21

  On September 27, Janet and I visited Judy-Lynn Benjamin. Lester del Rey was visiting, too, and it seemed to me that Judy-Lynn was as effective in consoling Lester in his travail as Janet was in consoling me in mine. From that day forward, I was more or less sure that Lester and Judy-Lynn would eventually marry.

  And as though to balance that, I got the news that Ben and Rosa Bova were splitting up.

  22

  There was the usual amount of editorial splitting up, too. Ed Burlingame was no longer editor-in-chief at Walker, but had moved over to Lippincott. We had lunch on October 5. Ed had earned me from New American Library to Walker and seemed quite ready to carry me to Lippincott as well, but I was drowned in work and was in no position to take on another book at the moment.

  After all, I was working on The Land of Canaan and on More Words of Science and on the revision of Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor and was beginning Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan.

  There was no question that the move to New York was inhibiting my writing. Quite the reverse. Writing was moving along more quickly than ever and would keep on doing so, partly because various publishers were closer to me and partly because the very atmosphere of New York was more stimulating.

  23

  Larry Ashmead called me on the evening of October 9. There was a hitch, he said, in the Don Juan book. My heart sank—I was enjoying it so much that I didn’t want to be made to stop.

  Apparently, the hitch was that the Doubleday editorial board had decided to make it a large, fancy, expensively illustrated and boxed book.

  I was appalled. “You’ll lose your shirt,” I said. I had told them I didn’t expect the book to sell, and had begged them to do it on the cheapest possible paper with the cheapest possible binding.

  “Just the same, that’s how they want to do it,” said Larry. “The hitch is they can only give you a small advance.”

  I said, promptly, “I don’t care if they don’t give me any advance at all, as long as they let me do it.”

  But they did give me an advance.

  24

  Janet and I took the Metroliner to Washington on October 18. We bought seats in the club car and it was quite luxurious having a private swivel chair to one’s self with a little table to write on. In time to come, however, we learned that ordinary coach was better. We could then sit together, rather than separately. Besides, half the club car always permitted smoking, whereas many coaches were completely nonsmoking.192

  The occasion for the trip was a speech I was to give at the twenty-fifth graduating class of Montgomery Community College. The only place large enough to hold the festivities was Washington Cathedral. The people who were in charge of us, Dr. and Mrs. Miller, with their young daughter, Lesley, showed us through the cathedral, hosted us at a very pleasant dinner, and then gave us an auto tour through Washington after dark. Janet loved it all and somehow, seeing everything through her eyes rather than my own, made it all sharper, clearer, and more beautiful to me.

  The next morning, I gave my talk from the high pulpit in the cathedral and, apparently, the solemnity of the surroundings had its effect on me, for I gave a much graver speech than I usually do.

  It sometimes happens that after I have given a speech that has been taped, a transcript of it is sent me for editing. I dislike that, for it is intensely embarrassing. No matter how good an extemporaneous speech may be, it becomes full of bad grammar when written down, with incomplete sentences, sudden changes, and backtrackings of subject.

  Eventually, though, I received a transcript of my Washington Cathedral speech and I found I didn’t have to do a thing to it. “Apparently,” I said to Janet, “when I spoke from the high pulpit, God put words into my mouth, and He speaks very good English.”193

  25

  There was the first hint of movie interest in The Caves of Steel on October 21. My own interest at that was kept under control. I knew the routine—options, and renewal, and talk, and perhaps even a screenplay, and then nothing.

  26

  In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on October 22, Janet and I seized the opportunity to visit a Doubleday printing plant at Hanover. It was fascinating to see how books were made, and how much was involved after I had finished the piddling little matter of completing a manuscript.

  The personnel came out happily and grouped themselves around me under the impression that I was a famous author, and I loved every minute of it.

  The next day I gave two talks at Gettysburg College—my Mendel speech and my population speech—and then we went home through Pennsylvania Dutch country. We stopped at York and Lancaster, visiting old colonial homes in each city, and then ate at the restaurant where, a year and a half before, I had been introduced to sauerkraut.

  27

  I finished the revision of Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor on November 1, a year and a half after the trip to the Concord Hotel that started it.

  I found I didn’t have to mail it, however. I took it down to the offices that Houghton Mifflin maintained in New York, and they had it delivered in a special mail pouch that got it out to Boston at once.

  (Doubleday also offered me a pleasant convenience. I no longer had to deliver my papers to Howard Gotlieb at Boston University Library. I took them to Doubleday instead, and Doubleday packaged and mailed them for me. Of course, I missed the delightful lunches I had with Gotlieb on those occasions.)

  28

  November 3, 1970, was Election Day and, since I had established residence requirements, I could vote. To my intense satisfaction, Nixon was unable to swing either house of Congress into Republican control.

  In New York State, however, the Republican senator and his Democratic challenger fought each other to a virtual tie, allowing a third candidate, James Buckley, a hard-line conservative supported by Nixon and Agnew, to sneak in with a plurality, to my great unhappiness.

