I had no answers for this but, for the moment, I had a fallback position as the new year of 1942 started. (I turned twenty-two on January 2, 1942, something that evoked the sad remark, "I'm growing old" in my diary.)
I made a number of trips to NYU in January and learned that I would have to take Qualifying Examinations, yes, but meanwhile I could start research. I began seeing various professors, for in doing research, the student interviews professors, rather than vice versa. The point is to have the student locate, if possible, a line of investigation in which he would be satisfied to invest a couple of years—and possibly an entire professional lifetime.
It came about, therefore, that I could take the Qualifyings at Columbia without a horrible sensation of absolute doom hanging over me. The three days for those tests came on January 24, 27, and 29, 1942—
2 The official notification that an M.A. diploma had been awarded me came on December 17, 1941.
the whole being spread over five days rather than two weeks, as in tht first case.
The first day's tests were, for the most part, advanced physical chemistry, in which I did not expect to do much. The second day was on advanced inorganic chemistry, and I thought I did rather well ("five times" as well as the first time was the enthusiastic estimate in my diary).
On the third day came the advanced organic chemistry, and it seemed to me that I botched it. The more I thought so, the sweatier I got, and the more botchery I kept committing. I ended in despair and was quite convinced that this was my last day at Columbia and that there was nothing to it now but to crawl to New York University a beaten man.
As though to underline that, the Spring 1942 issue of Planet arrived that day containing my story "Pilgrimage," my most conspicuous failure in the literary portion of my life. Again, the title had suffered a sea change and a particularly awful one. It was the lead novelette, my name was on the cover, but, after all the insistence that I remove religion, Reiss had renamed the story "Black Friar of the Flame." 3
That story has always been considered by knowledgeable fans to be the worst story of mine ever to see print. I don't entirely agree; I think I have published some early stories that were even worse—as, for instance, "Secret Sense." I think, however, that the horrible title "Black Friar of the Flame" had a lot to do with the consensus.
4
Deep in multiple depression, I assumed that Columbia was ending in flames as black as that of the friar and that there was nothing to do but move full speed ahead at NYU.
On February 2 and 3, I registered at NYU, but carefully deferred payment until the news from Columbia was official. I signed up for a series of courses and, on February 4, I attended my first class there. I listened to a professor discuss the determination of carbohydrate struc ture by the great nineteenth-century chemist Emil Fischer.
Periodically, though, even while I was taking my NYU courses and finding that I could not avoid taking their Qualifyings in March, I would go up to Columbia to see my old friends. They kept trying to cheer me up, and Lloyd Roth offered to bet I would pass.
I said, uneasily, that I didn't gamble, and he said, "All right, no
3 See The Early Asimov.
money on your part. I'll bet you a dollar against your mustache. If you fail, I give you a dollar, so it won't be a total loss. If you pass, you have to shave off your mustache." (Like everybody else in the world except me, he hated my mustache.)
I agreed.
The results were due on February 13, and on the twelfth I was at Columbia to see if I could smoke out any advance news. Nobody was supposed to give out any news until the official posting, but there was no way I could avoid learning what had happened.
Professor Thomas grinned at me and said, ''Go home and write a story." Professor Caldwell said, "I can't tell you the results—but don't worry too much." Someone else said, "I mustn't tell—but don't commit suicide." Professor Victor K. LaMer scorned all subterfuge. When I met him and asked if he had any idea of the results, he said, bluntly, "You passed."
It seemed like a unanimous opinion. I can only presume that Professor Thomas, impressed by my handling of unknown samples designed to "get rid of me" and by my defense of my singing in the lab, had thrown the full weight of his opinion in my favor (he had given me an A— for the course I had taken with him) and had swayed the committee. It didn't hurt that Urey had quit his post as head of the department to devote himself entirely to war work (after his crocodile tears in class) and that none other than Thomas had taken over as acting head. (I could not have foreseen that.)
In any case, the official results were posted on Friday the thirteenth (not bad for a Friday the thirteenth) and I did the honest thing. I went to the barber's and had my mustache shaved off. My face was smooth again. I then went to New York University and dismantled my setup there.
I was twenty-two, I had qualified for research, and I was on my way toward a Ph.D.
Gertrude
While the first six weeks of the new year seemed entirely filled with Qualifyings, other things were taking place, too. Sometime in mid-January, I got a postcard from one Pauline Bloom, inviting me to attend meetings of something called the Brooklyn Authors Club. It's a sign of how sloppy I was getting about my diary entries that between my concern over my Qualifyings and over the war, I did not mention the card when it came.
I was flattered, however. I didn't know how Pauline had come to hear of me, but I took it to mean that my fame as a writer was spreading through the world and, of course, I assumed the Brooklyn Authors Club was an old, established, rich-in-tradition organization, and that an invitation from them was an accolade.
On January 19, 1942, I attended the meeting to which I had been invited and it was not at all what I expected. There were about a dozen people there, almost all of them well stricken in years (by twenty-two-year-old standards) and all of them mere beginners, even unpublished beginners. It turned out to be the kind of organization in which we read each other's manuscripts and then discussed them.
