off people, and was never in bed before 3 A.M.
Like any famous, or semifamous, author, I had loads of offers.
I was invited to guest on Jeopardy, to do the voice of Skeezix in a film adaptation of Gasoline Alley, to write 5,000 words about families for Good Housekeeping, to write 2,000 words about “My Most Unforgettable Parent” for Reader’s Digest, to write about Madagascar for National Geographic, to serve as honorary chairman of the White House Council on Storytelling, to narrate a documentary about Robert Scott’s race to the South Pole, to appear on the cover of Newsweek with children of different races, to tour Europe for the U.S. Information Agency and present lectures on the American Literary Heartland, to host a PBS show about “trends in culture” or “really, anything you want to do,” to write the text for a book of photographs of Childhood Homes of American Writers, to do commentary at the Winter Olympics, to appear on various TV shows, to host a salute to Phil and Don Everly at Carnegie Hall, to chair the Right to Read Music committee of the American Choral Association, to appear at benefits and to serve here and lecture there and write and host and spread the substance of my being like a grease stain across the breadth of America.
All I wanted to do was write something good for The New Yorker magazine.
One day, I wrote on a piece of paper: WHY DO I WRITE?
1. The big bucks. It might happen again. You never know.
2. The adulation of readers. People coming up in restaurants and saying, “Your stuff cheered me up once during chemo.”
3. A cool thing to do. What do you do? I’m a writer. Oh. Cool.
4. Am otherwise unemployable. As a nonwriter, I’d need to work as a parking lot attendant or clerk in a convenience store or else be institutionalized for a period of time.
5. The inscription on the façade of Northrop Auditorium at the U of M, about the search for truth.
6. How many people get the chance to write for The New Yorker magazine? Not many. There are Phi Beta Kappas from Princeton happy to work in the mail room and sharpen pencils and deliver galley proofs. The receptionist is a former Rhodes scholar who is at work on an article about the spine. If I listen closely, I can hear the ptptptptptptpptpt of her computer keys.
7. Want to please my old English teacher, Mr. Hochstetter, who thought I had talent though in retrospect this doesn’t say much for his judgment.
8. Want to impress women. Shakespeare was out to impress the dark lady, and Keats wrote for Fanny, Wordsworth for his sister Dorothy, and Balzac and Dickens and Hemingway and all those rascals. All of them out to impress the ladies.
9. A chance to speak to the youth of tomorrow.
10. Big bucks tend to lead to bigger bucks—TV, movies, soft goods. Look at A. A. Milne. He was a hardworking hack, cranking out stuff about the Boer War and motoring and country houses and Bright Young Things, and then he hit on Talking Animals and discovered the importance of subsidiary rights, product, marketing tie-ins.
Mr. Shawn sent me a note:
Dear Mr. Wyler,
Whenever you have a piece you want me to look at, please come right up to the 19th floor and knock on my door and come in. And let’s get together one of these evenings and sail.
Bill Shawn
Every day I awoke early and stood under the shower listening to WQXR and saying, “This is the day I run up two flights of stairs to Mr. Shawn’s office, with a piece of writing in my hand, and he reads it, jumps up, and gives me a big hug.” And I dressed in my black suit and white shirt and drank my coffee out on the terrace with a glance at the Times —no Iris to lecture me about the Palestinians—and headed out the door and hiked briskly south to 86th Street and caught the C train and stood at. the front of the front car, watching the track ahead as we careened between the rows of pilings and at 59th I switched to the B and hopped out at 42nd and strode briskly past the hot-dog vendors
Like any famous, or semifamous, author, I had loads of offers.
I was invited to guest on Jeopardy, to do the voice of Skeezix in a film adaptation of Gasoline Alley, to write 5,000 words about families for Good Housekeeping, to write 2,000 words about “My Most Unforgettable Parent” for Reader’s Digest, to write about Madagascar for National Geographic, to serve as honorary chairman of the White House Council on Storytelling, to narrate a documentary about Robert Scott’s race to the South Pole, to appear on the cover of Newsweek with children of different races, to tour Europe for the U.S. Information Agency and present lectures on the American Literary Heartland, to host a PBS show about “trends in culture” or “really, anything you want to do,” to write the text for a book of photographs of Childhood Homes of American Writers, to do commentary at the Winter Olympics, to appear on various TV shows, to host a salute to Phil and Don Everly at Carnegie Hall, to chair the Right to Read Music committee of the American Choral Association, to appear at benefits and to serve here and lecture there and write and host and spread the substance of my being like a grease stain across the breadth of America.
All I wanted to do was write something good for The New Yorker magazine.
One day, I wrote on a piece of paper: WHY DO I WRITE?
1. The big bucks. It might happen again. You never know.
2. The adulation of readers. People coming up in restaurants and saying, “Your stuff cheered me up once during chemo.”
3. A cool thing to do. What do you do? I’m a writer. Oh. Cool.
4. Am otherwise unemployable. As a nonwriter, I’d need to work as a parking lot attendant or clerk in a convenience store or else be institutionalized for a period of time.
5. The inscription on the façade of Northrop Auditorium at the U of M, about the search for truth.
6. How many people get the chance to write for The New Yorker magazine? Not many. There are Phi Beta Kappas from Princeton happy to work in the mail room and sharpen pencils and deliver galley proofs. The receptionist is a former Rhodes scholar who is at work on an article about the spine. If I listen closely, I can hear the ptptptptptptpptpt of her computer keys.
7. Want to please my old English teacher, Mr. Hochstetter, who thought I had talent though in retrospect this doesn’t say much for his judgment.
8. Want to impress women. Shakespeare was out to impress the dark lady, and Keats wrote for Fanny, Wordsworth for his sister Dorothy, and Balzac and Dickens and Hemingway and all those rascals. All of them out to impress the ladies.
9. A chance to speak to the youth of tomorrow.
10. Big bucks tend to lead to bigger bucks—TV, movies, soft goods. Look at A. A. Milne. He was a hardworking hack, cranking out stuff about the Boer War and motoring and country houses and Bright Young Things, and then he hit on Talking Animals and discovered the importance of subsidiary rights, product, marketing tie-ins.
Mr. Shawn sent me a note:
Dear Mr. Wyler,
Whenever you have a piece you want me to look at, please come right up to the 19th floor and knock on my door and come in. And let’s get together one of these evenings and sail.
Bill Shawn
Every day I awoke early and stood under the shower listening to WQXR and saying, “This is the day I run up two flights of stairs to Mr. Shawn’s office, with a piece of writing in my hand, and he reads it, jumps up, and gives me a big hug.” And I dressed in my black suit and white shirt and drank my coffee out on the terrace with a glance at the Times —no Iris to lecture me about the Palestinians—and headed out the door and hiked briskly south to 86th Street and caught the C train and stood at. the front of the front car, watching the track ahead as we careened between the rows of pilings and at 59th I switched to the B and hopped out at 42nd and strode briskly past the hot-dog vendors
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