by Isaac Asimov
We had a very animated luncheon and I put myself out to be charming and amusing, since both of the young women were attrac tive and obviously pleased with me. Finally, since the girls had ordered a birthday cake, the waiter brought one with great eclat and put it in front of me, assuming naturally that it was my birthday and that my young granddaughters were helping me celebrate.
Whereupon I said, haughtily, "Waiter, place that cake in front of the girls. It is their birthday. I am the birthday present."
It was a pleasure to watch the waiter give the old-man-with-thewhite-sideburns that look of sudden awed respect.
[Photosynthesis was written for Basic Books-publisher Arthur Rosenthal. ]
Somehow I took it for granted that by the time the book rolled off the presses, it would be called The Green Miracle or The Food Factory or something like that. It wasn't ...
"Arthur," I said uneasily. "how can the book sell well with that ridiculous title?"
Arthur said . . ." If you'll look under the photograph [of the Sun], you'll see your name printed very clearly-and spelled correctly."
It was nice to have a publisher's confidence, and, indeed, the book did moderately well.
I taped a show with Walter Cronkite, who was narrating a program on the future, one called "The Twenty-first Century." I was rather excited about this, for I admired Cronkite extravagantly.
I sat down in a chair across a low, round table from him, and while the technicians fiddled with the light, I wondered whether I could say, "My father will be very thrilled, Mr. Cronkite, when he finds out you've interviewed me."
It seemed so childish a remark that I didn't dare make it. I was afraid Cronkite would call off the whole thing in disgust.
My hesitation gave him the chance to speak first. He said, "Well, Dr. Asimov, my father will be very thrilled when he finds out I've interviewed you."
[At a panel discussion] One of the panelists ... was Kurt Vonnegut, whom I now met for the first time. Over a glass of beer that evening (I had ginger ale) he said to me, "How does it feel to know everything?"
I said, "I only know how it feels to have the reputation of knowing everything. Uneasy."
[Comment after one of his talks to librarians] "Dr. Asimov," she said, "I just want you to know that in our branch, your books are the most frequently stolen."
There was widespread laughter and I said that this seemed to indicate that either my readers were particularly dishonest, which I doubted, or that once having one of my books in their possession they couldn't bear to give it up on any account-something for which I couldn't blame them.
Twenty-Six.
THE BIBLE,
[In 1965 he wrote a book he called It's Mentioned in the Bible, but it came out as Asimov's Guide to the Bible.]
IMMIRMIM I have always been interested in the Bible, though I can't recall ever having had any religious feelings even as a youngster. There's a swing to biblical language that impresses the ear and the mind. I assume that the Bible is great literature in the original Hebrew or, in the case of the New Testament, Greek, but there is no question that the Authorized Version (that is, the King James Bible) is, along with the plays of William Shakespeare, the supreme achievement of English literature.
I also take a kind of perverse pleasure in the thought that the most important and influential book ever written is the product of Jewish thought. (No, I don't think it was written down at God's dictation any more than the Iliad was.) I call it "perverse" because it is an instance of national pride which I don't want to feel and which I fight against constantly. I refuse to consider myself to be anything more sharply defined than "human being," and I feel that aside from overpopulation the most intractable problem we face in trying to avoid the destruction of civilization and humanity is the diabolical habit of people dividing themselves into tiny groups, with each group extolling itself and denouncing its neighbors.
I remember once a fellow Jew remarking with satisfaction on the high percentage of Nobel Prize winners who were Jewish.
I said, "Does that make you feel superior?"
"Of course," he said.
"What if I told you that 60 percent of the pornographers and 80 percent of the crooked Wall Street manipulators were Jewish?"
He was startled. "Is that true?
"I don't know. I made up the figures. But what if it were true? Would it make you feel inferior?"
He had to think about that. It's much easier to find reasons to consider oneself superior than inferior. But one is just the mirror image of the other. The same line of argument that takes individual credit for the real or imaginary achievement of an artificially defined group can be used to justify the subjection and humiliation of individuals for the real or imagined delinquencies of the same group.
My father received [the Bible book] in Florida. (I always gave him a copy of every book I wrote, and he would show it to everyone he knew but would not allow them to touch the books. They had to look at it while he held it. He must have made himself, and me, so unpopular.)
He telephoned me to tell me he had read only seven pages and had then closed the book because it didn't reflect the Orthodox viewpoint. This was the period [in his father's retirement] when he had returned to Orthodoxy so he could have something to do. I felt bad about that, because it was the clearest evidence of his backsliding, and I disapproved.
Having spent so much time on Asintov's Guide to the Bible ... I went to Brandeis to see a magnificent collection of old Bibles.
At one point we were looking at a Jewish Bible published in Spain before the expulsion of the Jews. It was open to the seventh chapter of Isaiah, and was in Spanish, except for one word that was in Hebrew and stood out like a sore thumb amid the rest.
My friend said to me, "Why do they have one word in Hebrew?"
