World literature is like a great river, with its source situated somewhere in the dim past not far from man's own beginnings and its terminus ever receding before us in the mists that veil the destiny of our race. Some men, such as Dickens or Tolstoy, ride the middle of the river, and, in turn, contribute their own works to the surging of its flow. Other writers, whose names and works you have never heard of, might be compared to small drops of water on the waves along the river's edge. But of those many thousand souls who share the mysterious urge to set words on paper it might be said that, be they famous or be they unknown, all are part of this same river. To a greater or lesser degree, they all partake of its waters in the high communion of their art. Why is it, then, that in the
broad spectrum of humanity writers should be the meanest, the pettiest, the most jealous, mudslinging, backstabbing, self-centered, conceited people who ever lived? It is only within the last few months that I have come to an understanding of just how bad writers can be. The event that really opened my eyes was when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected me, out of a multitude of other writers, to participate in their five-year Community in Space program on an orbiting station twenty thousand miles above the earth. I won't bother to review all the nasty, sniping attacks on me which many of the unsuccessful candidates for the position have given vent to in national publications. I only wonder if the space colonists (all of them leaders in their fields) who were chosen to represent the other professions had to endure such a torrent of abuse from their colleagues. My feeling is that they did not.
It has been written that my selection was the result of backstairs political maneuvers on my part. When you see that written anywhere, you will know for sure that the author has never met me, and that, in fact, he knows less about me than he does about the President of Togo. As anyone with even a slight acquaintance with me will tell you, I am a man who was born, and has remained, a truthteller; that is the very core of my nature. To speak anything other than the truth is an act of which I am almost physically incapable. So, as it happens, the hypocrisy, flattery, and glad-handing that grease the social wheels for millions of my fellows are skills far beyond my ken. The unblinking light of my regard falls the same upon everyone (including myself) without fear or favor. This troublesome
honesty of mine has stood in the way of my advancement more times than I can count, but I accept its disadvantages without complaint; you see, it's just the way I am.
Now, to set the record straight, and to put a stop to the half-truths and rumors, I will tell how NASA came to choose me. I am afraid it is a simple story, entirely devoid of exciting secret schemes. One day, I picked up a newspaper and saw the announcement that NASA was looking for top members of some forty different professions to live for five years in a creative community housed in an orbiting space station. By chance, I was unemployed at the time, and eager for new challenges. I rushed down to the Pentagon, found the offices of the Air Force, and put my name on the sign-up sheet. My name was not at the top of the list; nor was it at the bottom. Then I was told that anyone who wished to apply had sixty days to submit the necessary recommendations, as well as a sample of his or her most recent work. I gave much thought to the sample I would submit. I wanted it to have a little something for everyone; I wanted it to be fresh; I wanted it to grapple with large themes. So, first of all, I went out and bought a middle-sized motor home with my own savings. I was convinced that I must leave behind the comfortable routines of my life up to that point. After much painful soul-searching, I decided to split once and for all from my estranged wife. I had lost her boyfriend's phone number, so I left a note on her car informing her of my intention. Then, just to be on the safe side, I also broke up with the guy at the newsstand, the boy who serviced my vehicle, and a tolltaker on the New Jersey Turnpike. I set off down
the highway with her recriminations still ringing in my ears.
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My first stop was New England. I picked a comfortable campsite and got right to work. Immediately I was pleased to notice that the stately, brooding shadows of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Emerson fell across my typewriter as I chronicled life in the land of the three-martini lunch, where Ivy League-educated denizens of sprawling bedroom communities improvise unconventional marriages in the sexual confusion of the later twentieth century. That was fun; but I began to worry that I was speaking in a voice that could do with a bit more American authenticity. So I headed out on Interstate go. As I passed Buffalo, I could feel my voice becoming more authentic. Clevelandâeven more authentic. Then Chicago. Aahâauthenticity was now all around me. I spent eleven days on the outskirts of that city, creating, growing, and learning. (For example, did you know that Chicago is actually
not
the windiest city in this country? In fact, it's rather far down the list.) Then I was back on the highway. When I reached the Far West, I noticed that my prose suddenly became as vast and brawling as the landscape that surrounded it. Eventually, through a careful budgeting of time and money, I was able to pursue my stylistic development in forty-six of the fifty states. Then I drove back to Washington, to type up my final copy and turn it in. Reading it over, I discovered that I'd found a large theme, all right. That theme was America itself.
The news that I had made the final cut absolutely floored me. I was even more stunned when I showed
up at the Air Force offices and got a look at the nine other finalists. Among them were some of the most famous writers in the country, people whose names you would recognize in an instant. We were all given a mandatory essay question to complete in three hours. I was sure I'd be over my head in competition the likes of this, but I resolved to do my best. Our springboard topic was “The World's Greatest Dad.” I chewed the eraser on my pencil for a moment, and then my hand began fairly flying across the pages of my blue book.
I shall always remember the day I found out that I'd been selected, because it was one of the happiest days of my lifeâand one of the saddest. The telegram found me at my campsite outside Bethesda. I screamed for joy; I jumped from my motor home; I took Mrs. Main, the campsite manager, in my arms and waltzed her around her office. But she had to get on with her work, so I called one of my closest friends, a novelist and essayist, to ask him to have a few beers with me in celebration. When I told him my news, a chill came into his voice. I knew for the first time that loneliness which must always walk hand in hand with the successful.
