“And I suppose you don’t smoke, either?”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am,” I said exactly as before.

  She frowned and said, “Well, what the hell do you do?”

  And I said, without lowering my voice, “I f——— an awful lot, ma’am.”

  Whereupon she burst into shrieks of laughter, repeated the remark to everyone, and I was the hit of the evening.

  24

  A new project arose during lunch with Austin on June 27.

  Sterling North (whom I knew only as a book reviewer for the New York Post) edited a series of juvenile books for Houghton Mifflin that were very successful. They dealt with American history in one way or another, and Austin wondered if I could do one of that series.

  I thought for a while and then suggested that I do a book on Benjamin Franklin, with emphasis on his scientific discoveries. Austin agreed enthusiastically and eventually I named the book I was planning The Kite That Won the Revolution.

  25

  As July began we all seemed to go our separate ways. On July 1, we delivered David to Camp Annisquam and on July 3, I put Gertrude and Robyn on the bus to New York. Then, on July 5, I myself drove to New Hampton, New Hampshire, to attend a session of the Gordon Research Conferences for the second time. This time it was I, not Lemon, who was to give a talk.

  That week of the conferences was devoted to communications, so I gave what I call my “Mendel talk,” which dealt with a failure in communications. I discussed the discovery of the basic laws of genetics in the 1860s, and the failure of scientists to recognize that discovery till 1900.

  Except for that break I kept working busily on my biographies, and on the evening of July 8, Gertrude and Robyn were back.

  26

  Mac Talley’s assistant that year was a young man named Ed Burlingame. He was young and eager and I liked him. He was working on The Genetic Code and was trying to find a hard-cover publisher. On July 12, he reported that Clarkson N. Potter would do it.

  That offset the disappointment of receiving my Doubleday statement and finding it to be $1,900, the lowest in 5½ years. (That was not surprising, really, in view of the 3-year hiatus in new books for Doubleday.)

  And then the Potter deal fell through, too.

  I was not overwhelmed by the tragedy of it all, however. Though at no time during 1962 was I to get a monster check such as I had received the previous November, I did have forty-five books on my backlist, all of them, except the two textbooks, in print and earning money. What’s more, soft-cover sales and foreign sales kept picking up, and the number of small and medium-sized checks that arrived more than made up for the lack of the monster.

  Month by month, 1962 was outpacing 1961 by a good deal, and even if, in the end, it fell short because of a lack in November, there still seemed a good chance that if 1961 was to be my great year, it wouldn’t be my great year by as much as I had suspected.

  27

  Books sometimes get shunted aside as one gains an ascendant interest over another. I had been going great guns on the science biographies, and I already had over two hundred thousand words in final copy, with plenty more to go—when I wore out and went back to The Human Brain, which itself had been hanging fire for three months.

  I had stopped The Human Brain after I had finished the relatively easy part and approached the brain itself, which I simply didn’t understand.

  In the three-month interval, however, I had had time to cool off, to stop concentrating on the how-am-I-going-to-do-it? terror. I also collected some reading matter on the subject and educated myself a little. I had enough now to start writing about the brain, and the actual act of writing about it calmed me and made it easier to go on.

  I joke sometimes to the effect that when I approach a part of a book where I must explain something I don’t understand, I just type faster and faster and faster. Then, when I get to the part I don’t understand, sheer inertia pushes me through.

  That’s not literally true, of course, but there’s something to it psychologically.

  28

  With David at camp as he had been the previous summer, we prepared, once again, to take advantage of our temporary one-child status to go to Birchtoft. For the first time, though, I had so huge a pile of unfinished manuscripts that I began to worry about the unimaginable horror of a fire.

  The house and the furniture could be replaced, but the manuscripts. I had seven boxes of science biographies and a box of The Human Brain. The imagination boggled at the prospect of having to reconstruct that.

  On July 28, therefore, I took everything over to the Saltzbergs’ (with whom we had come to be particularly good friends) and urged Gloria to put them in the safest place in the house, where her children wouldn’t get at them.

  “And in case of fire,” I said, “save the manuscripts and, if there is any time left, see what you can do about your kids.”

  She promised faithfully and when The Human Brain was finally published, the dedication was “To Gloria and William Saltzberg, who guarded the manuscript.”

  The next day we left for Birchtoft, detouring to Camp Annisquam to see David.

  Once at Birchtoft, Gertrude found, to her honor, that she had forgotten to pack certain of Robbie’s dresses and her own bathing suit. I suggested that we just go into town and buy whatever we needed, but the sight of growing panic on Gertrude’s face made me realize that quick shopping decisions were impossible. I therefore suggested another solution.

  “Tell me exactly what you forgot and where the items are in the house,” I said.

  She told me, and I got into the car and raced off. It took me four hours to drive home, pick up everything, and come back, and I was the hero of the place. The various wives present obviously thought that here was a properly trained Jewish husband.

