I Hated to Do It: Stories of a Life (3 page)

Kurt was also proud of his remarks that he made at the funeral for Isaac Asimov, a fellow humanist. Asimov was a strong believer in humanism and wrote and spoke often on the subject. Kurt always said that he broke them all up at Asimov’s funeral when he stood up as the speaker and said, “Isaac is up in heaven looking down at us now.” Kurt thought that was the funniest thing he had ever said.

Max and I continued talking on the phone about matters of Kurt’s that Max was working on, and gradually we would get Kurt involved in the discussions. Although Max and I were the deal makers, I had this idea, and still do, that the client should have some say-so in, or at least approve of, what we were doing for him. So gradually Kurt and I communicated more and more about his business happenings, and we became more and more friendly. Kurt needed someone to help him and someone he could trust, and I was a young, energetic attorney who loved his writing and found the deals I could make for him intriguing.

I negotiated some great multimillion-dollar publishing deals for Kurt later on. I do not want to take any great credit. Kurt and I got along famously. From my point of view, I have always said that it is a cinch to make a deal when you have all the marbles. Kurt was getting “hot,” and I knew it, and his publisher knew it.

***

We don’t have to worry that I took advantage of the Big Bad Publisher, as it didn’t happen that way. I have always believed in, and in fact wrote a whole book based on, the idea that there is no such thing as an agreement in the entertainment and publishing business that is good for one party; it’s either good for both or it’s good for neither.

I don’t know how you can take advantage of a star in the agreement you make with her, as an unhappy star will either sing flat or not show up at all.

***

After this initial meeting with Kurt and my few telephone conversations with him, Annie and I would make a point of showing up at places where Kurt was appearing. When Kurt spoke at the 92nd Street Y, we were there and arranged to take him to dinner after the speech at a local restaurant with a few other friends of Kurt’s. We started attending book signings by Kurt, and Annie and I were now being included when they were followed by a dinner sponsored by the publisher.

I gradually did more work for Kurt, who was starting to become very popular, and Max and Kurt and I, sometimes with John D. MacDonald, were drinking more Silversmiths at the Century Club. It became habit-forming, and about once every ten days, Kurt, Max, and I would meet at the club, and each of us would consume close to three of those potent, if not lethal, drinks.

During our trips to the club, about three in the afternoon each time, we would make a trip to the kitchen, which, of course would be closed. By banging on the door, we could get someone in the kitchen to come out with a few sandwiches to stop the racket. Convivial talk ensued, the sandwiches were consumed, and then it was time for bed at three thirty in the afternoon. Kurt walked home. He always walked home. Max disappeared. I went home or tried to work in the office. Another day’s work done.

With Max having his office around the corner from the Century Club and with him spending a lot more time at the club drinking Silversmiths than he spent in his office, his author client Richard Gehman one day was prompted to remark, “Hey, Max, I need an agent in the afternoon, also.”

It just happened that as I started advising Kurt, Annie and I became friends with him.

***

I was now negotiating major business deals for Kurt at the suggestion of and in cooperation with Max. As I did more and more for Kurt, Max was pleased to be relieved of the major responsibility of negotiating some complicated deals, and Kurt was relieved that I was gradually doing more and more of his personal business, which included assuming the responsibility of collecting his money and paying his bills. Our friendship with Kurt and the Vonnegut family grew rapidly at the same time that I was assuming more and more of the responsibility for Kurt’s business.

There was a period of time that I was handling all of Kurt’s money, and as fate would have it, I had invested some of his money in New York City bonds, a rather safe investment at the time. In 1975, for some unknown reason, I sold all of Kurt’s New York City bonds, and two weeks later it became known that New York City was near bankrupt. It was a stroke of luck on my part that for some reason unknown to me, I sold the bonds at precisely the right time.

This gratuitous stroke of faith caused me to realize that it would be important for me to relieve myself of the duty of investing Kurt’s money for him. I kept enough in the bank account and paid the bills, but any extra money after that was handled by an experienced broker that I engaged for Kurt and watched over.

