by James Watson
A month later, Nathan Pusey told Harvard University Press that it could not publish my book, saying, “Harvard did not want to be involved in fights between scientists.” Libel considerations were likely not involved but no foundation for such objections seems to have been established in any case. Some months before, at a party dominated by Harvard Law students, a recent law school graduate told me that he was reading my manuscript for Ropes and Grey, Harvard's Boston lawyers, explaining that he had no past experience with libel matters. Once I learned that HUP was out, Joyce Leibowitz suggested I retain as my personal counsel the New York lawyer Ephraim London. A greatly respected legal scholar, Eph had successfully argued several freedom-of-speech cases before the United States Supreme Court. A tall, thin man with connections to publishing going back several decades, Eph had been Simon and Schuster's house counsel. Upon reading my manuscript, he said it contained no libel.
Already I had a new publisher, the newly formed Atheneum Press, started by Pat Knopf, son of the famous publisher Alfred A. Knopf, and Simon Michael Bessie. I chose it to stay with Tom Wilson, who was resigning as director of Harvard University Press to join Atheneum. Tom's leaving HUP had nothing to do with Pusey's decision to block my book. The decision had been made beforehand, in response to his approaching HUP's compulsory retirement age. Tom's children were still young and he needed a well-paid job into the foreseeable future. Ironically, only because HUP was not publishing my book could I continue to enjoy the reassurance of having Tom at my side. Lawrence Bragg, confident of Tom's integrity, let his preface stand. Fearing a libel action if not a petition for an injunction against Honest Jim's publication, Atheneum retained the New York lawyer Alan Schwartz, whom William Manchester had used to defend against Jacqueline Kennedy's libel suit.
I met with him and Tom Wilson several times before Eph London came into the picture to tell Schwartz that the changes he wanted were unnecessary, as Honest Jim was neither libelous nor an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Many of Schwartz's suggestions would blunt intended candor. His accepted version of the first sentence, “I can't ever remember seeing Francis Crick in a modest mood,” could only have been written by a timid lawyer. In a few cases, he wanted harmless substitutions such as often instead of generally. To these I gave in. As Tom Wilson strongly concurred, I also agreed to Schwartz's wish that the title become The Double Helix.
The situation was less under control across the Atlantic, where Weidenfeld's solicitor, Colin Madie, still maintained that Francis was being defamed and that, given his reputation for not being particularly well balanced, we should not expect him to act in his own long-term interest. By the end of September, Madie abruptly changed his opinion, telling Weidenfeld to proceed. This happened after he showed the manuscript to a close friend who had known Francis for years and who told him that my portrait of Crick was “right on mark.” Weidenfeld's editor in chief, Nicolas Thompson, then reread the manuscript, writing to me that “my picture of Francis was one only a hypersensitive or very unreasonable person could object to. You point to his faults indeed, but much more to his enormous talents and likable qualities.”
The way was now clear to sign final contracts, with Tom Wilson looking embarrassed as he conveyed to me Simon Michael Bessie's offer of an André Deutsch-magnitude advance. Seeing no gain from asking Bessie why he took me for a fool, I let Eph negotiate a more reasonable sum. Later, Bessie tried to renege on his promise to stipulate that Atheneum would pay one-half of any costs of successfully defending a libel suit. So I wrote him that the contract already incorporated all compromises, and there we must stand. Otherwise, I would find another publisher, notwithstanding my connection with Tom. I gave him a deadline to back down, which he did. I felt sorry for Tom's having to be associated with this overrated publisher, who was not a patch on someone like George Weidenfeld.
