I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

  But all that is just playing. I am firm in my beliefs. I am an atheist and, in my opinion, death is followed by an eternal and dreamless sleep.

  Divorce

  As the 1960s drew to its close, Gertrude and I found our marriage increasingly intolerable. The situation was made worse by the fact that in 1967 Gertrude developed rheumatoid arthritis, which came and went, but left her very often in pain. It is impossible to be in almost constant pain and to be reasonable.

  Then, too, I was increasingly wrapped up in my work and she was left more and more to herself. I can’t blame her for resenting it. Furthermore, though our bank account continued to rise, I could see that she felt we got no good out of it. I liked our frugal, stay-at-home life. All I wanted was clean paper and a working typewriter and the money could just stay in the bank.

  By 1970,1 came to believe that the life we led was driving Gertrude to desperation and, knowing that I could not change, it seemed to me that divorce was the only alternative. I was perfectly willing to give her half of all the money in the bank, plus the house (fully paid off) and all its contents outside my office. I was also willing to make what I thought was a generous alimony settlement.

  At the time, David was eighteen and Robyn was fifteen and just entering senior high school. I would have liked to wait till she was eighteen and entering college, but neither Gertrude nor I could have made it.

  After we decided I would move out, I put a deposit on a nearby apartment and began the procedures that would lead to a divorce. To my vast astonishment, Gertrude agreed only to a legal separation. Apparently, if I wanted a divorce, I would have to take her to court, where, she made it plain, she would make every effort to strip me dry. This was horrible. In Massachusetts, the only grounds for divorce were things like insanity, infidelity, cruel and unusual treatment, and so on. Insanity and infidelity were absolutely out of the question, but my lawyer said that if I simply told him tales of my married life, he could work up enough cruel and unusual treatment to satisfy the court. I refused, with considerable anger. I didn’t want to accuse Gertrude of such things.

  In that case, said the lawyer, I would have to go to a state where nofault divorces were possible and where I could make out a reasonable case for not taking up residence just to get a divorce. The obvious choice was New York, where, after all, I had been brought up and where most of my editors (Doubleday, in particular) were located. So I made the necessary preparations and on July 3, 1970, I had a moving van come over, load up my writing equipment, my library, my bookcases, and all I needed to make a living—and I left for Manhattan.

  That, of course, was not the end. What followed was bitter indeed, for Gertrude hired a lawyer, who did what he could to wear me down. On two different occasions, for example, he set up a court session, and while I was racing to Boston to keep it, he maneuvered a delay, so that on reaching Boston, I simply had to turn around and go back to New York.

  I persisted, however, and after three and a third years, the divorce came through. What’s more, the judge awarded Gertrude less than I had originally offered. My lawyer was jubilant, but I was not. I said that I wouldn’t cheat her and voluntarily raised it to what I had offered.

  With that I was free. I would like to add just one postscript. During those last few deadly and unhappy months before I left, I was busily writing Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor. I defy anyone to read it and to point out any portion that reflected the state of my despair. The answer is simple. While I was writing, I was not in despair. Writing, as I think I have said before, is the perfect anodyne for me.

  Second Marriage

  I didn’t arrive in New York unprepared. I had enlisted the help of Janet Jeppson, with whom I had been corresponding for eleven years. She found me a small apartment on Seventy-second Street only four blocks away from her own apartment. When I moved in I felt exactly as I had the first night at the army camp back in 1945. No, I felt worse. When I entered the army, I had been twenty-five years old and I knew that in two years at the most I would be a civilian again and could take up my old life. Now I was fifty and there was no end possible. I had uprooted myself permanently.

  I looked, woefully, about the two rooms I had rented. My library was still in transit, so there was no real work for me to do. It was Independence Day weekend, so there were no publishers to visit.

  Janet, who had supplied the kitchen with cutlery and some staples so I could get a start, was with me as I surveyed the scene. She is a remarkably sensitive woman and there is no doubt that she could sense the guilt under which I was laboring over having left my family, and my loneliness. Delicately, she pointed out that she was seeing no patients over the weekend, and I could stay at her apartment during the day. It would be more cheerful.

