Writer’s New Path Winds Through Politics and TV Production
Richard Morais, of Milford, was recently walking two rescued Chihuahuas around the borough as he recounted how he had just spent a month in California. He had followed his latest book subject, trillion dollar money manager Joe Sanberg, who, Morais said, “makes a business case for progressive politics.”
“He hired Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager and was fundraising for a Biden appointee, Nina Turner. He gave an impassioned barn burner speech on a roof,” Morais said. “I got to see how political sausage is made.”
In California, Morais also monitored the making of his novel, “Buddhaland Brooklyn,” into a television series. These developments followed an unsettling change of fortune for him four years ago.
He had been writing about the business world, its characters and ramifications, for much of three decades for Forbes and then as editor of Barron’s Penta, when a shift in leadership left him without a job. He recalled assessing the assets he had accumulated from his past ventures to strategize for his next one. He had no sudden realizations.
“It was a process,” he said.
However, he found much that he could use in new ways.
"The biggest reason for start-ups is getting fired," he had told this reporter nine years ago, in an accidental foreshadowing.
He launched his own startup by reconfiguring his skills and accomplishments.
“I channel characters when I write fiction. Now I can do it with nonfiction. I can approach the interesting business people I’ve met and offer them the literary version of private equity,” he said.
Alongside his magazine work, he had written an unauthorized biography of designer Pierre Cardin and then three novels, with the necessary patience. His agent had worked on selling his first novel, “The Hundred Foot Journey,” for 17 years. When this story about an Indian boy becoming a French chef, amid cultural clashes, was finally published, it was selected as a New York Times editor’s choice. Then DreamWorks Pictures made it into a successful film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, and Charlotte Le Bon. Morais has written two novels since then, “Buddhaland Brooklyn,” and “Man Without Borders.”
His ability to create these kinds of opportunities can make him attractive to the business people that interest him. He offered to collaborate on a book with Joe Sanberg for two years’ salary and a third of book profits after he takes the book to the marketplace using his literary agents. He made a deal that put him on a path that appealed to him.
Morais gave examples of Sanberg’s progressive ideas that make economic sense. For instance, Medicare for all would lead to an “entrepreneurial Golden Age,” because keeping health insurance is often the reason people stay with the jobs they have, rather than pursue their own ideas. Sanberg also pointed out that the minimum wage increase in the 1930’s has been linked to productivity gains, and if the wage had continued to rise accordingly, it would now be $23.
“But the gain went to executives instead of wage earners,” Morais said. “We need to step toward the middle. If you give the rich a dollar in tax breaks, they park it. Others spend.”
Morais is at work on the final edit of the Sanberg book and will head to Europe to begin work with a new client in November. Meanwhile, he also works for Story Summit with local author Amy Ferris (“Marrying George Clooney”), who presides over it. Their strategy is to match well established writers with up and coming ones to help them get where they’re trying to go.
The way Morais’ work and life continue to be connected with Europe echoes, with some irony, his early history. He grew up in Switzerland, where his Portuguese father worked for Alcan Aluminum, and his American mother was a Jungian psychologist. At 16, Morais decided he was not Swiss and wanted to live in the U.S. He applied to American colleges and went to Sarah Lawrence, but he spent most of his decades at Forbes covering Europe, and he was European bureau chief in his last years there. Now he remixes his past to make his future.