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Title: In Memory Yet Green
(1920-1954)
Series: Asimovian Memoirs #1
Authors:
Isaac Asimov
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Autobiography
Pages: 663
Words:
300K
Publish: 1979
The synopsis/whatever provided by
Grokipedia is very long. However, it was not nearly as long as this
book and I will say that a little Asimov goes a long way.
This is an autobiography and while I
had added the “memoir” tag, Asimov does make it clear that he
used his own journals as primary documents and he also used many of
his contracts with various magazines and publishers to date stories,
etc. Which leaves me feeling pretty comfortable that what is being
told here is a step up from a pure memoir. However, and this is a big
however, Asimov’s style makes it extremely clear that he is
up-selling his positive traits and down playing the negative ones. He
doesn’t ignore the bad stuff, but it is almost like he’s writing
about them while squinting, so it’s all hazy and unclear.
I was ready for this to be over at the
400 page mark. The level of detail is what I would expect from a
chronic journaller and might make historians all gushy, but for
someone like me, it was just a flow of minutiae that overwhelmed me.
The level of personal detail is why I decided to add the memoir tag.
Plus, near the beginning he claims to have a “near-eidetic”
memory but later in the book acknowledges he has no memory of certain
events or people and that without his journal, they would have
disappeared from his mind. So he remembers what he remembers very
well, but what he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t remember not
remembering. If that makes sense? Which means anything from his
memory is suspect, which is what memoirs are all about.
I actually took a break from reading
this after the 400page mark and read a couple of other things, just
to give myself some breathing room. I actually read The Black
Colossus, Edgar and Emma and The White Rose. A
novella, a short story and a novel and it was barely enough.
Don’t get me wrong, Asimov wrote
smoothly, with a funny and very witty style and he was never a bore
or pompous. But just like anyone who finds a track of success,
sometimes they overuse that “joke” and by the third time it’s
just embarrassing to listen to them instead of being uproariously
funny like the first time. Like I said, I’d reached my limit by 400
pages and the book was just under 700.
I am pretty much done my reading of
Asimov’s fiction, which is why I chose to dive into this trilogy
about the author as a man. That usually doesn’t work out so well
for me and this was about what I expected. Asimov was a lech and very
handsy (even by 1940’s and 1950’s standards) and I am surprised
that he wasn’t beaten up. I know I would probably have threatened
to blow his brains out. He was also an adulterer and philanderer and
didn’t try to hide that in this volume. He does downplay it and
there is nothing salacious, but it is clear he would take just about
anything offered by any woman he found attractive.
I learned a lot about his growing up
years and his breaking into the literary world and I’m glad I did.
I also made up the “series” title because there is this volume
and then the next, which covers up to 1978 and then there was a
posthumous volume entitled “I, Asimov”, all
of which comprise an autobiography but assembled at various times and
by various people (Asimov died in 1992 I believe).
The title of this volume, and the next
volume (In Joy Still Felt), are taken from an anonymous poem
that Asimov included at the beginning of the book. Here it is:
In
memory yet green, in joy still felt,
The scenes of life rise
sharply into view.
We triumph, Time's disasters are undealt,
And while all else is old, the world is new.
I will not try to
psychoanalyze that at all. You are more than welcome too if you so
desire.
