Even This I Get to Experience

by Norman Lear

  ADDITIONALLY, I’VE WORKED closely with Catherine Hand, Paul Schaeffer, Bob Burkett, Betsy Kenny, Caty Borum, Andy Spahn, Aviva Rosenthal, Cherie Simon, Christy Salcido, Marc Morgenstern, and Penny Wright. So much of what I have been into politically and socially over time would not have been possible without them. Their passions matched mine, they interfaced with key people when I wasn’t available, and everything we touched was better for their having been a part of it.

  I WAS BLESSED at birth with common sense. But common sense, like a tennis player, requires a backboard. This book would have been a considerably lesser effort had I not had a brilliant, exquisitely sensitive professional backboard. Her name is Dr. Maureen Gordon. Many balls—in this case thoughts, memories, ancient reasoning—came back at me in ways that forced me to reach and stretch to pound them back to her. With every stretch came a little more light.

  APPROPRIATELY, I DEDICATED this book to my beloved Lyn and my kids, but I am also enormously grateful to those whose encouragement was particularly meaningful to me: William Goldman, Howard Stringer, Bill Moyers, Nora Ephron, A. Scott Berg, Arianna Huffington, Roger Rosenblatt, Phil Rosenthal, Betsy Kenny Lack, Richard Sarnoff, Nancy Friday, Digby Diehl, Byron Katie, and Stephen Mitchell. Stephen went so far as to help me edit the first half of the book as I was writing it.

  I sent a draft-in-progress to my friend and book agent Amanda Urban and she happily showed it to Ann Godoff, who purchased this memoir for Penguin Press and is its editor. Ann could not have been more wise, encouraging, or helpful.

  ESSENTIAL TO THE gathering of the library of shows, scripts, notes, correspondence, interviews, etc. on which Even This . . . depended was the devoted and irreplaceable work of my long-time archivist and dear friend Jean Anderson.

  And beyond essential to my actual writing was, as I indicated in the book, Paul Slansky. In addition to his aid and support as researcher, editor, and chief adviser, he was as hard-working and dedicated as he was a delight to work with. If a book can be said to have had a producer, Paul was it on this one.

  P.S.: In the course of writing this book I have never picked up my copy of Roget’s Thesaurus without experiencing the joy and surprise of discovery upon turning to any page. How the man got all that together in a single lifetime is one of the most delightful of mysteries. Thank you, Mr. Roget.