A better side of Atheneum was presented by Harry Ford, who chose the typeface and designed a striking red jacket. Once I got through my first fall Harvard lectures, I assembled and sent on to him the appropriate photos and preliminary sketches for diagrams of DNA bases, the sugar phosphate backbone, and so on. Libby Aldrich was no longer available to help me, having gone off to Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford to study English and also to avoid facing her emotions concerning the Advocate's former editor Stuart Arrowsmith Davis. In Plath-like fashion, she wrote a blue-tinted letter to describe herself as freezing, pale, and gaunt, but very well acclimated to dropping shillings into various heating devices and visiting the public baths (another shilling) along with the rest of the neighborhood's female population of Indians and Cypriote. Lady Margaret Hall itself, she said, was part convent, part prison, and very much an autonomous little private girls’ school, through which passed innumerable withered little old ladies, two of them her tutors—the Anglo-Saxon one old and fierce, the literature one old and sadly girlish. For cheer, pictures of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan were on the walls of her two attic rooms, above the floors occupied by her meek Irish landlord and his virago wife. Seeing Privilege, Libby wrote that she shortened her skirts and aimed to cultivate glamour.
Tom Wilson now was in a position to contact the New Yorker about serializing The Double Helix as they had Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. But they turned us down, as did Life magazine, which said they had already dealt with DNA through their big 1963 illustrated article. The Atlantic Monthly responded more positively, publishing The Double Helix intact in their January and February 1968 issues. By then, Francis and Maurice had given up thoughts of any legal action, with Francis feeling victorious over HUP's withdrawal. No one would now have cause to think The Double Helix a scholarly book. Early in February 1968, Eph sent me a bill for $700 for his assistance between June 1967 and October 6, 1967, citing charges for (1) his opinions with respect to libel, (2) the withdrawal of Atheneum-suggested changes that he thought unwarranted, and (3) conferring with attorneys for Atheneum with respect to requests by Dr. Crick's attorney to examine manuscripts, correspondences, et cetera. To complete the bill, $8.86 was requested for toll calls and $5.75 for messenger service.
A luncheon was held at the Century Association on February 14, 1968, for reviewers and science editors. There I would have to be gracious to Michael Bessie, but Libby Aldrich was on hand for me to make snide remarks to behind his back. Just before Christmas, Oxford had dropped out of her life, and for six weeks she'd expected to be Mrs. Stuart Arrowsmith Davis. The wedding was meant to take place in Bronxville the Saturday before my event. Just before the ceremony, however, the groom had suffered a nervous collapse and the marriage was indefinitely postponed. By the luncheon's end, Libby was nowhere to be seen, and I eventually found her in a ladies’ room passed out from having drowned her sorrows in pre-luncheon drinks. A cab took us to the Plaza, where I had a big room with a window on the park. Libby instantly fell asleep in my bed. By 7:00 P.M., she was alert enough for dinner at La Cote Basque before I took her to Grand Central Station for the train to New Haven, where Stuart was a Yale graduate student.
The next evening I met the Atheneum publicity agent at the studio where I was to appear on Merv Griffin's TV show. My conversation with Griffin seemed to end almost before it started, with my nervous movements causing Merv's English-butler sidekick, Arthur Treacher (also of eponymous fish and chips fame), to ask whether I needed the little boys’ room. Ten days later, I went back to New York to appear after Harry Belafonte on the Today show and attend a luncheon to mark the book's official publication date. In the middle of March I was there yet again for a book world luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria. By then, several positive reviews had appeared, the most important by the Columbia University sociologist Robert Merton. The article, entitled “Making It Scientifically,” began: “This is a candid self-portrayal of the scientist as a young man in a hurry.” Richard Lewontin used his Chicago Sun-Times space to compare it to Francoise Gilot's Life with Picasso, calling it a vulgar curiosity about minor scientific celebrities. Soon I was on the New York Times best-seller list, remaining the
re for sixteen weeks, though never near the top. Time magazine for some two weeks wanted me on its cover, sending a reporter to follow me about at Harvard and then watch me speak at Dartmouth. Eagerly I sought out Time on the day promoted for my front-page appearance only to see the face of “Danny the Red.” The student barricades in Paris had become more important than DNA.