Having spent some time on that very point in my Bible book, I said, "That's the verse that, in the King James, goes `Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.' The only trouble is that the Hebrew word is almah, which does not mean `virgin' but `young woman.' If the Jewish publishers were to translate the word correctly they would seem to be denying the divinity of Jesus and they would be in serious trouble with the Inquisition. Rather than do that, or translate it incorrectly, they leave that word in Hebrew."
I said all this in my usual speaking voice and in very much the manner in which I would have delivered a lecture at school. While I was talking (at somewhat greater length than I report it here), the nearest security guard approached and listened curiously.
I didn't notice that, but my friend did, and (like most of my friends) he overestimated the importance of my name. He therefore said to the guard ... "Do you know who he is?"
And the guard said, "God?"
My friend needn't have laughed that hard.
Twenty-Seven.
CHANGES
[On August 3, 1969] the Sunday New York Times ... interview of me ... took up a full page in the Book Review section and was very good. What particularly pleased me was that toward the end he included a tribute I had paid my father for buying me a new typewriter even before I had made my first sale, as his evidence of faith in my perseverance and ability.
I promptly called my parents in Florida to ask if they had seen the Times yet. They hadn't, and my mother, who answered the phone, said my father wasn't feeling well. I asked to speak to him and he seemed annoyed at my mother for having overdramatized the situation.
He said, "So I have pains. I have pains all the time now; and I've had it for years. Sometimes it's a little worse, sometimes a little better, and finally I die. So what? When I die, I die."
"Yes, Pappa," I said, "but how do you feel now?"
"Not so bad. She's just making a fuss. I'll send her out for the Times. That will give her something to do."
Later on in the day, he called me ... very pleased. Of course, he did his best not to be sickening about it, since he always prided himself on his stoical approach to life, but he rarely fooled me.
/> Some years before, I heard Shelley Berman do a comic routine on The Ed Sullivan Show. He played his own father, whose accent, intonations, idioms, personality, and retail store were exactly like my own father's ... I called my father long-distance ...
"Hello, Pappa. It's Isaac. Did you hear Shelley Berman on the TV just now'?"
"Yes," said my father, and nothing more.
Rather at a loss for words, I waited, and then finally said, "I heard him, too, so-so-so I thought I'd call and ask how you are."
There was another pause, and my mother said, "He's fine."
I was astonished. "Mamma!" I said, "what are you doing on the phone? Where's Pappa?"
My mother said, "He's in the corner, crying. What did you say to him?"
So much for my father and his stoicism.
On Monday, August 4, 1969, things fell apart.
At 8:45 P.M. that evening I was on the phone and the operator broke in to tell me that someone else was trying to reach me on a lifeand-death emergency.... Stupidly, turning cold all over, I said, "Life and death'?"
I heard my brother's voice break in. "Tell him it's Stanley calling." . . .
I broke off my conversation, was connected to Stanley, and I said, "What's the matter?"
It was a useless question. I knew what had happened.
That afternoon, my father had died, a little less than a year after he had gone to Florida ...
At least I had spoken to him the day before. He had indeed felt poorly then. He felt worse on the morning of the fourth, was taken to the hospital, and died there in a matter of hours.
He was seventy-two years and seven months old at the time of death, and had survived the onset of his angina pectoris by thirty-one years. He had remained mentally alert to the very end and was never bedridden till the last day. It was a source of great solace to me that on the last full day of his life I had spoken to him (and so had Stanley, in connection with the Times article) and that he himself had read the article and had seen that I had appreciated what he had done for me and that I had let the world know.
[Isaac died at seventy-two and approximately three months, but he was not so lucky to avoid being bedridden many times before that.]
The death of my father seemed to sensitize me to the manner in which my life seemed to be falling apart. Gertrude and I had been talking divorce ...
[In the spring of 1970] Divorce had come close enough to make it seem advisable to me to find an apartment for myself, one small enough for me to handle and yet large enough to hold my library. I found such an apartment in Wellesley ... I would be no more than five miles from the house, so that I could see the kids and be available for emergencies ...
[But separation plans did not work out. and his lawyers told him] I would have to go to another state where no-fault proceedings could be instituted and where I could set up a legitimate residency. California and New York were the only two possibilities and, of the two, I chose New York. New York would be closer to my children; it was the place I was brought up; it was where all my major publishers (except Houghton Mifflin) were based.
[He moved to Manhattan to an apartment hotel and began to work again. It took three years to get a divorce.]
Twenty-Eight.
SHAKESPEARE
After I had handed in Asimov's Guide to the Bible, I felt bereft. I had worked on it so long and enjoyed it so much, I resented having to stop. I wondered if there were anything else I could do that would be comparable in pleasure, and what is the only part of English literature to compare with the Bible? Of course-the plays of William Shakespeare ...
I therefore began to write Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, intending to go over every one of his plays carefully, explaining all the allusions and archaisms, and discussing all his references involving history, geography, mythology, or anything else I thought could use discussion.
The most fun I've ever had, writing, was when I wrote my autobiographies. After all, what more interesting subject can I have than myself? Leaving this out of account, however, Asimovs Guide to Shakespeare was the most pleasant work I had ever done. I have loved Shakespeare since I was a young boy, and reading him painstakingly, line by line, and then writing at length about everything I read was such a joy.
