Part V:The Events Leading Down to Biography: On Writing Kornbluth

For Don Wollheim's magazines, Cyril wrote from his youthful yet strangely world-matured heart. The two Futurians enjoyed a particularly close relationship for a time, with Wollheim sometimes a mentor-father figure, sometimes an equal. In his magazines, moreover, Wollheim proved to be Cyril's greatest early booster, giving "Cecil Corwin" the minor celebrity among science-fiction pulp readers that Cyril Kornbluth, or "Cy Kornbluth," already enjoyed in the small but international science-fiction fan community. An important result of their relationship took the form of collaborations, in which Don conceived a story line for Cyril to flesh out. Some among their collaborations may have escaped biographers because of the now-reigning assumption that the Martin Pearson penname refers primarily to Wollheim. I did uncover one definite instance of this. How many others there are remains to be discovered. Since one Wollheim-Kornbluth tale saw publication in John W. Campbell, Jr.,'s celebrated Astounding, these may well be Kornbluth's most significant early collaborations.

In one of my many failings in writing Kornbluth, I left the Wollheim angle less than fully explored. Similarly the Lowndes angle — and the Johnny Michel, Knight, Algis Budrys, Blish, Jane Roberts, Larry Shaw angles ... and so on. Despite my intention otherwise, I toiled so heavily on questions related to what Pohl was leaving out of his accounts that my attention inadvertently remained turned toward him, not away. Researching in Syracuse would have freed me of this, had that event fallen earlier in the process. Working on materials from Syracuse, DeKalb, the Eaton Collection, and the Oxford Bodleian so absorbed me in the spring of 2009, however, that precious little time, let alone means, remained to pursue the new research directions opening before me.

I was also facing the real problem of having arrived at this point — the point where I knew what questions to ask — too late. In the years before Lowndes' death, I failed to fully grasp how many pertinent subject areas his memory might have touched upon. By 2009, death had removed him from the scene, as it had Merril, Kidd, Knight, Budrys, and Robert Sheckley. All were alive when I offered the world my Kornblume round table. Infirmity had removed Pohl from the scene, too, by this time: for when I called to arrange an interview, I learned he was hospitalized for an unknown length of time. Whether he would have granted me an interview I have no idea. A few years before, at a convention, he had turned down my request for an interview on the subject of Cyril. More tellingly, as had taken me fifteen years to realize, from the outset he had met my question about archived Kornbluth correspondence with silence — a silence presumably not born of ignorance.

A few among Cyril's various colleagues and contemporaries remained, fortunately — such as Klass, Silverberg, Dave and Ruth Kyle, Carol Emshwiller, Bob Madle, and Kate MacLean — who helped me put pieces of the puzzle, small and large, into place. I felt and feel immensely grateful to these generous souls.

End, Part Five.

Part VII:The Events Leading Down to Biography: On Writing Kornbluth

Especially in the last months, my work on the Kornbluth manuscript overwhelmed my days and overflowed into nights. When I rose in the morning I worked our hand-crank mill and brewed coffee in a slow drip cone while starting the usual breakfast of vegetables slowly cooked in an old iron pan and served over whole oats. While coffee dripped or vegetables cooked I would go to the study — sometimes impelled there by a new insight percolating upwards through my morning mind, or an older one that had made me restless in the night. Then I would hasten forth to the kitchen — then back to the study, and forth and back until I set the table. I made our old black teapot, into which I dripped coffee, overflow uncounted times, due to needing to take a thought or two to the office. After breakfast our Scottie asked for play, a request I almost always honored, whenever the mood struck her. Accepting play as a priority helped my sanity in these intensely focused months: for although Lorna demanded it, I needed it the more. Afterwards, I sequestered myself in my study until noon dinner, then again until happy hour, which was another aid to sanity: for Martha and I observed it no matter my place in the manuscript, and no matter the press of deadlines. She or I served a tray of vegetables, with cheese or sausage if we had any; and we sat in the parlor in our circa-1900 house, in old rocking chairs, with Lorna bouncing from her own rocker to floor and back, to receive bits of whatnot from one or the other of us. Her joyous energy improved every late afternoon, while I recounted the day's triumphs and frustrations, and Martha spoke of hers: for she was now part-time working as the shipper at Organic Maple Co-op. With our scotches or Rob Roys sipped, and tray emptied, I retreated to the study until supper; and I did so again after supper, and worked as long as I could. Often then from sleep I would awaken at two a.m., the haunting strongly upon me again.

Those who recall the early chapter in Moby Dick in which Melville expresses his fear of not seeing the task ahead to completion will know one source of my dread. In my work I was answering questions I believed needed answering, and telling a story I believed needed telling. I was writing of a man plagued by misfortunes, including the one of possessing a damaged heart, who wrote repeatedly of characters suffering heart problems — whose damaged hearts end their life stories, as Cyril's did his.

I myself have a heart murmur. In the first year after moving to Cashton I would listen to my heartbeat at night, and hear irregularities that must have arisen during our years in a more stressful living environment, and in all our late-night band work. The irregularities seemed to disappear, gradually, as our quieter village life moved along — only to return in these days of biographical labors and financial worries. Rather than force myself to take more rest, however, the thoughts roiling through my mind at two a.m. often made me rise, dress, and resume work until time came to make breakfast. I was working seven days a week, with my days running ten to fourteen or more hours in length, and still was running out of time. March, the month Kornbluth died and also my deadline month, loomed ahead. Ruth Kyle, who recently has passed away, had felt fond of Cyril and would not let Dave, another Transradio veteran, shovel snow. Similarly Martha now often took sidewalk duties as the snows of late winter were arriving — frequently and thickly, as they often do in this region.

March no more finished me, when it passed, than I finished the manuscript. Yet I was feeling increasingly drained and finding it harder, day by day, to extend my work. I knew I should do better in several areas — in enlarging on the post-Kornbluth careers of the remaining members of The Five, for instance, since Cyril had helped shape their attitudes toward science fiction — attitudes that then, for a few years, offered guiding lights for that struggling field of writing. For the period after Cyril's death, I had to be satisfied with accounts of Klass's planned celebratory volume and of the posthumous alterations of Kornbluth texts: sad stories with which to end a sad story. The subsequent critical portion I had little time to deepen or extend. I did arrive, however, at a final chapter that I view as intrinsic to the book, and necessary for understanding the whole: "Kornbluth, Klass, and the Moral Stance." I took weeks, then, for one full revision, and weeks again for a second — and turned in the manuscript knowing that another full revision would have been best. Mentally I lacked strength, however. Physically, perhaps, too.

Besides the uncompleted second book for McFarland, I had one small writing task on my table in the months after delivering the book. While writing Kornbluth, I had written a number of reference-work entries at the promise of a pittance. I now had a contract for one additional historical note, quite short — perhaps a few hundred words long. I could have done the work in half an hour, or half a day, at most — had I forced myself to start researching. Instead I let the assignment languish. I lacked will. My focus must have been shattered. At length I lost not only the tiny assignment — almost the smallest I ever received from this publisher — but also my connection to that minor source of revenue. Exhaustion, which I would have denied I was experiencing, had brought me to a standstill.

I learned, once the book appeared, that another had feared for its existence. He exclaimed, "You did it — you really did it! I was afraid you would suffer the curse of the Kornbluths!"

For some, it seems, Cyril operated under a curse whose name was Writing. For Cyril himself, the writing itself turned out well. Little else did.

End, Part Seven.