In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  I could tell I was going to be rejected, and my expression showed it, but he semireassured me. The rejection was only for Columbia College. I was so naive in those days that I knew nothing beyond the mere name "Columbia." I did not realize that Columbia University was a huge establishment of which Columbia College, the elite undergraduate school, was but a small part. However, I found this out in the course of the interview.

  My interviewer may have been sufficiently impressed by my scholastic record not to want to lose me to Columbia altogether. He may

  also (I like to think) have been impressed by the intelligence that must have been apparent to a sufficiently shrewd observer even through my pimply and adolescent uneasiness. He therefore suggested I apply to Seth Low Junior College 1 instead. This was another undergraduate college of Columbia University and was by no means elite. I had never heard of it at the time and, in my entire life since, I have never met anyone who has ever heard of it—unless he, too, had been a student there.

  Seth Low Junior College was located in Brooklyn and had the same scholastic standards as Columbia College (the interviewer said). What's more, in the third and fourth year of college, I would be allowed to take courses with the Columbia College students.

  In order to save my face, the kindly interviewer stressed the fact that Columbia College had a minimum age of sixteen as one of the entrance requirements and that I would be under sixteen even in September and that was why I could not enter. That was quite true, for I had read it in the booklet they had sent me. I had, however, taken it for granted that colleges would not refuse a bright enough student even if he were under sixteen. Prodigies were prodigies.

  Afterward, I checked the requirements for Seth Low Junior College and it set sixteen as an entrance requirement there as well, so I saw the excuse for what it was—a well-meant lie.

  The interviewer didn't say something that I eventually found to be the case, which was that the Seth Low student body was heavily Jewish, with a strong Italian minority. It was clear that the purpose of the school was to give bright youngsters of unacceptable social characteristics a Columbia education without too badly contaminating the elite young men of the College itself by their formal presence. Those were the days when racial quotas weighted in favor of the elite were as American as apple pie.

  Seth Low Junior College was not what I wanted, but what could I do? I nodded as cheerfully as I could manage and said he might alter my application to have it apply to Seth Low.

  I tried to put a good face on it to my father when I came out of the building and stoutly maintained that Seth Low "was just as good," and my father stoutly agreed that it would get me into medical school just as surely as Columbia College would, but I didn't believe it, and neither did he. We each said it to cheer up the other. We each failed.

  1 It was named for the president of Columbia University in the 1890s, who, before that, had been mayor of the independent city of Brooklyn, and after that, the mayor of the conglomerated city of Greater New York.

  We went home glumly, and my father took advantage of one of his rare absences from the store to stop in to see a movie with me. That was so rare an event that I remember what it was. It was Richelieu, with George Arliss, Edward Arnold, and Cesar Romero. Being imbued with Richelieu as the villain of The Three Musketeers, I had difficulty adjusting to a story in which he was the hero.

  We also stopped in at a museum (I don't remember which one) and there we saw Albert Einstein, who happened to be looking at the exhibits also. He was unmistakable and he was the one scientist who was a legend to everyone (and especially to Jews) in his own lifetime. Everywhere he went, a small crowd of the curious followed, standing off at a respectful distance, with no one, no one, daring to do anything as crass as asking for an autograph. My father and I followed along with the crowd, being quite satisfied just to stare. It was the only time I ever saw him, and it is for his sake more than for my Columbia interview that I remember the exact date.

  3

  My failure at the Columbia interview took a lot of the steam out of my high-school graduation. In fact, so much of a flop did my school career seem after the remarkable beginning in grade school that I remember nothing at all about the graduation. Not one thing. Well, maybe one thing.

  It seems to me that only my mother attended. (My father must have been as downhearted as I.) My mother sat in the balcony and I gave her strict instructions to stay in the balcony till I came up to get her. (The direction of instructions had clearly swung over by now and was from me to her, rather than vice versa.)

  As soon as everything was over I rushed for the stairway to the balcony and found a thick and steady stream of people coming down. It was impossible to move upward against the current. I had to wait till all were down. When all were down, to the very last person, my mother, who had loyally followed instructions, appeared at the head of the stairs, wondering what had happened to me.

  I, of course, received my copy of the Senior Recorder for the graduating class of June 1935, but I didn't keep it—or it was lost. In recent years I have managed to get a copy and I will try to preserve it now.

  In the Senior Recorder of that year is the photograph of an incredibly young, skinny, and toothy Isaac Asimov (or at least it is incredible

  now, as I look back on it). My father saved a print of that picture for some reason and had it in the mirror over the bureau in his bedroom. 2 Otherwise, when I came across it again years later, I simply wouldn't have recognized it.

  The photograph was used on the book jacket of Before the Golden Age.

  Each photograph of each student had something written underneath, in italics, by some anonymous wit who probably did not survive the strain and who perished to universal applause. Underneath mine, the villain had written: "When he looked at the clock, not only did it stop, but it started going backwards."

  This is an allegation I repel with the scorn and contumely it deserves.