[After moving to New York] I received galleys of the book-a lot of galleys, for the book was half a million words long. That gave me something to do, just when I very badly needed something to do to keep my mind off my feeling of guilt and insecurity.
Galleys or "proofs," for those of you who don't know, are long sheets on which the contents of a book are printed, usually two and a half pages or so to each galley sheet. The writer is supposed to read over them carefully, trying to catch all the typos made by the printer and all the infelicities made by himself. Such "proofreading" and corrections are meant to ensure that the final book will be free of errors.
I suspect that most writers find galleys a pain, but I like them. They give me a chance to read my own writing. The problem is that I'm not a good proofreader, because I read too quickly. I read by "gestalt," a phrase at a time. If there is a wrong letter, a displaced letter, a missing letter, an excessive letter, I don't notice it. The small error is lost in the general correctness of the phrase. I have to force myself to look at each word, each letter separately, but if I relax for one moment I start racing ahead again.
The ideal proofreader should be, in my opinion, knowledgeable about every aspect of spelling, punctuation, and grammar, while being slightly dyslexic.
Asi,nov's Guide to Shakespeare was published in two volumes in 1970, and whenever I use it, or even look at it, I find myself back in those very early days in New York, uncertain of the future and a little frightened.
Twenty-Nine.
NEW EXPERIMENTS
IN WRITING
[During a visit to a secondhand bookstore] I came up with a secondhand Modern Library edition of Lord Byron's Don Juan. I had read the first couple of cantos in college, but I had never read the whole thing (or at least the sixteen cantos Byron had written-he never finished it). It struck me that since I could rarely sleep through the night at the [hotel J, I could use the time to read Don Juan. Who knows? It might put me to sleep.
I tried it that very night, and only got through the dedication and into a few verses of the first canto before I realized that nobody could possibly get the full flavor of the poem without understanding all the allusions Byron was constantly making to current affairs, to recent history, and to classic learning.
I remembered Martin Gardner's recommendation [to try annotating something, because it's fun to do], and fell into an absolute lust to annotate Don Juan.
[At a lunch with Larry Ashmead, his Doubleday editor] I advanced my notion of annotating Don Juan, explaining that it was the greatest comic epic in the English language, and perhaps in any language, and that its wealth of contemporary and classical allusion, which had made it all the funnier to an educated man of the 1820s, was lost on us a century and a half later.
Larry put it up to the editorial board and in due time I heard that they were willing to let me go ahead. In fact, I couldn't help but notice on Larry's desk a comment (handwritten) by Betty Prashker, one of the senior editors. All it said in connection with the Don Juan annotation was, "Oh let Isaac have his fun."
[Ellen Queen's Mystery Magazine asked Isaac to write a story for them.]
It occurred to me ... that I might use the Trap Door Spiders [the stag club that met once a month in New York]. I could have a similar organization, which I would call "The Black Widowers," have similar members, and a similar routine ...
Where I departed from reality was to have the guest come up with a mystery ... I also invented a waiter, who solved the mystery ... he was an incarnation of Wodehouse's immortal Jeeves ...
I had never thought of the story as the first of a series ... but [after it appeared] I decided to try more of what I instantly began to think of as the "Black Widowers" stories.
It wouldn
't be easy. Each story would have to be told during a banquet; each would have to be analyzed in armchair fashion, with the solution ... sufficiently forceful to be accepted at once.
I managed. In the end the Black Widowers stories grew to be more in number than those of any other series of stories I had ever writtenand the most enjoyable for me.
[Among other things, Isaac wrote a story for a science-fiction anthology. The story turned out to be too long.]
Larry ... phoned me and told me that anthologization was out. He wanted the story expanded into a novel.
I didn't want to expand it into a novel, however. "The Gods Themselves" fit the twenty thousand words perfectly and if I tried to pump it up to three or four times its length, I would ruin it by making it incredibly spongy.
I thought very rapidly and said, "Look, Larry, the story involves an energy source that depends on communication between ourselves and another universe, and it ends downbeat. What I can do is retell the story from the standpoint of the other universe and still leave it downbeat. Then I can take it up a third time in still a third setting and this time make it upbeat."
"Are you sure you can do this?" said Larry.
Well, I wasn't. I had just made that all up on the spur of the moment, but it wouldn't have done to say so.
"Absolutely positive," I said (well, if I couldn't, I wasn't Isaac Asimov), so on March 8, 1971, I dropped in at Doubleday and signed a contract to do the novel.
Larry had shown the first part [of The Gods Themselves] to a paperback house and they had expressed interest, but had said, "Will Asimov be putting some sex into the book?"
Larry said, firmly, "No!"
When Larry told me this I instantly felt contrary enough to want to put sex into the book. I rarely had sex in my stories and I rarely had extraterrestrial creatures in them, either, and I knew there were not lacking those who thought that I did not include them because I lacked the imagination for it.
