Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived [Paperback]

Laurence Shames (Author), Peter Barton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2004

Some people are born to lead and destined to teach by the example of living life to the fullest, and facing death with uncommon honesty and courage. Peter Barton was that kind of person.

Driven by the ideals that sparked a generation, he became an overachieving Everyman, a risk-taker who showed others what was possible. Then, in the prime of his life — hugely successful, happily married, and the father of three children — Peter faced the greatest of all challenges. Diagnosed with cancer, he began a journey that was not only frightening and appalling but also full of wonder and discovery.

With unflinching candor and even surprising humor, Not Fade Away finds meaning and solace in Peter’s confrontation with mortality. Celebrating life as it dares to stare down death, Peter's story addresses universal hopes and fears, and redefines the quietly heroic tasks of seeking clarity in the midst of pain, of breaking through to personal faith, and of achieving peace after bold and sincere questioning.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I'm hardly the first person to notice that there is only the present, constantly," writes Barton in this extraordinary memoir. "The present moment is lived, and relieved; written, and rewritten. Every previous version still inhabits it." What gives this insight and the many others that follow uncommon power is the ever present fact that Barton, a pioneering entrepreneur in the cable television industry, was dying of stomach cancer as he wrote them. Alternating chapters with mystery writer Shames (The Naked Detective), Barton, who died in September, 2002, at 51, offers us-and his wife and three children-his final rewrite of a life filled with the optimism and idealism of his generation. Barton tells us how it feels to die while the party is still raging, offering us glimpses of a life that packed in everything from being a professional ski bum to working as an aide to New York State governor Hugh Carey to huge success as a visionary businessman (Barton helped found MTV, among other achievements). Readers will be knocked out by his honesty and his utter lack of self-pity or sentimentality. The "gift" of terminal cancer, according to Barton, is that "it doesn't kill you all at once. It gives you time to set your house in order.... It gives you time to think, to sum things up." Setting his house in order included taking his family for a balloon ride at dawn. Summing up what matters, he reminds us that it is the large and small moments of pleasure and love, those very present moments, that redeem us in the end. This is a very beautiful book about how to live.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Peter Barton and Laurence Shames, the graceful writer he persuaded to help him tell this tale, have produced a worthy monument, a book about how to live, and how to die."

--Ken Auletta

"This is a wise, funny, and intensely true book--a generous gift from an amazing guy to those of us who are so busy getting through life that we sometimes forget why we're living. Sooner or later, we'll all make the journey Peter Barton took; now, thanks to him, it doesn't look so scary."
--Dave Barry

"A little masterpiece. . . a book to be read by everyone. . . . [It] may be the most honest book I have ever read. . . . Some of [the] phrases and sentences literally took my breath away. . . . [Not Fade Away] lit up my own mind and spirit--dare I include soul?--to consider my own life and purposes."
--Jim Lehrer

"You couldn't know Peter Barton and not know he would face dying in the most adventurous and original way. . . . This is a book full of insight and comfort, wisdom and hope."
--Barry Diller

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (September 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006073731X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060737313
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laurence 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 twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of eight Key West novels, 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 stick around and explore them.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight at the end of life, September 15, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived (Hardcover)

Peter Barton was my son-in-law and continually surprised me by always seeing the "big" picture while I (like most of us) wallowed in the details of life. He wrote it with Laurence Shames after learning of an impending, untimely death.

He was an extraodinarily creative person, always able to see the context of every situation. Life rewarded him well financially but, most of all, with an uncanny sense of where we fit in the course of our lives.

This book is filled with large-scale insights, many of which will be useful to each of us. Even knowing him, I found the book a worthwhile read. I personally grew from the "read," as I'm sure you will. It may reset your values as well as your expectations regarding living.

Laurence Shames is skillful not only with words but also with conveying ideas. His book reads very well.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A life-changing book, September 14, 2003

By 

Robin Gerber (Bethesda, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived (Hardcover)

It's hard to describe the mixture of emotions that accompany reading this masterful book by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It was Barton's knowledge of his impending death that was the impetus for the book. Barely fifty, with young children, a happy marriage and tons of money, Barton chose to face his mortality through leaving a memoir. Shames became Barton's collaborator, co-author, interpreter and ultimately friend. There are moments of humor, heartbreaking sadness and revelation. It would be impossible to read this book without evaluating your own feelings toward life and death, family, friends, happiness and setting the right priorities for yourself. It's a brave and beautiful book that shouldn't be missed.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring story, September 10, 2003

By 

sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived (Hardcover)

This book is about the life and death of Peter Barton, a very successful entreprenour who lived life fully, yet died early at the age of 51 from stomach cancer.
This story is told in alternative chapters by Barton and Laurence Shames, a writer who befriended Barton at the end of Barton's life in order to help him express his feelings and emotions about his impending death.
This small book contains very big ideas. Barton makes you understand how being wealthy doesn't automatically give you the best medical care, and it certainly doesn't protect you against death. He brings home in this very personal way how health and family are the things that are important, and that the end of life is a complicated, individual experience, full of reflection and introspection.
I thought that it was "gutsy" and generous of Barton to want to share his experiences with the world, and one gets the impression from the book that that is the kind of individual he was.
When you finish - you can do it easily in a few hours - you are left appreciative of the things that you normally take for granted, and can briefly try to comprehend the concept of living in the moment.
I say briefly because, alas, I think we are hardwired not to be able to live our lives the way Peter Barton did at the end of his life...living in the here and now and giving up the foolish pursuits that drive us daily. I think that is why books like this are important, so that we can read them and get back to what is important, and try to live our lives thinking about these issues and thus be "ready", when we face the end of our own lives.
Recommended, but I think I would have liked a little more information about Barton's illness and treatment although I understand that it was a conscious decision not to include that in the book.