  I cheated, though. Part of my willingness to do the job depended on the fact that I could pick up the day’s mail while I was there. Driving 150 miles to pick up clothes we could as easily buy two miles away might be a distressing chore, but driving that same distance to pick up the day’s mail was a mere bagatelle.

  We had good weather that week and most of the time was spent at the lake. Even I got into a bathing suit and spent some time paddling about.

  29

  When we got home on Sunday, August 5, I found in the mail a letter from the World Book people strongly urging me to come to Chicago on September 11. Again, I was furious. First West Virginia and now this.

  I spent several days trying to keep my anger sufficiently ablaze to write them a letter telling them I would not come. But again, they paid me a great deal of money for very little work and they were lavish with travel expenses and per diems and again I decided to do as requested.

  30

  Shorter trips on my own were much better. In New York on August 19, I had the big adventure of taking the Staten Island ferry. In all my years in New York I had never done that.

  On Tuesday, I had lunch at the Friars Club with some people from television and I saw Groucho Marx there. I rubber-necked at him in true hick fashion, but at least I restrained myself from rushing up for an autograph. I felt that in the Friars Club show-business personalities ought to be spared that.

  31

  When I got home on August 21, I was shocked and puzzled to find an angry postcard from August Derleth, claiming that he had the rights to Robert Bloch’s story “The Hell-hound Train,” which had been included in The Hugo Winners, and demanding an accounting of its earnings.

  I was indignant August didn’t have a leg to stand on. I had negotiated in good faith with Bob’s agent, Harry Altshuler. If there was any dispute over rights, the quarrel was between August and Harry, with myself an innocent (and uninterested) bystander. I sent August a postcard telling him so.

  Though August bombarded me with additional cards and even threatened legal action, I held my position and said, come what might, I would not give him any information and that he must talk to Harry Altshuler. By the end of the month, August quieted down, admitting I was right, and it all blew over. What resolution was reached between Harry and August, I don’t know. I never bothered to ask.

  32

  On August 26, we picked up David, and the family was together again.

  Two days later, we received a brand-new kitchen set, a table and four chairs, replacing at last the chipped table and three chairs that Gertrude had bought twenty years before when we were still living on Walnut Street—and which had given excellent service.

  The new kitchen set was paid for out of bonus money paid me by World Book. I resented that somehow, for I felt that by spewing money over me in this fashion, World Book was corrupting me and making it difficult to hold to my principles. It forced me to come trotting to West Virginia and Chicago, for instance, and I felt ashamed.

  33

  We all know, intellectually, that in the midst of life we are in death. We know that at any time an unlooked-for accident, a slip, a bit of forgetfulness, a mechanical failure, something over which we have no control, no knowledge, perhaps even no direct connection with, can snuff us out.

  It is something, however, we don’t usually think of, for life would be insupportable if we did. Yet once in a while, it is borne in upon us despite ourselves.

  On September 4, 1962, I was standing in line at the post office waiting to pick up my morning mail. There was a sudden terrific crash followed by the loud racing of an automobile engine.

  It was an automobile, hard up against a telephone pole just outside the post office, with the driver slumped over the wheel. There was no mystery about what had happened. The driver had had a heart attack while driving, and was dead. Had he been pointed in a slightly different direction at the moment of attack he would have gone through the glass front of the post office and all of us in line might have been killed or, at the very least, badly damaged by flying glass.

  It was nothing that could have been foreseen or guarded against while conducting life under anything like normal circumstances, and I drove home shortly afterward a shaken man.

  It reminds me of a story my brother once told me. As a young reporter on Newsday (whose staff he had joined in May 1952), he had been told to interview a state official. Stan called him and the official told him he was about to fly to Albany and would have to be interviewed there. Stan, with a fine show of ingenuousness, asked how he might best get to Albany, hoping the official would invite him along on the private plane he was taking. The official obtusely told him the names of the airlines that plied their way between New York and Albany.

  Stanley took a commercial airline and was waiting in the official’s office when the news arrived that the private plane had crashed, killing the pilot and badly injuring the three passengers. It was months before the official was well enough to be interviewed—in Brooklyn.

  With the interview concluded, Stanley couldn’t resist saying, “You know, sir, when I asked you how I could best get to Albany, I was hoping you’d invite me to get on your plane.”

  The state official said, “If I had thought that was what you were after, I would have invited you, and that would have been a real stroke of misfortune. After the crash, we were told that the weight of one more passenger would have certainly resulted in all of us being killed.”

  I was horrified when Stanley told me this story, and I sought for ways to express that horror. Stanley made it difficult by refusing to take it seriously.

  Finally I said, “But Stan, don’t you realize how your death would have affected Mamma and Pappa?”

  Stanley shrugged that off, too. “They would have felt lousy, but they would have survived.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “For the rest of their lives, they would have changed their minds and decided you had been their favorite son, after all.”