  29

  The next day I gave a talk at the Universalist church that was only a short distance northward on Central Park West. Janet and I walked it—but in a driving rain. My shoes and socks were drenched and I had to stand in them for over an hour to give my talk. The result was foregone—my worst cold in nine years.

  On that occasion, though, Marcia and her younger son, Richard, were at the talk and it was the occasion for Marcia to meet Janet for the first time.

  30

  Science fiction surrounded me in New York. I saw Bob and Barbara Silverberg for the first time since I arrived in New York on November 16, and for a while we, the Silverbergs, Judy-Lynn, and Lester made a steady sixsome. On that day, I also saw Ben Bova for the first time since I had come to New York and he confirmed the fact that he was separated and seeking a divorce.

  31

  On November 22, I drove to Long Beach to see my mother, and this time I took a rather trembling Janet with me. I reminded her that I had come without compunction to meet her mother. Janet was afraid, however, that my mother might disapprove of her not being Jewish.

  “My father might have,” I said, “if he were alive, but my mother won’t. You’ll see.”

  My mother didn’t. She took an instant liking to Janet (everyone does), and all was well.

  32

  Then came Thanksgiving on November 26. It was customary for Chaucy Bennetts (an excellent cook—very much along the lines of Mary Blugerman) to give a big family feast on that day, and I was invited. Chaucy and Leslie were there, of course, and young Leslie, too, together with her brother, Bruce, whom I had seen onstage, at a distance, four months before, but whom I now met at close range for the first time.

  Leslie’s husband, Bill Boggs, was present also; tall, curly-haired, very good-looking, and an aspiring television personality. Add Janet, her mother, and myself, and there were eight people at the feast, all completely happy.

  Certainly, I was. It was the first time, somehow, that I felt completely accepted in a family circle in a holiday atmosphere. It gave me an odd feeling of warmth I had never experienced before.

  Young Leslie had a youthful Yorkshire terrier whose name was Moose and who was so small and fuzzy that I suspected there was nothing under the fur but a pair of eyes. At one point, when we were watching Oklahoma! on television, I threw myself on the floor next to young Leslie, to watch more comfortably. Moose (who adored her mistress, and vice versa), presumably supposing I was attacking Leslie, emitted a startled “woof.”

  This created a sensation, for Moose had never barked before. Thereafter, of course, having made the discovery it had vocal cords, Moose continued to yap now and then. I never liked to take credit for this.

  33

  I was slated to give a talk at Rhode Island College on December 2194 and when we got to Providence at noon, there was none other than Austin Olney waiting at the desk of the Holiday Inn for us to arrive. He knew that I was avoiding Massachusetts, and supposing I wasn’t likely to get any closer to Boston for a while, he came down to Providence to meet us.

  It was a tremendous pleasure to see him after a five-month hiatus. We had lunch together and he met Janet—for the first time. As I said in my diary, “He was quite taken with Janet, but then, small wonder.”

  It turned out that Austin, too, was separating from his wife. It was as though it had only taken my own separation to shake all the marriages I knew asunder.

  On the way back from Providence the next day, we stopped in Mystic, Connecticut, and looked over some of the old ships there. Janet, who always insisted she was of Viking descent (she is half Swedish, one-quarter Danish, and one-quarter English), is almost quixotically attached to ships of any kind.

  34

  There was unpleasantness, too. Don Laventhal and Gertrude’s lawyer had come to a settlement along lines I privately thought were completely reasonable. Gertrude, however, hired a new lawyer, an aggressive one named Monroe Inker. His first move, on December 10, was to freeze my Houghton Mifflin income, less than a week before my royalty statement was due. I realized, with considerable regret, that I was in for a longer and messier involvement than I had hoped for.

  35

  I had now become brave enough to have Janet participate in my business functions. I had been afraid that my being seen in public with Janet might give rise to the possibility of accusations of adultery, but Janet said she was not afraid of such accusations. In fact, said Janet, after living forty-four years of as proper and circumspect a life as one could imagine, the thought of being accused of all sorts of immoral actions was rather exciting.

  Thus, on December 14, when Larry had dinner with me again, he had it at Janet’s place, and Janet prepared the dinner. It was Janet’s first occasion as formal hostess on my behalf.

  And the next day, I had lunch with Richard Dempewolff, editor of Science Digest, and Janet joined me. For the first time she was with me at a business luncheon.

  36

  I was working on a second anthology of Hugo-winning stories. The first anthology covered the nine winners over the seven-year period from 1955 to 1961. Since then, the tendency had been for Hugos to be awarded for more and longer stories, and in the seven-year period from 1962 to 1970, there were fifteen prize-winning stories with a total wordage just twice that of the first set.195 Larry asked me when I was going to prepare the second volume, and I shook my head sadly.

  “I’ve won two Hugos since the first volume, Larry,” I said, “so I don’t qualify as editor any longer.”

  “That’s silly,” said Larry.

