I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  I said, “How would you describe him?”

  “Short,” said the student, “and very conceited.”

  “Good,” I said, “that’s how I imagined him to be.”

  The books survived, though, and were generally well received even though they were not the kind of books that would sell lavishly. By the time I had returned to New York, I was quite confident of my ability to write on any subject I pleased without expecting critical obliteration.

  In this connection, it happened that in my first week in New York, it occurred to me that I could do anything I wanted to do without let or hindrance. I had no family, and Janet was busy with her patients. Consequently, I went down to lower Fourth Avenue, which in 1970 was still a haunt of secondhand bookstores. There I did something I had always dreamed of doing. I drifted along the musty shelves of such a store, looking at old books.

  I came across a copy of Lord Byron’s Don Juan. There had been a copy in the Blugerman household, and I had tried to read it in the mornings when I woke up before anyone else, and yet was not allowed to do anything lest I wake Gertrude’s brother, John, who, his mother would say, “had to have his twelve hours’ sleep.” As nearly as I could make out, she was serious. However, the type of the edition in theBlu german bookshelf was microscopic and the surroundings were depressing, so that I could never get into it.

  Now, it seemed, I could make a better stab at it. I had never been a good sleeper. I can’t manage anything more than five hours a night and in the new apartment I had trouble sleeping at all. Well, if I couldn’t sleep, why bother trying? I was alone there. I could put the light on and read all night. Who was to stop me?

  That night I got into my very low-quality bed (which came with the apartment and wasn’t mine), opened Don Juan, and began reading. I had scarcely finished the prologue, in which Byron vilified Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when I was all on fire. Martin Gardner’s words came back to me and I wanted to do an annotation, a real annotation. I wanted to have Doubleday put out an edition of Don Juan with comments by me that would explain all the classical allusions and all the topical references for the contemporary American reader.

  The next morning I went to Doubleday and sold Larry Ashmead on the idea, and got to work at once. Gardner was right. It was enormous fun. David came to visit me while I was hot on the trail of Byron and it was all I could do to spend any time with him at all. I wanted only to work on the book. It was that which made me a bad father or, in Robyn’s gentle phrase, a busy father.

  I knew it couldn’t possibly sell, and so did Doubleday. After all, the public taste was no longer in favor of the romantic poetry of the post-Napoleonic period. For another, the book would have to be priced high—too high for all but a very few readers. However, I wanted to do it and Doubleday wanted to please me.

  Doubleday published it in 1972. We couldn’t call it The Annotated Don Juan because Clarkson Potter (a subsidiary of Crown Publishers), which had published Gardner’s Annotated Alice, had that form of title copyrighted. It was therefore called Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan. Doubleday put out a beautiful edition, which won a prize (for its design, not for its contents, I hasten to say), and it actually earned back its advance. (Of course, I had asked for a small advance in the first place, to make sure that it would be earned back.)

  As soon as the book was finished, I started working on what was to be Asimov’s Annotated Paradise Lost because I wanted to get it in to Doubleday before the first was published and, possibly, dropped dead. That was as much fun as its predecessor and it was published in 1974. I also did a smaller book, dealing with a number of well-known poems that had historical meaning, and it came out as Familiar Poems, Annotated in 1977.

  None of these books made any money to speak of, though none actually lost money, and the pleasure they gave me was worth far more than money to me. Indeed, I would have liked to do more, but I really felt I couldn’t stick Doubleday beyond a certain point. However, in 1979, Jane West of Clarkson Potter asked me to do an annotation for them, leaving me free to choose an appropriate book. Gardner, in that luncheon of ours so many years before, had mentioned Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as an ideal book for me to annotate, and so I suggested that. Jane was enthusiastic and once again I got to work.

  This time the book could come out as The Annotated Gulliver’s Travels, for it was a Clarkson Potter book, and it was published in 1980. It did marginally better than the Doubleday books, but not very much better.