  I was delighted at the chance. Janet’s kindness soothed the transition enormously. Remember that we were rather more than friends when I came to New York. That eleven-year correspondence was a romance in itself. Janet wrote long and fascinating letters, and my answers went back by return mail. She addressed her letters to the medical school to avoid raising inconvenient questions at home, and I used to go to the school at least once a week, more for the reason of

  picking up letters from her than for any other reason. We spoke by

  phone frequently as well. It was clear that Janet was as articulate and intelligent as I, and that

  her views and philosophy were very close to mine. The letters were marvelous. (Janet still has them somewhere and occasionally rereads a few of them.) Janet, I think, was in love with me all the time. She had no husband, no family, to restrain her. In addition to my letters, she read everything I wrote and had enjoyed my writing before she ever met me. I suspect I loved her too, but, of course I was all tangled up in the feeling that, as a married man, I shouldn’t do that.

  Let me stress that I was no angel of fidelity. (Gertrude, I’m sure, was. I never dreamed of questioning or investigating the matter, but I’m sure of it anyway.)

  I was without sexual experience when I married, and I had no extramarital contacts for eleven years thereafter despite opportunities in the army and at conventions. However, I was not proof against temptation altogether and, eventually, there were occasions when a young woman made her intentions perfectly plain, and when the opportunities were there, and—I succumbed.

  It had its importance. With Gertrude, I never felt particularly skilled sexually, but other young women, to my astonished delight, seemed impressed. I realize that sexual prowess is not something an “intellectual” such as myself should place much value on, but biological pride is hard to fight. Frankly, it raised my opinion of myself and made me happier.

  I might easily have turned into a Don Juan. I had the impulse to do so—but I lacked the time. Writing still came first, and writing in quantity too, so that the opportunities to have a fling came only rarely. I didn’t regret that, for even sex takes second place to writing as far as I am concerned.

  What’s more, there was no question of “love.” Each adventure, in those days of the 1950s, was nothing more than an adventure—on the woman’s side as well as mine. After all, there was nothing in common but a fleeting sexual attraction.

  Janet was different. Certainly, I found her presence interesting and delightful when we were together at the World Convention in Pittsburgh in 1960 and, again, in Washington in 1963. (In Washington, I remember, we escaped from the convention a while to tour the White House and visit museums.) Then, too, in 1969, when Gertrude and Robyn were visiting Great Britain with friends, when David was at his special high school in Connecticut, and I was alone at home, Janet came to Boston.

  She stayed at a nearby hotel and for a couple of days we drove about in northeastern Massachusetts, visiting such places as Salem and Marblehead. With her, I really f
orgot about writing, the only time I can think of, offhand, that this happened. In fact, those couple of days may have been the most carefree of my life, for there was nothing hanging over me, not the candy store, not school, not a job, not my family—not even writing. The world, for a little while, was all Janet.

  But it was not the delight of her physical presence that was crucial. It was the good fit of our minds and personalities; in fact, it was that good fit that made the physical presence of each so important to the other. The letters would have been enough to make me long for Janet even if I had never seen her, and I know that she reciprocated that feeling.

  But once I moved to New York and spent the Independence Day weekend with her, any ambivalence I had in the matter was gone. I was in love with Janet and she was in love with me and we both knew it beyond any possibility of doubt. It was clear in my mind that I would marry her as soon as it became legally possible.

  What’s more, as divorce proceedings stretched on interminably, there seemed no reason to maintain totally separate establishments. I moved into her apartment and used my own just for daytime work.

  Janet was a tower of strength to me during the miserable time of uncertainty that preceded the divorce. She never pushed me; never urged me to agree to anything foolish in order to hasten the divorce; seemed perfectly willing to continue our irregular arrangement for the rest of our lives. If Gertrude was making life harder for me, Janet was making it easier to an even greater extent.

  When the divorce finally came through, I insisted (Janet did not) that we get the necessary blood tests and license. We were then married on November 30, 1973. A civil ceremony seemed too bloodless and neither of us wanted a conventional religious ceremony of any kind, so we were married in Janet’s living room, by Edward Ericson, a leader at the Ethical Culture Society, which was located four blocks away.

  At this time of writing, Janet and I have been married for seventeen years, and it is twenty years since I came to New York. May I say that we have been remarkably happy all this time and are as much in love now as ever. I am still all wrapped up in my work, but Janet is a professional woman with a career of her own. She was a skilled psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and after she retired, she continued her writing and was, independently of me, successful at it, so she’s wrapped up

  in her work as well.