  In the statistics they included under my picture, they listed "Columbia" as the college I intended to attend. It was a white lie, for what I meant by Columbia was Columbia University, of which Seth Low was a part. To this day, if someone asks me where I went to college, I say "Columbia." I never say "Columbia College," because that would be a lie outright, but I don't prevent anyone from thinking that is what I mean. My excuse to myself is that if I said, "Seth Low," everyone would say "What's that?" and I was in no mood to spend the rest of my life making explanations. The real reason, however, is that no matter how hard I try to be absolutely straightforward (and I do try), a little bit of phoniness will creep in now and then, and this is one of the little bits.

  It also says "surgeon," presumably as an indication of my intended profession, but to that all I can say is "What!"

  I knew that I (in response to my father's sternly pointing finger) planned to be a doctor, but I don't recall ever wanting to be a surgeon particularly. Yet I must have, since they got the information from the students themselves, who had to fill out a questionnaire for the Recorder. It must have been another bit of phoniness; I apparently thought that "surgeon" sounded more impressive than "doctor."

  It also says "Honor Roll 5 times" and lists of my other accomplishments as well. It says I was "Grade Advisors Assistant" in 1933. I remember that. The work consisted largely of getting large volumes of

  2 I say his bedroom, for from the Decatur Street store on, my mother and father always had separate bedrooms—till retirement at least. This was not a sign of estrangement, for they were never estranged, no matter how strenuous their discussions of policy became. Since my father and mother kept radically different hours, however, it made a lot of sense to have separate bedrooms so that neither woke the other at the wrong time.

  school records from the storage vats and returning them there. They had to go to the various teachers who entered marks into them. Dull work and not very rewarding.

  Then too, I was on the "Repair Squad," something I have no memory of. I can't even imagine
what it could possibly have been. And it says "Psychology Club." I presume I was a member, though why I should have been I can't say. I must have felt I had to join some club; it may even have been required that I do so. I suppose the Psychology Club met at a time that made it possible for me to attend, but I doubt that I attended often.

  Finally it says "Typist for Biologist '35" and behind that lies a story.

  4

  Ever since I had been close to my first typewriter when we had moved into the Essex Street store, I had longed for one. I wrote, whenever I wrote, in pen and ink, and that was difficult, arduous, and most of all, unglamorous. Writing, I more and more came to realize, should be done on the typewriter.

  The difficulty was that there was no way in which I could get my father to get me one. It cost too much money.

  That sounds awful, I know. Why should I put pressure on my poor father? If I wanted a typewriter so badly, why didn't I go out, earn money somehow, and buy one for myself? Ah but how could I? I was already working every day in the candy store, and, alas, that was unpaid labor. Nor, as I explained earlier, did I ever get an allowance that I was allowed to keep.

  The attitude I might have taken was that my work had earned me a chance at the typewriter, but that never occurred to me. My work earned me a chance at food, clothing, and shelter. A typewriter would have to come out of my father's superfluity, and of that there was none.

  Except that he did get me a typewriter, and it must have been some time early in 1935. How is it possible that I could forget so important a date as obtaining my first typewriter? I don't know, but I've managed. Early in 1935 is all I can say, and I based that only on the notation in the Senior Recorder that I was a "typist." Before I obtained my Senior Recorder in recent years and found that notation, I used to say that I got my first typewriter in 1936; but that was wrong.

  My father didn't go hog wild. He didn't buy me a new typewriter. He inquired among his customers and found a place where they would sell him an old but serviceable typewriter for a small sum of money. He

  bought me an Underwood No. 5 for ten dollars. It was a tremendous bargain, but even so, finding the ten dollars wasn't easy. How old it was I don't know, but it worked perfectly. What's more, it was a full-size model and not a portable. (Portables are convenient but not as comfortable for long-continued use as full-size models are.)

  However, getting the typewriter and listing myself as a typist did not make me any more of a writer than I was before, nor increase my importance in the school by one iota.

  The photograph and its accompanying information and witticism is the only indication in the Senior Recorder that I attended Boys High. I am not mentioned in any of the listings of Halls of Fame, in any of the historical items, in any of the statistics. Nowhere.

  On page 54 of the Senior Recorder is a list headed "Class Statistics," which includes the best in this category and that. "The Best Literary Man" is listed as Martin Lichterman.

  In the Recorder of Spring 1934, the one in which I had my essay "Little Brothers," Martin Lichterman had two items. One was a piece of fiction called "Oh, To Leave It All." Yes, the title adequately describes it. It is about a man of fifty-seven who is in apparently terminal illness and who considers suicide but changes his mind at observing the beauty of spring.

  I guess there's no question but that it is better written than my piece. However, Mr. Lichterman did not become a professional writer.

  5

  I don't remember much concerning the summer of 1935. It did not have the excitement of the summer of 1930, when I waited to enter junior high school, or the summer of 1932, when I waited to enter high school.

  I knew I was going to be allowed to enter Seth Low—but I also knew that I was really going to go to City College, and I desperately didn't want to do that.

  Seth Low meant tuition fees—as high as those of Columbia College, by the way—but where my father might conceivably have scrabbled money together for Columbia, I knew he would not for Seth Low. That meant I would have to find a scholarship.