  “You don’t understand. The first volume was in Tim Seldes’ day, and I was asked to be editor only because I had never received a Hugo. How can I do a second volume when I have now had Hugos?”

  “Why not?” said Larry.

  “People might think it was queer.”

  For that he had an unanswerable argument. “Who cares?” he said.

  So that was it. I took in the completed book (at least I took in my various Introductions, plus the front matter and back matter) on December 17. I left it up to Doubleday to get copies of the stories themselves.

  Remembering well my experience with the first volume, I was careful to arrange to have Doubleday take care of all the bookkeeping. This was not the usual practice of publishers in connection with anthologies, but Doubleday was as anxious to keep me from wasting time on bookkeeping as I was.

  37

  David arrived on December 18 for his third visit. He told me he was arriving on a particular train at Grand Central, and I was there waiting for him. The train arrived, but David was not on it. Anxiously, I wondered if he might have missed the train and would come on the next one, and only after I had waited for nearly an hour, did it suddenly dawn on me that David wasn’t familiar with New York and might have arrived at Penn Station.

  Before chasing down there, I called the Cromwell to ask if by any chance David had called trying to reach me. He hadn’t. He was there in person, sitting in the lobby and waiting for me. Arriving at Penn Station, indeed, and finding no one there waiting for him, he had made it to the Cromwell via the subway system, which was pretty good of him seeing that he was unfamiliar with the routes and that I myself had lately been lost on it.

  32

  The Sensuous Dirty Old Man

  1

  I had another feast at Christmas, this time at Rae’s house, with the entire family, as at Thanksgiving. I was a little on edge, though, for Robyn was coming in by bus the next day and I was fearful of missing her, of something going wrong.

  Nothing did. She arrived at 3:15 p.m. on December 26, and I was there at the bus station to meet her. I had not seen her in almost half a year and she was as beautiful and as ebullient as ever.

  For four days, she and I ate at good restaurants, saw movies, went window shopping (and real shopping), and wandered around the streets of New York City. On Tuesday the twenty-ninth, Larry Ashmead took us both to lunch at Sardi’s, where Robyn desperately wanted to see a celebrity, but where we didn’t see the ghost of one.

  Finally, I put her on the 1:00 p.m. bus on December 30. She had been with me for ninety-three hours and I had loved every hour of it. My only regret was that I did not, as yet, consider it judicious for her to meet Janet.

  2

  Finally, the traumatic year of 1970 was over. During that year, I had published only six books, fewer than the number in any year since 1965, but the events of the year had nothing to do with that. It rather reflected the amount of time I had spent on Shakespeare and on the Ginn science series.

  The six books were:

  103. The Solar System and Back (Doubleday)

  104. Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, Volume I (Doubleday)

  105. Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, Volume II (Doubleday)

  106. Constantinople (Houghton Mifflin)

  107. ABC’s of the Ocean (Walker)

  108. Light (Follett)

  All of them had, of course, been written in West Newton.

  3

  January 2, 1971, was my fifty-first birthday. We had celebrated New Year’s Eve at Judy-Lynn’s and we retaliated by taking her and Lester to dinner as a birthday celebration.196

  Then, on January 4, I had a delayed birthday lunch with Chaucy Bennetts. She no longer worked for World, which was undergoing a complete reorganization, and she had to leave The Best New Thing behind. She was now working for Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, the Juvenile Division of William Morrow & Company. She was eager to have me do something for Lothrop, and I promised I would as soon as it became feasible. Once more an editor was carrying me from house to house like a contagious disease.

  4

  David Ford, an actor, lived in Janet’s apartment house, exactly two floors higher than she did. He was a reader of mine, and hearing that I visited the place regularly, kept his eyes open for me. When he caught me in the lobby, he hailed me, and the upshot was that he arranged to have us see the stage play 1776 in which he was appearing.

  We went on January 7 and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. (Ford played Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the villain of the piece, and did a good job. He went on to play John Hancock in the movie version.)

  Afterward, we met Ford at Sardi’s for a late-night snack, then visited his apartment for a while. We discovered that he had filled it with an incredible supply of minutiae—as one example, an old-fashioned penny gumball machine complete with gumballs.197

  He told us that he had once had a repairman in his apartment and had had to leave to walk his dog. On his return, he was convinced that the repairman must have taken something in his absence, but he could not be certain, since he himself did not have a full count of all the miscellany he possessed, and he could not possibly tell if anything were missing or not.

  5

  John Ciardi was in town on January 9, with his wife, Judith, and Janet and I had dinner with them. He was a large fellow now, quite stout; not at all the slim charmer of twenty-one years before. But still a charmer, with a voice as beautiful as ever, and my equal as a jokester—with the added advantage of being able to handle a variety of accents. Janet was fascinated by him.

  Ciardi had made a new name for himself with his translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and I told him of my own two volumes on Shakespeare, and the fact that I was getting unpleasant reviews from Shakespearian scholars (when they deigned to notice me at all), since they resented my invasion of their field. I added, gloomily, that I expected similar treatment from the Byronians when Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan came out.