I ought to have been horrified, and I might have been at the start, but it quickly turned out to be fun. I liked to listen to the manuscripts and discuss them. Then, too, I had brought along "Legal Rites," and I read my manuscript "with expression" so everyone else was enthusiastic, which pleased me.
I also remember that some time was spent in discussing the war and in considering rumors that enemy ships were at sea to serve as bases for the bombing of New York. (This sort of thing exercised us vastly in the weeks after Pearl Harbor. There were air-raid alarms in New York and I think most people expected to be bombed.)
The meeting was sufficiently successful for me to make up my mind to attend future meetings. On February 2, I attended again, and had a good time again.
What it did for me was to get me back in the writing mood. Nearly two months had passed since Pearl Harbor and, finally, on February 2, I suggested another story to Campbell. It was to be a sequel to
"Not Final" and, after listening to the plot, Campbell suggested the title "Victory Unintentional." I got to work that very day and by February 8, I was finished. I brought it to Campbell on February 9.
On February 13, after official confirmation of my having passed the Qualifyings and right after I had shaved off my mustache, I visited Campbell in the best of spirits. He wasn't in, but Katherine Tarrant handed me the manuscript and there was no doubt about the results. A scrap of paper was attached on which Campbell had scribbled "CH 3 CH 2 CH 2 CH 2 SH." That was the chemical formula for butyl mercaptan, the substance that gives skunks their smell.
I had never received so brief and so devastating a rejection, but even that couldn't take away the greatness of the day. I wrote an answer on the note. "The next one will be rf / ^'^^] •" That was the
ysA 0
formula for coumarin, which is what gives newmown hay its sweet and pleasant smell.
Meanwhile, I had attended still another meeting of the Brooklyn Authors Club "and had about the swellest time of my lif
e," according to my diary. I had become the official reader by now, reading everyone's manuscripts and not my own only. It had turned out, you see, that I read with life and verve, while the others did so in a monotone.
I read my own rejected story "Big Game" to great applause, particularly that of a young man named Joe Goldberger, who attended a meeting for the first time on that day. "Big Game" so pleased him that he felt he would like to be more friendly.
He said to me at the conclusion of the meeting, "Let's get together next Saturday night and go out on the town. I'll bring my girl. You bring yours."
That scared me. The phrase "out on the town" sounded very expensive. Besides, while in the course of the nearly two years since Irene had left New York, I had had dates with at least a dozen girls, not one of them could possibly be considered "my girl." In fact, looking back through my diaries, there are girls' names mentioned that are only names now. None of them remain in my memory. (But let's be fair: I doubt very much that I remain in their memory.)
So I said, "I'm sorry, Joe. I don't have a girl."
That didn't seem to bother him. "That's all right. My girl will bring a girl for you."
The double date was for the Astor Hotel at Seventh Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, for Saturday, February 14 (Valentine's Day—something I didn't notice at the time), at 8:30 p.m.
I agreed with forced heartiness, still worried about the expense, and carefully jotted down Joe's telephone number in case I decided to back out. He may have expected that I would, for on February 13, in the evening, he called to remind me of the date.
That was the day I had passed my Qualifyings so I felt that nothing was too big for me to tackle and I told him in great glee that I would be there. Undoubtedly, if I had failed my Qualifyings, I would have backed out.
Apparently what was happening that made Joe keen on not letting me back out was that it was his girlfriend who was putting on the pressure. (I learned the story afterward and I hope I've got it straight.) Joe and his girlfriend (whose name was Lee) had been going together for quite a while and Joe seemed interested in marriage but Lee was not certain that he was the right man for her.
Lee had long wanted a chance to introduce Joe to a friend of hers —Gertrude Blugerman—in order to get Gertrude's estimate of his qualities. It seemed important to do so, however, under some color of legitimacy to avoid humiliating and angering Joe, and this double elate seemed just the thing.
I became a mere pawn in this subtle plan of Lee's and didn't count. When Gertrude expressed strong objections to a blind date, Lee begged her to accept for the sake of meeting Joe and passing on his qualities. And if I turned out to be a disaster then surely even a disaster could be endured for a few hours. Then too, Joe had described me to Lee as a "Russian chemist with a mustache," and Lee had passed that description on to Gertrude and had done her best to imply to Gertrude that she would be meeting someone exotic and virile. (Russians were getting a good press in those months of the Soviet winter counteroffen-sive against the till-then invincible Nazis.)
The fact was, of course, that except for the place of my birth, I was pure Brooklyn; and on the day before the date, I had shaved off my mustache, being unaware that it was a selling point.
Naturally, I got to the Astor early (I am always early) and proceeded to wait. Lee caught sight of me before Gertrude did, and when Joe confirmed her horrified suspicion, she rushed back, full of apologies, and begged Gertrude to endure the evening somehow. I gather (when I was told the story in later years) that, at first glance, I struck Lee as unfit to date.