Only late in May did Weidenfeld publish the British edition of The Double Helix. They had produced a much condensed version for the Sunday Times to publish, but I nixed the effort, saying that it lacked the character of the full book and would unnecessarily annoy Francis and Maurice. Even worse was the vulgar jacket, printed a month before publication without my input. It made Francis seem ridiculous, with such ludicrous attempts at seductive copy as: “1) Which winner of the Nobel Prize has a voice so loud it can actually produce a buzzing in the ears? 2) Who is the top Cambridge scientist who gossips over dinner about the private lives of women undergraduates? 3) Which eminent English biologist created a scandal at a costume party by dressing up as George Bernard Shaw and kissing all the girls behind the anonymity of a scraggy red beard?” Mortified by my publisher's stupidity and grossness, I immediately contacted Nicolas Thompson to have Weidenfeld replace the offensive jacket. With no argument they backed down, and George Weidenfeld personally reassured me that all the jackets were being destroyed.
The week I was in England to mark the official publication date was no time to try to see Francis and Maurice. But Peter Pauling was typically fun to be with, and I could deliver the English version to Naomi Mitchison, to whom I dedicated The Double Helix. I saw Lawrence and Alice Bragg at their country home near the Suffolk coast. In England, most of the reviews were favorable. The most critical was by the embryologist C. H. Waddington, who thought me verging toward Salvador Dali-like manic egocentricity. By the year's end, some seventy thousand books had sold in the United States and British sales approached thirty thousand. Given its generally high praise and wide visibility, Tom Wilson thought I would be a shoo-in for the 1969 National Book Award in science. But it went to Yale's Robert Jay Lifton for Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima.
Though I was disappointed, I no longer needed others to tell me I had written a book worth reading.
Remembered Lessons
1. Be the first to tell a good story
In 1953 the finding of the double helix by itself did not create the opportunity for an important new textbook. Any such book written the next year necessarily would have been dominated by other facts already well documented—and which still constituted most of what was known on the subject of life's nature. Twelve years had to pass before an almost complete, new story could be told of how the genetic information within DNA molecules is used by cells to order the amino acids in proteins. By contrast, the story of the quest for DNA's structure could be told immediately, although it took me almost a decade to figure out how to go about telling it. Many have had their objections to my version of characters and events, but the popular imagination was captured by it, not least on account of its having come first.
2. A wise editor matters more than a big advance
Assuming you are not being insultingly low-balled, choosing a publisher on the basis of the advance is like choosing a house builder solely on the basis of the lowest bid. An innovative book usually takes more time to write and may cost more money to produce than either you or your publisher would guess at the time of signing the contract. Better to have a seasoned and comprehending editor on your side when your manuscript takes many more years to finish than contractually stipulated. By then your editor, if not employed elsewhere, will be under pressure to curb production costs as much as possible. Your illustrations may be cut in number and fobbed off on the cheapest available commercial artist, but the chances of that are diminished if the publisher isn't already deep in the hole having paid you money you haven't yet earned. If you haven't been overpaid, your freedom to pay back the advance and take the book elsewhere is greater and so is your leverage in demanding that corners not be cut.
3. Find an agent whose advice you will follow
Publishers’ contracts invariably contain clauses that only publishing lawyers understand. Unless you want to become credentialed in this arcane specialty, another field that has seen its best days, let your prospective contract go through the hands of someone paid by you to see that you are not taken advantage of. It is too much to expect your publisher, no matter his reputation for rectitude, to look after your interests and his own equally. The 10 percent to 15 percent of the proceeds charged by a reputable agent are well worth whatever is saved trying to represent yourself.
4. Use snappy sentences to open your chapters
With so much on TV, a short, incisive first sentence is more important than ever in pulling your readers into a new chapter. Let your audience know where they will be going if they stay with you. In The Double Helix, I used openers such as “I proceeded to forget Maurice, but not his DNA photograph.” Equally important are ending sentences, in which I often sprinkled a touch of irony, as in “The remnants of Christianity were indeed useful,” or attempted Oscar Wilde-like epigrams: “The message of my first meeting with the aristocracy was clear. I would not be invited back if I acted like everyone else.”
