Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science (30 page)

The situation was less under control across the Atlantic, where Weidenfeld's solicitor, Colin Madie, still maintained that Francis was being defamed and that, given his reputation for not being particularly well balanced, we should not expect him to act in his own long-term interest. By the end of September, Madie abruptly changed his opinion, telling Weidenfeld to proceed. This happened after he showed the manuscript to a close friend who had known Francis for years and who told him that my portrait of Crick was “right on mark.” Weidenfeld's editor in chief, Nicolas Thompson, then reread the manuscript, writing to me that “my picture of Francis was one only a hypersensitive or very unreasonable person could object to. You point to his faults indeed, but much more to his enormous talents and likable qualities.”

The way was now clear to sign final contracts, with Tom Wilson looking embarrassed as he conveyed to me Simon Michael Bessie's offer of an André Deutsch-magnitude advance. Seeing no gain from asking Bessie why he took me for a fool, I let Eph negotiate a more reasonable sum. Later, Bessie tried to renege on his promise to stipulate that Atheneum would pay one-half of any costs of successfully defending a libel suit. So I wrote him that the contract already incorporated all compromises, and there we must stand. Otherwise, I would find another publisher, notwithstanding my connection with Tom. I gave him a deadline to back down, which he did. I felt sorry for Tom's having to be associated with this overrated publisher, who was not a patch on someone like George Weidenfeld.

A better side of Atheneum was presented by Harry Ford, who chose the typeface and designed a striking red jacket. Once I got through my first fall Harvard lectures, I assembled and sent on to him the appropriate photos and preliminary sketches for diagrams of DNA bases, the sugar phosphate backbone, and so on. Libby Aldrich was no longer available to help me, having gone off to Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford to study English and also to avoid facing her emotions concerning the
Advocate's
former editor Stuart Arrowsmith Davis. In Plath-like fashion, she wrote a blue-tinted letter to describe herself as freezing, pale, and gaunt, but very well acclimated to dropping shillings into various heating devices and visiting the public baths (another shilling) along with the rest of the neighborhood's female population of Indians and Cypriote. Lady Margaret Hall itself, she said, was part convent, part prison, and very much an autonomous little private girls’ school, through which passed innumerable withered little old ladies, two of them her tutors—the Anglo-Saxon one old and fierce, the literature one old and sadly girlish. For cheer, pictures of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan were on the walls of her two attic rooms, above the floors occupied by her meek Irish landlord and his virago wife. Seeing
Privilege,
Libby wrote that she shortened her skirts and aimed to cultivate glamour.

Tom Wilson now was in a position to contact the
New Yorker
about serializing
The Double Helix
as they had Truman Capote's
In Cold Blood.
But they turned us down, as did
Life
magazine, which said they had already dealt with DNA through their big 1963 illustrated article.
The Atlantic Monthly
responded more positively, publishing
The Double Helix
intact in their January and February 1968 issues. By then, Francis and Maurice had given up thoughts of any legal action, with Francis feeling victorious over HUP's withdrawal. No one would now have cause to think
The Double Helix
a scholarly book. Early in February 1968, Eph sent me a bill for $700 for his assistance between June 1967 and October 6, 1967, citing charges for (1) his opinions with respect to libel, (2) the withdrawal of Atheneum-suggested changes that he thought unwarranted, and (3) conferring with attorneys for Atheneum with respect to requests by Dr. Crick's attorney to examine manuscripts, correspondences, et cetera. To complete the bill, $8.86 was requested for toll calls and $5.75 for messenger service.

A luncheon was held at the Century Association on February 14, 1968, for reviewers and science editors. There I would have to be gracious to Michael Bessie, but Libby Aldrich was on hand for me to make snide remarks to behind his back. Just before Christmas, Oxford had dropped out of her life, and for six weeks she'd expected to be Mrs. Stuart Arrowsmith Davis. The wedding was meant to take place in Bronxville the Saturday before my event. Just before the ceremony, however, the groom had suffered a nervous collapse and the marriage was indefinitely postponed. By the luncheon's end, Libby was nowhere to be seen, and I eventually found her in a ladies’ room passed out from having drowned her sorrows in pre-luncheon drinks. A cab took us to the Plaza, where I had a big room with a window on the park. Libby instantly fell asleep in my bed. By 7:00 P.M., she was alert enough for dinner at La Cote Basque before I took her to Grand Central Station for the train to New Haven, where Stuart was a Yale graduate student.

The next evening I met the Atheneum publicity agent at the studio where I was to appear on Merv Griffin's TV show. My conversation with Griffin seemed to end almost before it started, with my nervous movements causing Merv's English-butler sidekick, Arthur Treacher (also of eponymous fish and chips fame), to ask whether I needed the little boys’ room. Ten days later, I went back to New York to appear after Harry Belafonte on the
Today
show and attend a luncheon to mark the book's official publication date. In the middle of March I was there yet again for a book world luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria. By then, several positive reviews had appeared, the most important by the Columbia University sociologist Robert Merton. The article, entitled “Making It Scientifically,” began: “This is a candid self-portrayal of the scientist as a young man in a hurry.” Richard Lewontin used his
Chicago Sun-Times
space to compare it to Francoise Gilot's
Life with Picasso,
calling it a vulgar curiosity about minor scientific celebrities. Soon I was on the
New York Times
best-seller list, remaining there for sixteen weeks, though never near the top.
Time
magazine for some two weeks wanted me on its cover, sending a reporter to follow me about at Harvard and then watch me speak at Dartmouth. Eagerly I sought out
Time
on the day promoted for my front-page appearance only to see the face of “Danny the Red.” The student barricades in Paris had become more important than DNA.