When I saw Gertrude, though, I saw at a glance that she was fit to date. She was five feet, two inches in height, a trifle on the plump side
Gertrude
33
(which didn't bother me), with beautiful dark hair, and even more beautiful dark eyes, a generously proportioned figure, and—most of all—was the very image of Olivia de Havilland who, in my opinion, was the most beautiful actress in Hollywood and with whom I had fallen desperately in love when I saw Captain Blood.
Gee!
I still remember that evening. Gertrude told me on a later occasion that I seemed to be looking at her constantly and to be unaware of anything else.
Yes, indeed! She was exactly right!
Joe was in charge, so the date did not follow along the lines they usually did when I was in charge. The first place we went to was a bar.
"What do you want?" said Joe to me, expansively.
I looked uncertain and miserable, and whispered to him, "What am I supposed to have?"
He took in the situation and whispered back, "Have a half-and-half. That's very mild."
I didn't know what a half-and-half was. I said, "Sure."
So I got it and sipped it and it tasted like beer, so I hated it and just held it wondering what to do next. Meanwhile, everyone lit up a cigarette, including Gertrude, and Joe offered me one. I took it, he lit it, and now I had something in my other hand.
Gertrude watched me as I desperately sipped and tried to swallow and then, just as desperately, puffed and tried not to choke. She said, "You don't drink, do you?"
I shook my head miserably.
"You don't smoke either, do you?"
I shook my head again.
"Why are you trying to, then?"
I said, "I don't want to spoil things."
She said, "You won't spoil things."
So I put down the half-and-half and stepped on the cigarette. I felt much better after that.
On a later occasion, Gertrude told me that she had always led a most circumspect life (and so she had) and that I was the first person she had ever met who made her feel wicked by comparison. Apparently she didn't mind feeling wicked.
We then went down to Greenwich Village to see some arty movie called The Forgotten Village and after that we had a midnight snack.
Finally I said, "I can't stay out much later than this because I have to help with the paper delivery tomorrow morning at my father's candy store."
On a later occasion, Gertrude said that that had impressed her
mightily. I had apparently made no attempt to pretty up the situation but had admitted having a father who owned a candy store. Nor did I pretend I did something more important than fool around with newspapers. It seemed very honest.
Actually, it should have seemed very stupid. If it had ever occurred to me that I might have gained ground by lying, I might very well have tried to. It just didn't occur to me, and it never does, even to this day. With all the years I now own and all the experience I now possess, I still somehow possess a foolish lack of sophistication in such things.
But I did take her home, even though it turned out she lived in Brighton Beach at the far end of Brooklyn, and I didn't get home till 4:00 a.m. (My father didn't mind what time I got home, actually, as long as I was in the store at 7:00 a.m. to help with the papers—and, of course, I was.)
3
That blind date on Valentine's day was exhilarating, but it was expensive, as I had feared. The whole thing had cost me $2.50, and although Joe, exuberant over the apparent success of the date spoke of another date on Thursday, I was dubious. Where was I to get the money? 1
Yet when Thursday, February 19, came, I was there, too. Expensive or not, I wanted to see Gertrude again. I managed to get lost and showed up fifteen minutes late at the trysting place, but after that all went well. At a radio station we attended a discussion called "Brotherhood of Man: Is It Fact or Fiction?," which was free, and in which someone quoted a bit of doggerel I have remembered ever since:
The rain, it raineth every day Upon the just and unjust fella. But more upon the just y because The unjust has the just's umbrella.
Then we went to a cafeteria, which was not very expensive, and then I took Gertrude home again and remained twenty minutes outside her apartment door talking with her.
It was very romantic, and I was no longer satisfied to have Joe arrange the dates. I suggested I call for her at he
r home on February 28, and she agreed. I was off and running.
1 The war news did not exactly fill me with glee, either. On the very day of the date, the British bastion of Singapore—so long considered impregnable—fell to the Japanese, who now controlled all the East Asian coast south of Siberia, and almost all the western Pacific.
4
I was also off and running as far as my research was concerned.
The passing of my Qualifyings had left me with both a long-range and a short-range problem. The long-range was the matter of the draft. Although my 2A draft rating had been renewed in December, matters of judgment varied from draft board to draft board and from month to month. All of Columbia was buzzing with stories of graduate students being drafted, and increasing numbers of my friends were taking defense jobs. 2
What was best to do under these conditions, I didn't know. And when you don't know, what can you do but adopt a fatalistic stance? I decided that something would turn up, and meanwhile there was the short-range problem of choosing a research professor.
It wasn't easy. The professors knew me and, what's more, knew me as a problem student. Elderfield, who had a large corps of research students, was out, of course. I didn't even approach him. Others seemed equally unlikely. Thomas, who was a natural choice, was not taking on research students at the moment, and Caldwell, though she expressed willingness to have me, was clearly not enthusiastic.
Roth had suggested Professor Charles Reginald Dawson, for whom he himself was working. Dawson was a young man of thirty-one who had gained his own Ph.D. just four years before, in 1938, working under Professor John 'Top" Nelson, who had taught me undergraduate organic chemistry. I had had no contact with Dawson and knew nothing about him but I was desperate enough to try anyone.
In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 Page 41