  There was one more annotation I was dying to do, and I found my chance in the later 1980s when I was more than ever Doubleday’s fair-haired boy, for reasons I will be giving you later. I seized two months of time that I thought I could get away with and worked furiously until I was finished with The Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan. I offered it to Doubleday without an advance, so eager was I to get it published. That evoked the famous “Don’t be silly, Isaac!” which I was always getting from them, and they proceeded to give me an advance five times higher than I had had for Don Juan. It was published in 1988. Although it was a huge book costing $50 and was almost impossible to lift, it actually made back that advance.

  But that’s all. I can’t think of any other annotations I am dying to do. There’s Homer, of course, but he’s in Greek and you can’t go by any of the numerous translations.

  New In-Laws

  I realized that, since I was planning to marry Janet at the first possible opportunity, I was going to have another set of in-laws. I will confess to a little nervousness there. Whereas Gertrude and her family had been Jewish, Janet was Gentile. I knew that it was a matter of supreme indifference to her that I was Jewish (as it was to me that she was Gentile), but what about her family?

  Janet’s parents were Mormons, though I gathered they were not active in the church. Janet herself had never been baptized and was emphatically not a Mormon. She is, in point of fact, as completely nonreligious as I am.

  When the time for marriage was approaching, Janet, anxious to please me in all ways, asked if I would like her to be converted to Judaism.

  “Sure,” I said, “provided you allow me to be converted to Mormonism.” That ended that sort of nonsense forever. (She’s a member of the Ethical Culture Society now, but I won’t go even that far.)

  The Mormons believe in a high birthrate and both Janet’s father and Janet’s mother had many siblings. The result is that Janet had dozens and dozens of first cousins, uncles, aunts, and assorted other relatives. Fortunately, most of them were in Utah and it would not be necessary for me to meet them all. (Janet was even more relieved at that than I was.)

  Janet’s father, John Rufus Jeppson, had died in 1958, the year before Janet and I had met at the Mystery Writers banquet. It had been a sudden and unexpected death, for he was only sixty-two, and Janet, who had adored him, was devastated by it.

  Her father had had a hard life, working his way up from poverty, working his way through medical school and ending as an ophthalmologist and a respected citizen of New Rochelle. At his side was always his wife, Janet’s mother, Rae Evelyn Jeppson (nee Knudson). John and Rae had been childhood sweethearts and it was a love match from beginning to end. (This was true of my parents also.)

  I met Rae quite early, while Janet and I were living together. My nervousness lay not only in the fact that I was Jewish but in that we were living together though unmarried. I did not fear parental disapproval in itself, but I didn’t want to make life difficult for Janet and be the cause of an estrangement between mother and daughter.

  Janet assured me that there was nothing to be concerned about, but I remained cautious.

  Janet’s mother, Rae, was shorter than Janet and with hair still light brown, though she was in her seventies. She strongly resembled Janet in facial appearance and that was enough, in itself, to dispose me in her favor the moment I met her. She was a lady in the old-fashioned sense of the word: genteel, courteous, soft-spoken. (Janet often says that Rae tried to make a
lady out of her, but had failed.)

  She was honest too. Disregarding the fact that she might embarrass her daughter, she looked me in the eye and said, firmly, “Dr. Asimov, I am sorry for your wife.”

  But I met her eye and said, just as firmly, “Mrs. Jeppson. Please believe me. So am I.”

  That was all. The subject never came up again. Rae was satisfied. I think I did myself a great service by resisting the temptation to defend myself. I would surely have come across as a petty whiner if I had, and Rae would not have been pleased.

  My future mother-in-law and I got along famously. It was clear that when we remained overnight in her house, she wanted us to have separate bedrooms. I thought we could well endure that, and I pointed out to Janet that it was an innocent way of pleasing her mother. Janet, however, would have none of it. She did not wish, in middle age, to be subject to what she considered her mother’s unreasonable wishes, and Rae gave in. I felt guilty about it and I still think there would have been nothing terribly wrong in trying to make Rae feel better about the situation.