  That sounds like a cruel and heartless joke, because Stanley and I both knew that I was the favorite son, even though Stanley was far better to the old folks than I ever was. Stanley was the kind of fellow who never resented the fact, either.

  However, it wasn’t cruel and heartless. Stanley wouldn’t let me express my suffering at the thought of having lost him, so I had to make a joke to neutralize the retrospective pain. That, in fact, is the purpose of so-called gallows humor (jokes the man, about to be hanged, makes at the foot of the scaffold), which, for well-known historical reasons, is a Jewish specialty.

  18

  World Book Year Book

  1

  On September 9, 1962, I took the train to Chicago, which I had not visited in ten years.

  I was met at the station by an official of World Book and was treated as a celebrity. In fact, throughout my stay every effort was made to make me happy and comfortable. Nevertheless, I was in a rebellious state of mind and I found it all unnecessary and useless frippery.

  For instance, the purpose of the meeting was to introduce the board members to the salespeople under circumstances calculated to fill them with awe and reverence. Therefore, each of the seven board members was introduced as he or she moved down a kind of runway to the stage, with the orchestra playing some selection that acted as an appropriate leitmotiv.

  It reminded me, uncomfortably, of a Miss America pageant, and for a while I thought I was hallucinating when the orchestra struck up “Here She Comes, Miss America.” But that was the leitmotiv for Sylvia Porter, who handled the “Economy of the Year” section. At that, it wasn’t too bad, since Sylvia Porter was a comely female and, compared with the popular stereotype of the economist, was a miracle of loveliness.123

  I made the ritual bearable for myself by speculating on what they were going to play for me. I decided it would have to be “Fly Me to the Moon”—first because it was one of my favorite songs of the period, and second because I didn’t see how anyone could fail to connect that with my science-fictional character.

  That wasn’t the one.

  The orchestra played “How Deep Is the Ocean?” thus indicating my role as science writer.

  I was chagrined. No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified.

  There were delicious hors d’oeuvres at the reception that night, and then a Lucullan banquet (I must admit I can reconcile myself better to caloric pomp than to any other variety).

  I sat next to Red Smith, who did the “Sports of the Year” section. He was a very pleasant fellow. He said to me, “You could understand my review section, couldn’t you?”

  I said, “Yes, of course. You have a delightfully clear writing style, Red.”

  “Yes, but you understood the subject matter. Now, you write clearly, but I couldn’t understand your article.”

  “Your field touches a more general human response, Red,” I said, but I don’t think he was soothed by that thought.

  Since liquid refreshments flowed steadily and since almost everybody who drinks is willing to drink one more if the drink is free, there was considerable high-flying hilarity. Fortunately, there was considerable tolerance, also, and no one minded that I didn’t drink.

  The moment came, though, when it was time to return to our rooms, and it turned out, to everyone’s consternation, that Red Smith, having taken just one small drink too many, was having trouble navigating.

  Whereupon someone said, “Isaac, you and Red are in the same hotel. Just help him back, won’t you?”

  Well, I had been helped back in my time (I remembered being supported on both sides after my Ph.D. celebration fourteen years before), so I had no intention of standing on my teetotaling self-righteousness and refusing the task. On the other hand, never having done this before, I had no idea of the mechanics of controlling a slightly tottery gentleman who was roughly as heavy as myself.

  As I worked him up the main steps of the hotel to the lobby, I was assailed by a new worry. I had met Mrs. Smith, who was a delightful, charming, and amiable woman and who was now, presumably, waiting peacefully in her hotel room for her husband to return. But would she remain amiable? I had seen innumerable movie comedies in which some innocent fellow, bringing a too-happy friend home, is attacked by the wife as the cause of the corruption.

  By the time I had weaved Red into the elevator, I had my tactics ready. When I knocked at the door and Mrs. Smith opened it, I worked rapidly. Moving Red quickly into a chair, I said, “Gee, thanks, Red, I could never have made it back to the hotel without you.”

  Then I left with the speed of the wind.

  Mrs. Smith, who caught the significance of my statement at once and was apparently highly amused over my miserable attempt at tact, told the story far and wide the next day, and I was the laugh of the place.

  Another clear memory of the Chicago visit was the announcement to us that the unexpected success of the first issue of the Year Book meant that the World Book could raise their payment to the board members by 50 per cent. From now on, we would get three thousand dollars per article, rather than two thousand dollars.

  There was no question that the Year Book was a successful operation; that all the hoopla I found so distasteful was in its way merely the hoopla of American success, and was no worse than the hoopla of a World Science Fiction convention. There was no question, too, that the Year Book people were being generous and that I owed them gratitude.

  Yet what I felt was uneasiness.

  When the increase was announced, the other six board members124 maintained an admirable and professional aplomb. Poker-faced, they accepted the raise. Only my voice sounded out (for I was still the kid in the candy store whose dream of affluence was forty dollars each and every week).