  I had applied for a state scholarship, which was open to a certain number of boys and girls resident in New York State on the basis of overall scholastic averages in high school, but it was clear that my overall average simply wasn't high enough to earn me those one hundred dollars per year. Economics helped see to that. So did some other sub-

  jects, somewhat less hateful, in which I functioned only at the B level —my single course in physics, for instance, which had been poorly taught, and my third year of German, where my lack of talent in languages had finally become unmistakably evident.

  This was very embarrassing to me, especially since I had to face my father, who was far less willing to give up that smartest-kid-in-the-class bit than I was.

  The summer, however, was not a complete loss. For one thing, my interest in science fiction was becoming stronger and more realistic. I tried, for the first time, to write an actual letter to Astounding Stories.

  It was a perfectly ordinary letter. I commented on the most recent issue I had read. I praised and denounced stories and authors, with the usual lordly condescension of the critic, 3 and I asked for trimmed edges.

  Years later, an organization named "First Fandom" was being organized, with membership extended to those who had been active as science-fiction readers and fans prior to 1938, and I received a request to join. I replied sadly that although I had read science fiction avidly for years prior to 1938, I had not been active. At once they came up with that 1935 letter in Astounding Stories and declared that qualification enough. I have been a member ever since.

  In Before the Golden Age, I mention this incident and say, "It must have been a handwritten letter, for in 1935, I didn't know how to type and, for that matter, I had no access to a typewriter."

  That wasn't so. That passage was written before I got my copy of The Senior Recorder with its evidence that I was already a typist, and though I introduced changes in galleys to take what it said into account, I somehow missed this passage.

  And, of course, there was the typewriter. Once I got the typewriter, I had learned how to type by myself—with my father's help.

  Naturally, I knew how to type in the sense that I knew how to put the paper into the machine, and I knew that if you struck the key marked /, and you got an f or, if you also struck the "shift," an F. I knew how to make a space, a back space, how to return the carriage, and so on. What I didn't know was how to touch-type. I didn't think that was necessary. I sat at the typewriter and typed by the hunt-and-peck method.

  I was at it every day until my father, coming up one day for his af-

  3 I was going to say "unqualified critic," but I hate unnecessary adjectives.

  ternoon nap, stopped to watch his son type. He frowned and said, "Why do you type with one finger, instead of with all your fingers like on a piano?"

  I said, "I don't know how to do it with all my fingers, Pappa."

  My father had an easy solution for that. "Learn!" he thundered. "If I catch you typing with one finger again, I will take away the typewriter."

  I sighed, for I knew he would. Fortunately, there was Mazie, who lived across the street and for whom my pure and puppyish passion still continued. She was taking a commercial course in high school and knew how to type.

  I asked her how to type and she showed me how to place my hands on the typewriter keys and which fingers controlled which keys. 4 She watched while, very slowly, I typed the word "the" with left-hand-first-finger, right-hand-first finger, and left-hand-middle-finger. She then offered to give me periodic lessons.

  An excuse to be alone with her every once in a while was just what I was looking for, but I had my pride. No one was ever allowed to teach me any more than I required to begin teaching myself. "That's all right," I said, "I'll practice."

  And I did. I've been typing fairly constantly ever since, and I can now do ninety words a minute for hours at a time. (To be perfectly truthful, I've sacrificed accuracy for sp
eed, and I don't pretend I don't make errors. I just strike over or x-out. My editors don't mind, or, if they do, they maintain a discreet silence.)

  Naturally, when I first began to type, I used both sides of the paper, single-spaced, and no margins. Eventually, I learned to use one side and to double-space, but to this very day I can't bring myself to leave respectable margins, and I tend to use typewriter ribbons and carbon paper until they are quite, quite dead. It is not a matter of economy; I have no reason to economize in that direction. It's just that I've never recovered from having to extract money for paper and typewriter ribbons from the candy store. 5

  Once I was typing, of course, I had much more incentive to write. I remember distinctly that the first piece of fiction I ever wrote on the

  4 Sometimes, when I tell the story, I say that she showed me where to put my hands—but that is an ambiguous statement that lends itself to a horrible and untrue misconstruction.

  5 1 told this story in Before the Golden Age, and the copy editor, who was struggling with my inadequate margins (for it is the margins in which the copy editing corrections must be made), wrote in the margin of this passage: LEARN! Alas, it did not work. I am older, more set in my ways, and I fear no person today as I feared my father then.

  typewriter involved a group of men wandering on some quest through a universe in which there were elves, dwarves, and wizards, and in which magic worked. It was as though I had some premonition of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I can't for the life of me remember what it was that inspired me in this direction. I had read The Arabian Nights, the E. Nesbit fantasies (particularly her stories about the psammead), and all sorts of books of magic and legendry, but none of them stick in my mind as sufficient.

  I wrote better than forty pages, both sides, single-space, no margins, and I imagine that I must have turned out nearly thirty thousand words before I ran down. But run down I did, and it cured me. I had my fill of fantasy and I didn't try again for years—and never in any lengthy way.