★★★★☆
From
Grokipedia.com
In
Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography, 1920-1954 is the first volume of
Isaac Asimov's autobiography, published in 1979 by Doubleday &
Company, Inc. [1] [2] It chronicles the author's life
and career from his birth in 1920 through 1954, marking the period of
his early years, immigration to the United States, education, and
emergence as a writer in science fiction and science
popularization. [3] The book is notable as Asimov's
two-hundredth published work, in which he applies his characteristic
candid and engaging style to recounting his own experiences in
science, science fiction, and related pursuits. [4]The
autobiography serves as a detailed personal account from one of the
most prolific authors of the 20th century, whose output spanned
multiple genres and disciplines. [4] A companion second
volume, In Joy Still Felt, continues the narrative from 1954
onward. [5] The work provides insight into Asimov's
development as a writer during a formative era of his professional
life. [3]
Background
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was born on January
2, 1920, in Petrovichi, Russia, and emigrated to the United States
with his family, arriving in New York City on February 3, 1923, at
the age of three.[6] He grew up in Brooklyn and pursued his
education at Columbia University, where he earned a B.S. in chemistry
in 1939, an M.A. in 1941, and a Ph.D. in 1948.[6] Asimov joined
the Boston University School of Medicine faculty in 1949 as an
instructor in biochemistry, advancing to assistant professor in 1951,
associate professor in 1955, and ultimately full professor in 1979,
though he relinquished active teaching duties in 1958 to focus on
writing while retaining his title.[6]Asimov established himself as a
prolific author and science popularizer, producing works across
science fiction, popular science, mystery, and other
fields.[7] Widely regarded as one of the most prolific writers
in history, he authored or edited hundreds of books over his
career.[6] In 1979, In
Memory Yet Green was
published as his 200th book, coinciding with Opus
200, a collection
highlighting his first two hundred titles.[6] His major science
fiction contributions, including the Foundation series
and the landmark short story "Nightfall," had already
earned him enduring acclaim in the genre by the time he undertook his
autobiography.[6] In
Memory Yet Green itself
covers Asimov's life from 1920 to 1954; he transitioned to full-time
writing in 1958.[6]
Writing and purpose
Asimov composed In
Memory Yet Green during
the late 1970s, when he had achieved extraordinary productivity and
renown, marking the book itself as his 200th published work.[8] This
timing allowed the autobiography to serve as a reflective
self-portrait, capturing his ascent from a child of Russian
immigrants to a leading figure in science fiction and popular science
writing.[9]His motivation stemmed in large part from a lifelong
compulsive work ethic, rooted in his father's frequent criticisms
labeling him a "fulyack" (Yiddish for sluggard), which
instilled a deep-seated fear of idleness and drove him to maintain
relentless output across decades.[8] By documenting his early
life and career in exhaustive detail, Asimov sought to chronicle this
transformation and affirm his accomplishments against that early
judgment.[8]To ensure precision and depth, he relied on the diaries
he had kept compulsively since youth, chronicling minutiae such as
birthdays, acquisitions of typewriters or telephones, and daily
events.[9] These records enabled the autobiography's remarkable
factual accuracy and granular reconstruction of his experiences.[9]
Publication history
Original publication
In Memory Yet Green: The
Autobiography, 1920-1954 was
first published on February 9, 1979, by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
in Garden City, New York.[10] This initial hardcover edition
contained ix + 732 pages (with additional plates), bore the ISBN
0-385-13679-X, and retailed for $15.95.[10] The book marked a
notable publishing event as one of two volumes—alongside the
Houghton Mifflin anthology Opus
200—promoted as Isaac
Asimov's 200th book, celebrating his prolific career across science
fiction, popular science, and other genres.[11] This milestone
designation underscored the release's significance for Asimov's wide
audience, who followed his extensive output with enthusiasm.[12] The
Doubleday edition, issued as the first volume of Asimov's
autobiography, represented a major hardcover release tailored to his
established readership.[13]
Editions and reprints
Following the original
1979 hardcover publication by Doubleday, In Memory Yet Green was
reprinted as a trade paperback by Avon Books in 1980. [10] This
edition, with ISBN 978-0380754328, retained the complete original
text across 732 pages and was presented as the first volume of Isaac
Asimov's autobiography. [2] The
sequel, In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov,
1954-1978, appeared the same year, forming a two-volume continuation
of his life story. [14] The
Avon paperback remains available through used book markets and online
sellers. [15]
Content summary
Early childhood and immigration
In "In Memory Yet Green",
Asimov recounts his birth on January 2, 1920, in Petrovichi, a small
town in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (now in
Russia), to Jewish parents Judah Asimov and Anna Rachel Berman
Asimov. [6] Facing difficult conditions in
post-revolutionary Russia, including economic hardship and political
uncertainty, the family decided to emigrate to the United States for
better opportunities. [6] [16] They departed the