  We both work in our apartment—a larger one that we moved into in 1975, after I gave up the separate office I’d had for five years. We are together constantiy, even when we are both working each in our own part of the apartment. In addition, her patience and sensitivity are remarkable and she endures all my faults with unswerving love. I’m sure that I would endure her faults just as lovingly, if she had any.

  Not that marriage came easily to Janet at the start. She was forty-seven years old at the time of our wedding and had supported herself all her adult life and been successful in her profession. She wasn’t sure how she could adjust to married life and she was in tears the day before the wedding. I asked in alarm what was wrong.

  She said, “I can’t help it, Isaac. I feel as though I will be losing my identity.” “Nonsense,” I said firmly. “You won’t be losing your identity; you’ll be gaining subservience.”

  Janet broke into delighted laughter, and all was well.

  As to our Darby-and-Joan love affair, consider this—

  In 1986, the concierge at our apartment house handed me the New York Post and said, “You’re on page six.” I went up to the apartment waving the newspaper and said, “Janet, Janet, I made the Post.”

  “Why?” she said in surprise. (We are not Post readers.)

  “They caught me kissing a woman.”

  Janet shook her head (she knows all about my feckless gallantries) and said, “I keep telling you to be careful.”

  I handed her the paper. We had been at some function at which a science writer’s book was being published, and at one point Janet and I kissed each other (which we do frequently, whether we’re in public or not). A Post reporter saw that and waxed merry over the antics of “sexagenarians,” though Janet was actually only fifty-nine at the time.

  “See,” I said. “There you have our society. If a man kisses his wife in public, it makes the newspapers.”

  Guide to Shakespeare

  My move to New York did not stop my writing. I admit that every time the circumstances of my life changed radically, I would worry about whether I’d be able to continue my writing as before, but the worry has always been groundless. The writing always continued.

  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.

  In 1968, 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.

  I began it even before mentioning my plan to Doubleday, let alone getting a contract. After I finished my analysis of the play Richard II, however, I presented that to Larry Ashmead and asked for a contract. Larry obliged and I continued to work on the book furiously.

  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, Asimov’s 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.

  I was rewarded for this, for soon after I moved to New York, and immediately after the Independence Day weekend was over, when

  Janet was again with her patients, I received the 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.

  Asimov’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.

  Annotations

  On July 16, 1965, I had lunch with Arthur Rosenthal, publisher of Basic Books, which had done The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. Present at the luncheon was Martin Gardner, someone whom I admired extravagantly. I have read (and own) every book of his that I could get hold of. I followed his column “Mathematical Recreations” in Scientific American with avidity. Gardner’s most successful book was The Annotated Alice. It included the entire books of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Look ing Glass complete with Tenniel’s illustrations. In the margin Gardner discussed every as
pect of particular lines that he felt required com ment. It is a fascinating book that I have gone through several times. I referred to that at the luncheon, and Gardner (who was kind enough to say he admired my books too—and indeed we have been good friends ever since) told me that if I really wanted to have fun, I should find a book I liked very much and annotate it.

  In a way, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible and Asimov’s Guide to Shake speare were annotations, but, of course, I could not include the entire text of either the Bible or Shakespeare’s plays. I could only quote selected passages. But still the notion of real annotations remained in the back of my mind.

  And why not? My books on the Bible and on Shakespeare had given me courage. Until then, I had confined my nonfiction very largely to science, and even when I ventured outside that realm, as with my histories, I was writing books for young people that were not expected to be terribly deep.

  My books on the Bible and on Shakespeare were, however, far out side what one would have thought to be my expertise and they were written for adults. I was quite prepared to meet with a hostile recep tion along the lines of “Why doesn’t Asimov stick to his stupid science fiction and not try to thrust himself into fields he knows nothing about?”

  I did get a little of that. I remember a contemptuous short review from a professor of literature at a certain college who made it quite plain that he thought my books on Shakespeare totally unworthy of comment. It was in the Sunday Times, and the passage of two decades has not assuaged my anger at it.

  In later years, I met a student at the college in question and I asked him if he knew the reviewer (whose name I remember perfectly well but won’t mention). Yes, he did.