  The crucial moment of my relationship with Rae came when Janet was in the hospital in 1973, with a sudden subarachnoid hemorrhage. It fell to me to call Rae in order to tell her what was happening, and to explain that it was life-threatening. The situation was worse because Rae’s younger sister, Opal (for whom Janet had been named), had died of a subarachnoid hemorrhage at the age of forty-seven and, by coincidence, Janet was forty-seven when it happened to her.

  I dreaded telling Rae. Aside from the fact that I was distraught over Janet’s condition and could not entirely trust myself to handle the situation with the necessary gentleness and tact, I had to face a possibly equally distraught mother who might, in her sorrow, seek a scapegoat, and blame me. Rae had been brought up with a strict religious training and it was conceivable that she might view what had happened to Janet as God’s punishment for her having “lived in sin” with me.

  Naturally, I could not accept any such interpretation of events, but neither could I possibly argue the matter with a brokenhearted mother. I steeled myself for an onslaught against which, again, I could make no attempt to defend myself. I got Rae on the phone and told her the news as well as I could. I’m afraid I was weeping as I did so (no, I’m not ashamed of that) and she could not doubt my own misery.

  For a while, she said nothing, then, in the softest, warmest possible way, she said, “Whatever happens, Isaac, I want to thank you for making Janet so happy these last few years.”

  Fortunately, Janet recovered unharmed. Eventually, I told her what her mother had said, and I assure you that after that Rae Jeppson could do no wrong as far as I was concerned. I loved her as another mother of my own, and though Janet, daughterlike, sometimes complained about her, I never did.

  After a year of cancer Rae Jeppson died on June 10, 1976, shortly before her eightieth birthday. She remained physically active till almost the end, and mentally alert all the way. It was a quiet death and, unlike the case of my parents, or Gertrude’s, she did not die alone or among strangers. She died in her own home, in her own bed, with her daughter at her side, holding her hand.

  The last thing Janet said to her was: “I love you, Mother.” Rae whispered, “I love you too, Janet,” and drifted softly into death. And how can one die better than quietly, while receiving and returning love?

  Janet’s father was the first member of the large Jeppson family to become a physician, but he set the fashion for the family. Not only did Janet become one but so did her younger brother, John Ray Jeppson.

  After graduating from Harvard, John went to Boston University School of Medicine and was in the last class I actively taught. He carried the news of me to his sister and also introduced her to science fiction. From this all else followed and I am unspeakably grateful to him.

  He married a beautiful young lady named Maureen, while he was still in med school, and eventually he became an anesthesiologist. John now lives in California, and has two children, a girl named Patti and a boy who is a third John.

  Janet and I are very fond of Patti, who has chosen historical archaeology as her field. Young John is a dentist, married with a daughter named Sarah. This makes Janet’s kid brother a grandfather and herself a great-aunt. (It makes me a great-uncle, of course.)

  Janet has a first cousin, Chaucy Bennetts (nee Horsley), who is two years older than Janet. They grew up very much as sisters, rather than as cousins, and the sisterly feeling still exists between them.

  Chaucy is not her original name. She was christened Shirley, but her father was also named Shirley. Perhaps it was the inevitability of confusion, both in person and in gender, that was part of the inspiration for the name change. However, Chaucy eventually married a very pleasant gentleman named Leslie Bennetts, and when they had a daughter, what was she named? Why, Leslie, of course. I’ve never understood that.

  Chaucy was a highly intelligent and remarkably beautiful young woman who did a little acting, but afterward she turned to editing, becoming an important editor of children’s books for many years. Now she’s on the copy-editing staff at Doubleday and I frequently stop to see her there when I visit Doubleday. Her husband was considerably older than she was. He was a very lovable, quiet and tJioughtful man, who died in 1985 at the age of eighty.

  Chaucy’s daughter, the younger Leslie, inherited her mother’s youthful beauty. I saw the photos taken at her first marriage and in one photograph, where she was shown standing with her mother, she appeared much more beautiful than many a movie star. I looked at the photo with awe and said, “Breathtakingly beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking.”