As a fiduciary I was extremely careful to never take a dime belonging to Kurt. What is ironic is that at one point, poor me (poor as compared to my friend Kurt), loaned Kurt money from my account. It was not usual for me to be lending Kurt money, but for some reason I made a mistake and wrote a check on Kurt’s account that was for more than was on deposit in the account. Not wanting the check to bounce, I loaned Kurt’s account the money from my account. He paid me back.

Kurt’s Nephew Steve and the Rest of the Gang

Annie and I became very friendly with one of Kurt’s nephews, Steve Adams. Actually Kurt and his wife, Jane, raised Steve and two of his brothers, Jim and Kurt (Tiger), after a traumatic week in 1958 in which their father, James Carmalt Adams, was killed on September 15 in the Newark Bay rail crash when his commuter train went off the open Newark Bay Bridge in New Jersey, and their mother, Kurt’s sister, Alice, died of cancer the next day. Peter Nice, a fourth nephew, went to live with a first cousin of their father’s in Birmingham, since Jane, at the time, had her hands full with her three children, but she always regretted not also raising Peter.

Our friendship with Steve blossomed when he was in his early twenties and he made a trip, with his guitar-playing friend Headly, to break into showbiz. Steve had been invited and intended to stay with Kurt at his four-story white-painted brownstone on 48th Street in Manhattan, but when he arrived, Kurt was embarrassed to tell Steve that he was not welcome, so Steve moved in with us and lived on a sofa in our living room. We even found room for his bike in our living room, as Kurt’s place could not accommodate the bike either.

My wife, Annie, has made it a point to telephone Steve every year on his birthday and on his half birthday. Annie does not consult the computer, she just has this uncanny memory for birth dates and always said since he was an orphan it was the nice thing to do to call him. As Steve grew older, Annie called his house just to speak with Steve one day when it wasn’t a birthday or half birthday. When Jeannie, Steve’s wife, answered, she panicked and said, “Oh my God, did I forget Steve’s birthday?”

We were also friendly with Kurt Adams, whom everyone knew as Tiger, and although we were friendly with Jim Adams, we almost never saw him. Tiger we would see on special occasions with his wife, Lindsay. Tiger was an airline pilot for Continental Airlines and only recently retired. It was always fun being with the Adams boys. Jim was an incredible furniture maker. He designed and built furniture that was startlingly complicated and beautiful. Peter, who also was called Peter Boo by the boys, was raised down South and recently moved up near Steve and Tiger. He actually looks like his brothers, who were raised in the North, and talks like his brothers raised in the North, but it’s a surprise to us, because he does it with a Southern accent.

Kurt and Jane, in addition to raising the Adams’ children, had three of their own to care for, Mark, Edith, and Nanny.

Mark was named after Mark Twain. He grew up to become a successful pediatrician practicing in the Boston area. He says he likes saving lives. Mark has also written some important books,
Eden Express
and
Someone With Mental Illness, Only More So
. Kurt’s daughter Edith (Edie), an artist, was named after Kurt Vonnegut’s mother, Edith Lieber. Kurt’s youngest daughter, Nanette (Nanny), is married to realist painter Scott Prior. Both Edie and Nanny are very accomplished fine artists. Kurt, after his divorce from Jane, later adopted Lily as an infant in 1982.

My wife, Annie, has always had a very close relationship with Kurt’s daughter Nanny. Nanny calls Annie often, and Annie is always ready to counsel Nanny if she should have a question about raising kids, which is what most mothers deal with. If there was anything that was not personal relating to his relationship with his children, Kurt would not be bashful about asking my advice, which he may or may not have agreed with.

Kurt and the Rest of the World

Most of the time, Kurt liked talking to people. He was equally at home with a stranger he might sit down next to on a bench near the river as he was with a famous person. He listened but he also expressed his opinions. We invited Kurt to our house on many occasions, and he would talk with the others present; almost always it was on a one-to-one basis. Kurt never dominated the discussion in the room. Had he started talking loudly enough for all to hear, everyone would have shut up and listened, because even among the sophisticates at the parties we had, most people wanted to know what Kurt Vonnegut had to say on any subject.

