The Pursuit of Happyness

At the beginning of his autobiography, Gardner reflects on two events that helped him not only survive but thrive, even in the darkest circumstances.

The first was in the early 1980s, when, at age twenty-seven, outside San Francisco General Hospital, he saw a man in a “gorgeous, red convertible Ferrari 308” in search of a parking spot(1).Enamored by the “freedom, escape, [and] options” that the car represents, Gardner decided to offer the space where his own car was parked in exchange for information (3). Gardner asks the man about what he does and how he does it. The Ferrari driver replies that he is a stockbroker and will organize a few introductions for Gardner, who is “crazy enough to think I could do what he and others like him do, if only I can find an opening” (4).

The second event that formed his attitude happened in Milwaukee in 1970, shortly after his sixteenth birthday. Gardner was watching college basketball with his mother, Bettye Jean, and reflecting that two players, Artis Gilmore and Pembrook Burrows, would make a million dollars, his mother turns to him and vouches that, “If you want to, one day you could make a million dollars” (10).