First Vocation

Broadway musicals were in their heyday when I was in high school. They captivated me. I saw all I could, knew the music, knew the writers, librettists, composers, actors, singers, set designers, and all the lore. Writing musicals became my first great ambition.

While in high school, I wrote the book and lyrics of a three-act musical comedy called Big Bertha. It was about a suffragette. I don't know how I managed it. Writing the book and lyrics of an entire musical is a formidable task for an experienced adult. But such was my passion that I did it. My father, proud of me, got it typed and saw to its copyright. An agent thought enough of it to shop it around among composers. Nothing came of it, and I imagine a copy of it exists on some dusty shelf of the Library of Congress. I haven't seen it in over six decades.

It probably is awful, with the shallowness of a 17-year-old boy on view. But that isn't what interests me now. What drove me? How could a youth in the early 1950s achieve such a thing? My life is a mystery to me, but I do know that the ache to achieve was a factor that helped me succeed as a novelist much later.

As Winston Churchill famously said, Never give up! Never, never never give up!