On one occasion when Kurt was at a party at our place with a group of smart contemporaries of ours and of Kurt’s, Kurt settled in on the sofa talking with our son Seth, who was then a way-out-left progressive teenager. They were very busy talking and exchanging ideas, ignoring all the grown-ups. He respected Seth’s ideas and was challenged by Seth. He later gave Seth a self-portrait on which he had written, “For Seth, no matter what he is for or against.”

One night we were meeting Kurt for dinner at a restaurant, and Annie and I were sitting inside and we noticed Kurt walking up and down outside the restaurant. I sneaked out and he was busy smoking and talking to someone who wasn’t even a smoker. I guess someone recognized him, and Kurt was happy to be exchanging ideas with someone he had never met.

And then there was this other night when we saw Kurt outside the restaurant as we waited, and when I went outside, he was gone. I phoned his home and he answered the phone. I inquired what the heck happened and said that Annie and I were ready to eat and drink with him. He explained that he couldn’t find the restaurant. I urged him to get into a cab and come to the same place and I would meet him outside the restaurant. I did just that and we had a good time. Most of the time he was ready to learn by communicating with strangers, the famous, the infamous, and even someone like our young teenage son, Seth.

Another time we had attended a book signing at the Barnes and Noble near Union Square. It was a joint signing of a book written by Kurt,
Timequake
, and a book written by Lee Stringer,
Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street
. Dan Simon of Seven Stories Press, which published the Lee Stringer book, knew that if he had the two together, he would get some good publicity for the Stringer book. We arrived, and the place was packed because Kurt always brought out a mob. Although the place was full, Kurt was not in sight. I went outside and found him up the street smoking his cigarette, which was not unusual, but he was also involved in an interested discussion with another person hidden in the doorway, smoking also. I told him he was needed inside and he followed me in.

Lee Stringer

What a fascinating person and what an incredible story. Lee Stringer was a crack addict who lived under Grand Central Station. Dan Simon, who published some of Kurt’s work, had discovered Lee Stringer, who by a strange coincidence had exchanged his addiction to crack for an addiction to writing when he found a pencil he used with his crack pipe and one day discovered that the pencil could write and he could make it happen.

Here is how the relationship of Kurt and Lee Stringer happened. Sometime in 1997, Dan Simon, who publishes books that should be published, had lunch with Kurt at Cafe de Paris, where Kurt liked to eat, and told Kurt that he wanted him to read a bound galley of a book,
Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street
. Dan was smart enough to tell Kurt that he was giving him the galley not for a blurb, but he wanted Kurt to read the galley from cover to cover, knowing unless he read it all Kurt would just give him a good blurb as a favor. A few days later Kurt communicated with Dan that he had discovered the next Jack London. Dan introduced Kurt to Lee, and Kurt wrote a foreword to the book.

The joint signing at Barnes and Noble that I referred to was arranged after the book was published in 1998. Kurt was there for the signing of
Timequake
and also because he had written the foreword to Lee’s book. The evening was a smashing success with the banter back and forth between Kurt and Lee about writing and about the condition of the world. Dan Simon was smart enough to record the discussion that took place that night at Barnes and Noble, and it became a book written jointly by Kurt and Lee entitled
Like Shaking Hands With God
, which was published in 2002. Of course, it was and still is a great book.

Lee Stringer now works with Project Renewal helping counselors who help addicts. After the first book Lee wrote was such a huge success, lots of rave reviews came out, and Dan had lunch with Kurt and Lee again at Cafe de Paris. As Dan tells it, he wanted Kurt to give Lee some encouragement with his writing, since Lee, like many authors, had run into trouble with the writing. Good old Kurt, instead of giving Dan the support he wanted, told Lee that he didn’t have to do it, that he had done enough.

Before he died, Kurt had become very friendly with Lee Stringer, a truly most fascinating, talented, unusual human being.

Annie’s Seventieth and Endorsement Ads

It was in a small Burmese restaurant on West 56th Street where Annie, I, and David Markson were waiting for Kurt, who was running quite late. When Kurt finally arrived, he apologized for being late and he said to Annie, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to come to your seventieth birthday party.”