SARASOTA, Florida. For four years Ed Schnorr labored away at his memoirs, his first attempt at long-form writing after a forty-year career as a tool-and-die manufacturer. “It was a labor of love,” he says wistfully. “One reviewer said it was a charming look back on a happy life by a man who now focuses on his grandchildren,” he says. When this reporter asks him what publication the quote–which is featured as a “blurb” on the back cover of “Loving Life . . . Now That I’m Retired!”–appeared in, Schnorr says “None, actually,” but not at all sheepishly. “I paid $57 to my publishing company for it, so I know it’s legit.”
“That guy couldn’t write his way out of a Barnes & Noble bag!”
With 1,000 copies of his self-published book to unload Schnorr made himself a nuisance at pickle ball courts, bridge clubs and show-tune nights in Boca Del Vista Rey Retirement Village here, and against all odds he actually made a few sales to his fellow retirees, bringing his unsold inventory down to 977. “I’ll admit I bought a copy,” says Mort Schusterman, a former bra and girdle manufacturer, “but it was only to get rid of the bum.”
“No thanks, I already bought somebody’s memoirs.”
But over the last few months sales slowed to a halt, and after asking around Schnorr found out why. “Cut-throat competition,” he says, with a nod over his shoulder at Mel Cates, who is pushing his memoirs–“How I Made Money, Made Friends, and Did Good at the Same Time!”–on two couples enjoying lunch at the clubhouse here. “He basically copied my literary style and my business model,” Schnorr says bitterly. “The only thing he changed was the names of the grandchildren, otherwise I could sue him for plagiarism.”
Self-published memoirs are a popular activity among retirees, particular former owners of middle-market companies who sold their businesses and now find themselves unable to boss people around. “It’s the feeling of ‘Is that all there is?’ when you get a check big enough to pay off your bank loans but not a whole lot more,” says psychologist Eleanor Schulman who counsels the spouses of many such men. “They’re searching for some tangible confirmation that they were once a big deal, just in case their wives die before them and they need a pick-up line when they’re standing in line with a package of adult diapers under their arm at the drug store.”
“Here comes Schnorr. Act dead, maybe he’ll go away.”
Literary rivalries tend to be bitter, but Schnorr and Cates have so far avoided the fisticuffs that writers from Hemingway to Norman Mailer have resorted to in order to establish their male dominance over rivals in a sector whose only clear measure of success is sales. That hasn’t stopped them from sniping at each other over perceived small-bore miscues, however. “He calls himself a writer,” Schnorr says, as he flips through a borrowed copy of Cates’ memoir. “He forgot to put ‘I’ before ‘E’ here where he talks about his nieghbors.”