“then spend much of the time on that job living in Bali and writing a memoir?”
Where did he get the money to do act like one of the idle rich?
Publisher's advances.
Upon graduating from Harvard, he got a $40,000 advance for his very first ever book -- without any previous writings whatsoever to recommend him.
He failed to produce so much as a single page.
So, the publisher advanced him yet another $40,000. Whereupon he left his seat as guest lecturer at the Univ of Chicago, went to Bali for six months...and delivered a book.
I cannot tell you how implausible the publisher's actions are in this case. "Unprecedented" would be a good word.
And the chronology of events certainly leads one to wonder who else might've been in Bali at the time. A professional ghost writer, perhaps?