Soviet Union on January 11, 1923, and arrived in New York City on
February 3, 1923, when Asimov was three years old. [6]The family
settled in the East New York section of Brooklyn at 425 Van Siclen
Avenue, where they began their new life as Russian-speaking Jewish
immigrants. [6] Judah Asimov, initially penniless and
unable to speak or read English, worked various jobs before saving
enough to open a candy store, which became the family's home and
primary source of income. [17] [16] The store operated
long hours, often from early morning to late at night, reflecting the
demanding work ethic of immigrant life in Brooklyn. [17]As a
young child in a non-English-speaking household, Asimov initially
struggled with the new language. [17] Before the age of
five, however, he taught himself to read by carefully deciphering
shop signs and street signs around Brooklyn, driven by intense
curiosity and determination to understand his
surroundings. [17] These early efforts at self-education
amid the challenges of immigration are presented in the autobiography
as foundational to his later intellectual development. [17]
School years and self-education
Asimov portrays his
school years as those of a child prodigy who advanced quickly through
the educational system. [3] He
skipped several grades in elementary school and earned A's in nearly
every subject, receiving only lower marks in deportment. [9] [18]His
early introduction to fiction came through a friendship with a
talkative classmate who mesmerized him with invented stories, marking
his first meaningful encounter with narrative
literature. [18] [3] This experience fueled his
growing passion for reading, which he pursued independently by
secretly borrowing science fiction pulp magazines from the display
rack in his father's candy store. [18] He read them in
hiding and carefully returned them to appear untouched, allowing him
to explore the genre without parental knowledge. [4]
College and graduate studies
In Memory Yet Green recounts
Isaac Asimov's accelerated entry into higher education, beginning in
1935 at the age of fifteen after graduating from high school.[19] He
initially enrolled at City College of New York for a few days before
switching to Seth Low Junior College, the Brooklyn campus of Columbia
University, where he received a $100 scholarship.[19] The book
describes his disappointment at not gaining direct admission to the
more prestigious Columbia College proper, instead starting at the
less elite Seth Low branch, which served commuter students and had a
predominantly Jewish and Italian student body.[4][20]Seth Low Junior
College closed after Asimov's freshman year in 1936, prompting his
transfer to Columbia University's main Morningside Heights
campus.[19] There, he pursued chemistry as his major, completing
his Bachelor of Science degree in 1939 at age nineteen.[19] The
autobiography details his persistence in graduate studies despite
obstacles, including initial rejection from Columbia's master's
program in chemistry after being turned down by medical schools; he
successfully argued for probationary admission, which was lifted
after one year, resulting in his Master of Arts degree in
1941.[19]Asimov continued directly into Columbia's doctoral program
in chemistry, though his research faced significant interruption from
1942 to 1946 due to overlapping wartime commitments.[19] He
completed his PhD in chemistry in May 1948, marking the culmination
of his formal academic training in the field.[19] The book
covers these experiences across roughly pages 139–165, emphasizing
his rapid progression, financial strains, admissions challenges, and
the intellectual rigor of his chemistry studies at Columbia.[20]
World War II and military service
During World War II, Asimov
describes being recruited to work as a civilian chemist at the Naval
Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia (commonly known as the
Philadelphia Navy Yard) starting in May 1942, following a
recommendation from fellow science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein,
who was already employed there. [21] [19] His duties
primarily involved routine laboratory testing of materials used in
naval aircraft, such as soaps, cleaners, seam sealers, plastics, and
other substances, to ensure they met specifications for quality and
performance. [21] As an example, he details testing
waterproofness by placing calcium chloride in aluminum pans, covering
them with the material under examination, sealing the edges with wax,
weighing them before and after exposure to humidity for twenty-four
hours, and measuring any weight gain due to water
absorption. [21] Asimov reflects that his contributions
were limited and routine, expressing the belief that in peacetime he
would have been considered incompetent and dismissed for failing to
innovate or advance beyond basic compliance testing. [21] He
also notes learning to write technical specifications in the
deliberately complex "Navy style" and once submitted a
deliberately satirical version as an experiment, only to have it
praised as exemplary by superiors. [22]Despite the war's
conclusion in Europe and the Pacific, Asimov recounts persistent
anxiety over potential conscription and his efforts to avoid
induction through legal deferments. [22] He was eventually
drafted and inducted into the U.S. Army on November 1,
1945. [22] [19] After initial processing at Fort
Meade, Maryland, he was assigned to Camp Lee, Virginia, where—despite
classification as a "critically needed specialist" in
chemistry—he and other technically trained personnel were relegated
to clerical and typing duties. [22] Later transferred to
Oahu, Hawaii, Asimov narrowly escaped assignment to observe the
Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll due to a
clerical error that mistakenly recorded him as discharged and halted
family allotment payments; he leveraged this administrative mistake
to secure a return to the mainland for correction. [22] The
issue was resolved in his favor, resulting in an honorable discharge
on July 26, 1946, at the rank of corporal after nine months of
service. [22]Asimov characterizes much of his military
experience as absurd and Kafkaesque, particularly the misallocation
of skilled personnel and the continuation of the draft after
victory. [22] He relates two rare episodes of intoxication
among his anecdotes: on one occasion, after becoming drunk, he
professed love to a fellow soldier named Stash, who reacted
defensively by preparing to fight off an embrace, after which Asimov
giggled through the night and reflected that it was the only truly
happy day he had in the Army, musing that such episodes explain why
people drink; on another, he soothed a hiccuping, affectionate
drunken bunkmate named Upton by reciting a humorous poem about the
exaggerated love between drunken men, after which Upton vomited and
fell asleep. [22]
Postwar academic career
In In
Memory Yet Green,
Asimov describes resuming his professional life after the war by
joining the biochemistry department at Boston University School of
Medicine in 1949 as an instructor, where he taught classes and
conducted some research on nucleic acids and paper chromatography
with the goal of studying cancer tissue, though he later reflected
that this line of inquiry would not have produced meaningful
results. [23] He particularly enjoyed lecturing and
received standing ovations from his classes at the medical school,
while he also began delivering popular science talks beyond the
university. [18] [23] After struggling with
administrative hurdles for raises and promotions, he advanced to
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the end of 1951. [23] Although
he liked lecturing and had no objection to grading objective-answer
questions, Asimov expressed strong distaste for grading essay
questions, performing laboratory research, and authoring scientific
papers or textbooks. [23]The autobiography covers elements of
his personal life during this period, including his marriage to his
first wife, Gertrude. [4] The couple moved several times,
first to a hot converted attic apartment, then to a more comfortable
apartment, and finally to their first house. [23] After
nine years of marriage and having abandoned hopes of having children,
Gertrude gave birth to their son David shortly after Asimov
experienced kidney stones, an event that led him to obtain life
insurance and prepare a will. [23] [19] During these
years, he learned to drive and purchased a Plymouth automobile to
ease his commute. [23]Asimov also recounts his gradual
transition toward full-time writing, noting that his writing income
rose sharply and eventually surpassed his university salary,
prompting him to regard writing as his primary vocation and his
academic role as secondary. [23] His growing success in
science fiction, addressed in the section on his rise in the field,
supported this shift. The book concludes with the initial stages of
disputes over his university position. [18]
Rise in science fiction
In Memory Yet Green details
Asimov's entry into professional science fiction writing in 1938,
when he began submitting short stories to pulp magazines while still
a teenager, receiving numerous rejections before his persistence paid
off with his first acceptance. His first published story, "Marooned
off Vesta," appeared in Amazing Stories in October 1939 after
being sold to editor Raymond A. Palmer. Asimov describes his early
involvement with the Futurians, a New York-based fan group that
included aspiring writers and future editors such as Frederik Pohl
and Donald A. Wollheim, providing him with encouragement and contacts
in the field even as he remained somewhat on the periphery due to his
heavy focus on writing and studies.A key turning point came in his
relationship with John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding
Science-Fiction, whom Asimov first met in 1938. Campbell rejected
Asimov's early submissions but offered detailed feedback and
encouragement, eventually publishing his stories starting in 1940 and
becoming a major influence on his career. In 1941, Campbell supplied
the premise for "Nightfall," a story about a planet with
six suns experiencing darkness for the first time, which Asimov wrote
quickly and which appeared in Astounding to significant acclaim
within the genre. Asimov recounts the story's rapid composition and
its status as one of his most successful early works, helping
solidify his reputation among readers and editors.The autobiography
further describes the inception of the Foundation series in 1942,
when Campbell suggested the idea of a science of psychohistory to
predict the future of a galactic empire, inspired by Gibbon's history
of Rome; Asimov began the series with the novelette "Foundation,"
published in Astounding that year, followed by sequels that appeared
over the next decade. He notes the magazine's payment rates of around
one to two cents per word, which provided supplemental income
alongside his academic position, though the economics of pulp
publishing required prolific output to sustain a career. By 1954,
Asimov had produced dozens of stories, established the Foundation
narrative as a major work, and transitioned toward book publication
with early novels such as Pebble in the Sky (1950) and the collected
Foundation trilogy (1951–1953), marking his rise to prominence as
one of the field's leading authors.
