I Hated to Do It: Stories of a Life (2 page)

Then one day we wandered across the street and were sitting in the Student Union lounge when Ann looks up and sees a man heading for the men’s room. She says to me, “I know that guy, he lived on my block in Brooklyn.” At Annie’s suggestion I followed the chap into the men’s room and asked him if he lived in Brooklyn. He was startled but acknowledged he did, although he was even more surprised when I asked if he lived on Eastern Parkway. I met Jack Lepke in the men’s room at the Student Union and learned he was the minister on campus.

We became close friends and through him became friendly with Joe Ishikawa, the curator of the museum on campus, with Bruce Kendall from the speech department, and a few other people. We soon became part of a group of socially conscious students who met once in a while to speculate on how we could change the world for the better and also to do something about it. Part of the group was Ted Sorensen, who I knew from high school, the same Ted Sorensen who would later write speeches for our president Jack Kennedy.

We were, of course, conscious of the inequality of the races in Lincoln, and when Ralph Bunche, the delegate to the United Nations, came to Lincoln and no hotel in town would accommodate him because he was black, this had a profound effect on us. We did find a home for him during his stay in Lincoln, but those in our group were very disturbed by this.

We were bothered that the university dorms that were for women only were for white women only. We were bothered that the black student could not bowl with the university gym class at the local bowling parlor. We were bothered that when my wife, Ann, and Ted Sorensen went to a lunch counter with our black friend Charles Gulsby, Ann and Ted got food that was edible and Charles got food unfit to eat. We as a group decided to do something about all of this, and we did. We changed all of that at the University of Nebraska and in Lincoln.

By the time I graduated from law school and we left Lincoln for New York City, women of any color could live in the dorms, the black student in the university gym class could bowl with his class at the bowling parlor, and if Ralph Bunche had come back, we could have put him in a hotel. Charles Gulsby would eat the same food the white folks got in the café.

How did we help change it? We had nice, quiet one-on-one conversations with the owners of the eating establishments. We never threatened a boycott, but we were smart enough to make the owners understand that that was a viable option for us.

We were sensitive enough to use our best instincts. We knew the owner of the bowling parlor was of the Jewish faith, so we had a Jewish member talk to him about how prejudice affected us all, especially the Jews. We were sophisticated enough to know that if the dorm was to become open to black female students, we would have to get to someone with authority over the dorms. This was a Nebraska state university with the dormitories under the control of the state. We started by getting the support of the local NAACP and the B’nai B’rith and asked the leaders of these organizations to sign a petition. We appealed to some local politicians with consciences to use their influence to convince the authorities to change this policy, and we won.

With the hotel situation and Ralph Bunche, all we had to do was to find one hotel owner sympathetic with our cause. After that was done with some ease, we simply made sure that all the other hotel owners were told that everybody was going along with it. Whatever we did had the proper result, and Nebraska is better for it.

Our friend Ted Sorensen would leave Lincoln and go to Washington to advise and write speeches for President Kennedy. Annie and I would go to live in New York when I graduated from law school and live the dream we didn’t even know existed.

It was really amusing for us, with our little group of so-called intellectuals, who did all these good things to make the city of Lincoln and the world a better place to live. Of course, being socially conscious young people, we put together another group of students that also met on campus to increase our understanding of what was going on in the world. We would meet every two or three weeks and discuss the most pressing problems facing the world. Each evening we met, we would decide on the pressing problem of that time that we should discuss.

It became humorous beyond belief when it became impossible to discuss any subject except one that we had never planned on discussing, yet which we became hooked on. A guy by the name of Korzybski sneaked into the discussion, and this should be a warning to every educational group meeting, whether it is to discuss a book, a political happening, or whatever, because it can doom your group.

It started one night when a subject was decided on and someone innocently enough asked what a word describing the subject meant. One of the wise guys in the group then mentioned he had read a book called
The Meaning of Meaning
by Alfred Korzybski. Semantics was introduced into the discussion, and the possibility of ever discussing anything except the subject of semantics was from then on an impossibility. We no longer could talk about the subject selected until we knew what the words describing the subject meant. So we spent the evening talking about what it meant.

From then on, no matter what the subject was we decided to discuss, immediately there would be detailed differing opinions on what the word meant, always lapsing into the discussion of semantics, and Korzybski was just one of the authors discussed. If you can’t agree on what you are talking about, that is, what the subject under discussion actually is, it’s pretty hard to have any meeting of the minds in a discussion. We were almost saved when Bill, one almost-there participant, offered the bright suggestion, “Can’t we forget about this semantics stuff and just talk?” Hallelujah!

Much later in my life when I became friendly, very friendly with Kurt and we had almost daily telephone conversations, I told him this little tale. Words are, of course, essential to Kurt’s life, and he uses them very carefully. He was so amused by the story of Bill that he said to me, “Don, why don’t we just forget about this gravity stuff and take a walk off the top of the Empire State Building?” Of course, his observation was accompanied by his loud, raucous laugh, which was his trademark.

2.
Introduction to Kurt

I was sitting in my crummy little office on 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue when the phone rang and the voice said, “We are having breakfast at the Brass Rail around the corner, come join us.” It was Max Wilkinson, Kurt’s agent, so I ambled over to Fifth, between 43rd and 44th Street, and joined Max and John D. MacDonald, the famous suspense writer, for breakfast. They were just starting on their third martini, their breakfast. When I say I joined them, I mean physically but not with the martini drinking.

I had never met Max and hardly knew him, having only had some telephone conversations with him. I had previously found him because he was the agent for Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Actually, my wife, Annie, and I first became aware of the name Kurt Vonnegut Jr. when we were living in suburbia, Merrick, Long Island, and Dan Kramer, a neighbor I would see on the train ride to Manhattan, told me about this book
Cat’s Cradle
that his teenage son had introduced him to.