5. Don't use autobiography to justify pastactions or motivations
A major reason for writing autobiography is to prevent later biographers getting the basic facts of your life wrong. If life has graced you with lots of memorable occasions, merely reporting them correctly and dispassionately will generate a book worth reading. Attempts at justifying your actions and apologizing for bad behavior long ago only consign your work to the dubious genre of apologetics. Better to tell it straight without vainglory or shame and let others praise or damn you, as they will inevitably do anyway.
6. Avoid imprecise modifiers
Modifiers such as very, much, largely, and possibly don't convey useful information and only reduce the impact of otherwise crisp language. Saying someone is very bright offers no further insight than just saying he is bright. To go further, you must be more creative; for example, comparing your subject's brightness (or stupidity) with that of a known person or somehow ranking him, saying for instance, “No one was brighter in the Cavendish Laboratory”—that's got to mean something.
7. Always remember your intended reader
From the start, I wanted The Double Helix to be read beyond the world of science. So I integrated paragraphs about science with ones dealing with people, their individual actions and motives. Technical facts not essential to the story I left out. Even so, I found certain highly paid lawyers annoyed by any paragraph too technical for them to understand. I savored the justice ofthat.
8. Read out loud your written words
To make The Double Helix read smoothly, I read aloud every sentence to see if it made sense when spoken. Long sentences that were hard to follow I broke into shorter ones. I also sometimes combined a few short ones, as one short sentence after another can obscure the significance of events that unfold over more than one day. Choppy language is better suited for cookbooks and lab manuals.
13. MANNERS REQUIRED FOR ACADEMIC CIVILITY
BY THE mid-1960s, more and more of the research being done in Wally's and my third-floor labs was directed toward understanding how gene functioning is regulated by specific environmental triggers. We were preoccupied by concepts emanating over the past decade from the Institut Pasteur in Paris. There Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob skillfully employed genetic analysis of the bacterium E. coli to study how its exposure to the sugar lactose induced the preferential synthesis of the lactose-degrading enzyme ß-galactosidase. They showed the existence of a lactose “repressor” whose presence negatively controls the rate at which ß-galactosidase molecules are made. Their work suggested that free lactose repressore bind to one or more regulatory regions on the ß-galactosidase gene, thereby preventing subsequent binding of the RNA-making enzyme RNA polymerase. In their 196
1 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium paper, Jacob and Monod had proposed that the lactose repressor was an RNA molecule. Controversy by now existed as to whether they were correct, with others suspecting it to be a protein.
In 1965, Wally's main aim was to isolate the lactose repressor. As it was likely present only in a few molecules per bacterial cell, its identification was not a task for the faint-hearted. Two years before, Wally had spent several months unsuccessfully searching for it, believing it should specifically bind to ß-galactosidase inducers. Sensing then he was going nowhere, he turned to experiments with Julian Davies and Luigi Gorini that revealed streptomycin-induced misreadings of the genetic code, which offered possible explanations of how this powerful antibiotic kills bacteria.
Also keen to get the lactose repressor was the German biochemist Benno Müller-Hill, who was one year younger than Wally Coming from a politically liberal family, Benno gravitated further to the left as a chemistry student in the German socialist student scene, discovering that many teachers at the University of Munich had been Nazi sympathizers, though no one in authority seemed to care. In his hometown of Freiburg, Benno later did doctoral work in the laboratory of the sugar chemist Kurt Wallenfels. There he learned the essentials of protein chemistry through studying ß-galactosidase. He began to love science and became excited about Monod and Jacob's work on how lactose molecules induce the synthesis of ß-galactosidase. Later, in the fall of 1963, Benno began a postdoctoral position in Howard Ricken-berg's lab at Indiana University, to which he brought samples of the Wallenfels lab's glycosides to study their specificity in inducing ß-galactosidase.
