* He worked at a psychiatric hospital where he met the singer James Taylor and the poet Robert Lowell. Both were patients.

* He was at Woodstock and was also an usher at the Fillmore East.

* He was CEO of advertising agency J. Walter Thompson North America when he was thirty-seven. He wrote the ad jingle, 'I'm a Toys 'R' Us Kid'.

* He once watched Norman Mailer and James Baldwin square off to fight.

* He's played golf with three US presidents and has nine holes-in-one.

* Dolly Parton sang Happy Birthday to him over the phone. She calls him Jimmy James.

James says, 'I always wanted to write the kind of novel that is read and re-read so many times the binding breaks, and the book literally falls apart, pages scattered in the wind. I'm still working on that one.'