of course here I assume intellectual challenge is not essential part of anyone's everyday pastime: ))
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