Only late in May did Weidenfeld publish the British edition of
The Double Helix.
They had produced a much condensed version for the
Sunday Times
to publish, but I nixed the effort, saying that it lacked the character of the full book and would unnecessarily annoy Francis and Maurice. Even worse was the vulgar jacket, printed a month before publication without my input. It made Francis seem ridiculous, with such ludicrous attempts at seductive copy as: “1) Which winner of the Nobel Prize has a voice so loud it can actually produce a buzzing in the ears? 2) Who is the top Cambridge scientist who gossips over dinner about the private lives of women undergraduates? 3) Which eminent English biologist created a scandal at a costume party by dressing up as George Bernard Shaw and kissing all the girls behind the anonymity of a scraggy red beard?” Mortified by my publisher's stupidity and grossness, I immediately contacted Nicolas Thompson to have Weidenfeld replace the offensive jacket. With no argument they backed down, and George Weidenfeld personally reassured me that all the jackets were being destroyed.

The week I was in England to mark the official publication date was no time to try to see Francis and Maurice. But Peter Pauling was typically fun to be with, and I could deliver the English version to Naomi Mitchison, to whom I dedicated
The Double Helix.
I saw Lawrence and Alice Bragg at their country home near the Suffolk coast. In England, most of the reviews were favorable. The most critical was by the embryologist C. H. Waddington, who thought me verging toward Salvador Dali-like manic egocentricity. By the year's end, some seventy thousand books had sold in the United States and British sales approached thirty thousand. Given its generally high praise and wide visibility, Tom Wilson thought I would be a shoo-in for the 1969 National Book Award in science. But it went to Yale's Robert Jay Lifton for
Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima.

Though I was disappointed, I no longer needed others to tell me I had written a book worth reading.

    Remembered Lessons

1. Be the first to tell a good story

In 1953 the finding of the double helix by itself did not create the opportunity for an important new textbook. Any such book written the next year necessarily would have been dominated by other facts already well documented—and which still constituted most of what was known on the subject of life's nature. Twelve years had to pass before an almost complete, new story could be told of how the genetic information within DNA molecules is used by cells to order the amino acids in proteins. By contrast, the story of the quest for DNA's structure could be told immediately, although it took me almost a decade to figure out how to go about telling it. Many have had their objections to my version of characters and events, but the popular imagination was captured by it, not least on account of its having come first.

2. A wise editor matters more than a big advance

Assuming you are not being insultingly low-balled, choosing a publisher on the basis of the advance is like choosing a house builder solely on the basis of the lowest bid. An innovative book usually takes more time to write and may cost more money to produce than either you or your publisher would guess at the time of signing the contract. Better to have a seasoned and comprehending editor on your side when your manuscript takes many more years to finish than contractually stipulated. By then your editor, if not employed elsewhere, will be under pressure to curb production costs as much as possible. Your illustrations may be cut in number and fobbed off on the cheapest available commercial artist, but the chances of that are diminished if the publisher isn't already deep in the hole having paid you money you haven't yet earned. If you haven't been overpaid, your freedom to pay back the advance and take the book elsewhere is greater and so is your leverage in demanding that corners not be cut.

3. Find an agent whose advice you will follow

Publishers’ contracts invariably contain clauses that only publishing lawyers understand. Unless you want to become credentialed in this arcane specialty, another field that has seen its best days, let your prospective contract go through the hands of someone paid by you to see that you are not taken advantage of. It is too much to expect your publisher, no matter his reputation for rectitude, to look after your interests and his own equally. The 10 percent to 15 percent of the proceeds charged by a reputable agent are well worth whatever is saved trying to represent yourself.

4. Use snappy sentences to open your chapters

With so much on TV, a short, incisive first sentence is more important than ever in pulling your readers into a new chapter. Let your audience know where they will be going if they stay with you. In
The Double Helix,
I used openers such as “I proceeded to forget Maurice, but not his DNA photograph.” Equally important are ending sentences, in which I often sprinkled a touch of irony, as in “The remnants of Christianity were indeed useful,” or attempted Oscar Wilde-like epigrams: “The message of my first meeting with the aristocracy was clear. I would not be invited back if I acted like everyone else.”

5. Don't use autobiography to justify past
actions or motivations

A major reason for writing autobiography is to prevent later biographers getting the basic facts of your life wrong. If life has graced you with lots of memorable occasions, merely reporting them correctly and dispassionately will generate a book worth reading. Attempts at justifying your actions and apologizing for bad behavior long ago only consign your work to the dubious genre of apologetics. Better to tell it straight without vainglory or shame and let others praise or damn you, as they will inevitably do anyway.

6. Avoid imprecise modifiers

Modifiers such as
very, much, largely,
and
possibly
don't convey useful information and only reduce the impact of otherwise crisp language. Saying someone is very bright offers no further insight than just saying he is bright. To go further, you must be more creative; for example, comparing your subject's brightness (or stupidity) with that of a known person or somehow ranking him, saying for instance, “No one was brighter in the Cavendish Laboratory”—that's got to mean something.

7. Always remember your intended reader

From the start, I wanted
The Double Helix
to be read beyond the world of science. So I integrated paragraphs about science with ones dealing with people, their individual actions and motives. Technical facts not essential to the story I left out. Even so, I found certain highly paid lawyers annoyed by any paragraph too technical for them to understand. I savored the justice ofthat.

8. Read out loud your written words

To make
The Double Helix
read smoothly, I read aloud every sentence to see if it made sense when spoken. Long sentences that were hard to follow I broke into shorter ones. I also sometimes combined a few short ones, as one short sentence after another can obscure the significance of events that unfold over more than one day. Choppy language is better suited for cookbooks and lab manuals.