Max Wilkinson

As fate would have it, about this time that I first became aware of this Vonnegut book, another young man engaged me to acquire the film rights to this same novel,
Cat’s Cradle
. This was why I had previously located Kurt’s agent, Max Wilkinson. Through some telephone calls, Max and I came to an agreement and I made a deal for the film rights for my client. The client never made the film and there is a lot more to the story of the film rights to
Cat’s Cradle
, which will be told later.

***

My telephone conversations with Max Wilkinson were always friendly, as he was a friendly guy. He was the epitome of the Southern gentleman. He always called me “Dear boy.” I always waited for him to pat me on the head, but, of course, that didn’t happen. He told us that he had worked for Samuel Goldwyn in Hollywood before he became an agent and claimed credit for writing some of the famous Goldwynisms. He always claimed that he was the one who wrote “If Freud were alive today he would be turning over in his grave.”

Apparently my telephone discussions with Max impressed him enough that shortly afterward he called me one day to ask for help with a television matter of Kurt’s that he did not know how to handle. An agent in California represented a client who wanted to make a film based on one of Kurt’s short stories. Max had no idea how much money he should ask for the rights to make the film and did not know what to ask for if they wanted to turn it into a series based on the short story. After I advised Max how to handle this matter, it worked out very well for Kurt. Max and I became telephone friends. So the call from the Brass Rail bar that day was preceded by just my telephone conversations with Max.

***

When I got the call I had also never met John D. and knew him only by some communications through the mail. That was when people wrote letters with a pen or pencil, put the paper in an envelope, affixed a stamp, sealed the envelope, and put the envelope in something we used to call a “mail box.” I had written to him, in a spirit of humor, accusing him of libeling my friend and client Jim McKimmey when he wrote a snarky review of a book written by Jim.

***

So here I am with these two guys I had never actually met till that day. The three of us left the Brass Rail and went over to the Century Club, which was Max’s favorite haunt. It was so easily accessible to him, and to us at that time, being located just west of Fifth Avenue on 43rd Street, which was right around the corner from his office on Fifth Avenue. This was also my first visit to the Century Club. What a day: my introduction to Max, to John D., and now to the Century Club.

***

The Century Club was the last social club in New York to permit women to become members, and for years women were never permitted above the first floor. The club is a haven for many in the publishing business, and there is a strict rule that no business can be conducted in the club above the first floor, which meant that briefcases and other working papers had to be checked on the main floor. This established it as a pretty somber place. The members were some of the famous editors and publishers of this era.

It was quiet, dignified, stilted, and populated by the old-timers, many of whom were retired or semiretired. All of which prompted Max to one day remark that, “The reason they have not let women in the club is that they would go snooping around in the corners and discover that some of the old guys sitting there are dead.”

When John D., Max, and I arrived at the club after that morning breakfast of martinis they had at the Brass Rail, we each ordered a Silversmith and talked. Legend has it that a member named Silversmith gave the club a present of a number of silver goblets. This huge silver goblet, named after its donor, is a Silversmith, and it holds a drink about three times the size of a regular size martini glass. Strangely enough, the Silversmith drink we would order tasted exactly like a martini. Drinking two Silversmiths was like drinking about a half a dozen martinis. I guess this guy Silversmith liked martinis.

After this initial meeting with Max and John D., Max continued to call me for help with some of the matters he was handling for Kurt. Shortly after this, my wife and I met this tall, lanky guy, Kurt Vonnegut, at a party at Max’s apartment near Gramercy Park. Max was smart, as he wanted us to meet Kurt since he knew I would be able to make his job easier by helping him with some of Kurt’s proposals. It was a very casual meeting. There were interested people there, and Kurt seemed to be the center of attention. He was affable, friendly but shy.

We didn’t get a chance to talk any business and we had nothing else personal to talk about at this time. It is not my nature to be aggressive in a situation like this, as I knew that I would have ample opportunity to get to know Kurt without the distraction of people trying to curry his favor. This kind of thing appeared to distract Kurt, not knowing who to relate to, but it was a short meeting and a good beginning, as he now had an idea of who was assisting Max with some of his matters.

At this initial meeting, Kurt was still not aware of how successful
Slaughterhouse
would become, nor was he conscious of how famous he would become. He was also licking his wounds from the lousy time he had trying to sell Saabs and trying to subsist on rejection slips and payments of $500 or $750 for an occasional short story picked up by one of the popular (and some not so popular) magazines of that time. Kurt wanted to be trusting but knew to be cautious. One can only surmise he still had memories of that real slaughterhouse he was trapped in.

It was nice being exposed to Kurt at this stage of my introduction to the business of the entertainment industry. Kurt and I were both beginning to build our careers. I don’t think that either of us knew it then, nor would either of us have acknowledged it then, but in retrospect, our common insecurities in our just-beginning-to-flourish careers, our common military histories, and our common political beliefs and attitudes about society and care for the underprivileged bound us in ways that would develop into a lasting friendship. Annie shared these attitudes and made it easy for us to develop the relationship apart from what I did for Kurt and his business.

Kurt the Humanist

Kurt, as we would later learn, believed in humanism, which is a philosophical belief that emphasizes the value of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over an established doctrine or faith. This was fine with me. I had spent my high school days on the debate team espousing and believing these same principals. Kurt and I were both liberals and proud of it and hence supported the Democratic Party. Kurt insisted that he was not a Christian but thought Jesus to be a great person, and Kurt extolled the Sermon on the Mount. Kurt’s humanism was consistent with my Jewish upbringing, which accepted the charity and generosity espoused by Judaism and rejected the strict dogma that some Jewish people adhere to.