  Chaucy beamed at the praise for her daughter, and said, “Yes, isn’t she?” “She?” I said. I looked at the picture again and said, “Oh, yes, Leslie looks pretty good too.”

  Leslie’s marriage was not a success, unfortunately. It lasted only a year, but Leslie then launched herself on a successful journalistic career. She wrote for the Philadelphia Bulletin, then the New York Times, and is now with Vanity Fair. She is a terrific interviewer. (She once described me in an interview, however, and made me two inches shorter than I really am. Since I am only of average height, I couldn’t afford the loss and I took it hard. Of course, she is taller than I am, as is Chaucy, and that might have misled her.) She has recently married a second time. Her husband is writer Jeremy Gerard, and they have a daughter named Emily.

  Leslie’s younger brother, Bruce, is now an actor and photographer. He’s also tall, handsome, and intelligent, with an excellent singing voice.

  I got along marvelously well with Janet’s family and I was introduced to something I had never experienced—the family celebration. My own family never really celebrated, for the candy store was an ever-present anchor that dragged us down. There were occasionally festivities at the Blugerman household, but I was always made to feel an outsider.

  Now, though, with the Jeppsons and the Bennettses, I was welcomed into the family wholeheartedly, and made part of the holidays as they came—Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Chaucy prepared the main dish and she was every bit as good a cook as Mary Blugerman was. Rae would make a special sweet potato and marshmallow dish. Les Bennetts would prepare a liver pate. There were nuts and candies and fruits and cake, and I just loved the whole thing.

  The most remarkable holiday of all was Christmas 1971. I had received the page proofs for the third edition of my Guide to Science, and when it was time to go to Rae’s house, I looked ruefully at my page proofs, which I wanted to use for the preparation of the index.

  Janet said, “Take it with you. You can work there.”

  So I did. I took the page proofs and several thousand 3x 5 blank white cards, made sure I had a couple of good pens, and off we went. They gave me Janet’s father’s old office, with a large comfortable armchair and a perfect desk. They assured me that no one would bother me.

  I was about to tell them that I never minded being bothered, but they vanished and for the entire day ever
yone worked on preparing for a grand feast—except me. I worked on my cards, all alone, with no one daring to disturb the great man at his work. No footstep, no whisper disturbed me. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before and I knew that before long they would discover that I didn’t absolutely need isolation and that it would never happen again. But in the meantime I had had hours and hours to myself until I was called in to partake of the great dinner and to open presents. What a pleasant memory.

  (Just as a side remark, the third edition of the Guide to Science that I was working on that glorious Christmas had title trouble. It couldn’t very well be called The New New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. However, my name had grown so much more famous in the last decade that they decided to call it Asimov’s Guide to Science. When the fourth edition came out it was Asimov’s New Guide to Science. I don’t know what they’ll do for the fifth edition, if there ever is one.)

  But back to Janet— I introduced her to my family also. She was too late to meet my father, as I was too late to meet hers, but she met my mother in Long Beach. And she met Stan and Ruth. Everyone liked her, of course. (I never met anyone who didn’t.) Stan, after he had talked to Janet for a while, pulled me aside and whispered, “She’s a pearl, Isaac. How did you find her?”

  “I’m talented,” I said.

  Hospitalizations

  I had just passed my fiftieth birthday when I returned to New York and I was still essentially intact. I had never had my tonsils, adenoids, or appendix removed. I had thirty-one of my teeth and the only one missing could have been saved if I had had better dental care in the early 1940s. I had never as much as broken a bone.

  All this was a matter of smug self-satisfaction with me and I looked forward to going to my grave eventually still intact. However, man proposes and old age disposes—

  My certainty concerning my state of health was such that I rarely saw doctors except when it was obviously necessary. In part, that was the result of childhood conditioning too. My parents were poor, and doctors cost money. (Not much, to be sure. In my childish days, doctors paid house calls and charged three dollars to do so, but three dollars was a lot of money to poor people, and the doctor was called only when a child was at least a quarter dead or an adult fully half dead.)