Soon, however, my gloom was dispersed in the whirlwind of events preceding our takeoff, which was only a month away. First, there was a picnic to meet the other future space colonists, at the beautiful home of an Air Force colonel in McLean, Virginia. I met many people of amazing intellect whose contributions to mankind had won them fame the world over, and I also met many whose fame was limited to only a small circle. Without exception, every single one was just as
nice and friendly as anybody you'd ever want to talk to. We compared values and life styles in very stimulating exchanges as we helped ourselves to the sumptuous barbecue. At one point, I was standing around playing Jarts with a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, and a famous international photojournalist. I turned to the chemist and said, “Pinch me, will you? I can't believe this is real!”
The next weeks passed in a frantic rush of orientation sessions, group discussions, weightlessness training (the space station has artificial gravity, but this was just in case), packing, final details, and goodbyes to loved ones. At last came the morning when we were standing with our suitcases on the concrete apron next to the space-shuttle launch pad at Cape Canaveral. There were too many of us to go all at once, so the shuttle had to make two trips. The bunch I went with had a ball. It was really something to watch the older fellows, whose gray hairs bespoke their eminence, as they anticipated liftoff with eyes dancing like those of a young boy on his first roller-coaster ride. The flight was the thrill of a lifetime for everybody. We arrived at the space station with spirits as high as our actual altitude in miles, if not higher.
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I know that some of my literary colleagues back on the ground enviously imagine that we're luxuriating in plush surroundings up here, with nothing to do but work and enjoy. Well, I hate to shatter their illusions, but our quarters on the space station are no more ritzy than your average family motel room. Our needs are well provided for, but we don't live like millionaires, either. The room assigned to me is actually one of the
smaller ones. (NASA gave everybody rooms on the basis of a system that I'm sure was fair, even though some people have rooms twice the size of mine.) I have a small radio, but no television. I don't mind that, because television, with its tendency to turn all human emotions into cup custard, is an aspect of modern culture which I abhor. Besides, we have our own fifty-seat movie theaterâthe only feature of our space station which I guess you might call luxurious. Sometimes we get to see first-run movies, and that suits me just fine, because I am a movie nut. Of course, life here is not without its annoying little technical problems, or “glitches,” as we call them. The day we arrived, one of the station's outside thrust-reversers was screwed up, and everything kept tilting back and forth. I was in the midst of unpacking, putting pencils in my pencil holder, when suddenly things started to tilt, and the pencil holder toppled and all my pencils went scattering on the floor. Then, for some strange reason the water they brought up to use for drinking and showering turned out to be hard water; that is, water with high mineral content. I don't know why they didn't get regular waterâsome bureaucratic snafu, most likely. The water tasted O.K., but when you shampooed with it, no matter how hot you turned it up, it would not rinse your hair completely. After a few weeks of this kind of shampooing, all of us were walking around with hair that hung in lifeless strands. We were a pretty droopy-looking group, and morale began to suffer. Then NASA took the problem in hand and announced that they were adding another member to the Space Community. The new member was a serviceman from one of the leading water-softener companies. (I don't
have to tell you which oneâthey have already blown their own horn loud enough, with their “Water Softener to America's Space Program” ad campaign.) The shuttle made a special trip to bring this guy up, and, after some initial awkwardness, he fit in fine.
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Writers on earth may envy me, but I wonder if they know how I envy them. How I would love a little of their privacy, their anonymity, their freedom to foster their creations away from the bright lights of national and world attention! Whenever the space station passes over Houston, there's a knock on my door. “Jerryâit's Mission Control on the phone. They want to talk to you.” I know that this is just part of the routine. I know that the Houston boys have a flight schedule with a list of all our names with little boxes alongside, and all they want to do is put a little check in the box by my name indicating that they've talked to me, that I sound fine, etc. They ask me how the book is going, and I give them vague answers, and that satisfies them. They always mention the “great view.” They've got the idea that a person looking at the “great view” from up here would naturally be inspired to write as nobody in history has ever written before. “Oh, what a view!” I always answer.
Let me tell you a few facts about this supposed “great view.” In the first place, there is one window in this space station. One window for the entire space station. And it's not even that big a windowâit's about the size of a picture window in an ordinary house. In the second place, most of the time the space station is rotated around in a direction where all you can see out the window is blackness and a couple of stars. Maybe
if you stood there and waited for a few hours, you might see a meteor. And then during those times when the space station is rotated around toward earth, the window is always packed with people, and all you can see is the back of everybody's head.
Now, say I burst from my room one afternoon, my brain teeming with half-formed plots and characterizations, and I decide to take a short stroll. What I'm hoping for is the catalyst, the spark that will set the whole structure aglow from within. I walk to the window; earth is visible, if only I could see it through the crowd. The conversation goes like this:
“See that bump there? That's Long Island.”
“Long Island isn't a bump. It's more like a line.”
“O.K., then what is that bump?”
“Which one, the first bump or the second bump?”
“Not the first bump. I'm talking about the smaller bump. The first bump is New Brunswick.”
My question is: Was it in measures such as these that the Muses sang to Virgil and, later, Dante? I, for one, doubt it very much.
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The guys at Mission Control are put off easily enough, but once a month the President calls, and that's a whole different situation. It's quite a bit harder to kid him along. He knows all our names and he even recognizes our voices, and while he's talking I'm sure he's got a file on each one of us sitting on his desk in front of him. I never know for sure what he's going to say. He's a man who digs deeper; he didn't get to be President by accepting pat answers. The last couple of times we've talked, he's been getting curious about my work, and I really don't want to go into it. I could say
to him, “Look, writing is a process that takes place far back in the dim recesses of the mind, where words emerge and then go away again in a manner that even the most skillful of authors cannot easily explain in person, let alone over long-distance radiophone.” But I don't tell him thatâI try to cooperate. Our last conversation, however, was a nightmare.