On 'Anon.' (and on and on)

Whilst I was talking about quotes of dubious attribution the other day, it reminded me of a little anecdote I came across many years ago as I was reading the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, entitled "In Joy Still Felt". To be more accurate, that's the title of the second volume; the first is entitled "In Memory Yet Green" but I digress.

-oOo-

When it came time for Asimov to submit the manuscript for his massive, two-volume autobiography (the first of which, at nearly 700 pages, only covered 1920-1954!) his publishers, Doubleday, didn't like the title. They asked if he could find a quotation from an obscure poem and use that as a source for his titles. Asimov went off and found this:

'In memory yet green, in joy still felt,

The scenes of life rise sharply into view.

We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt,

And while all else is old, the world is new.'

Doubleday liked it and decided they could use it. One small thing puzzled them, though; they couldn't find a source for the poem (in the book it appears attributed to 'Anon.' After much searching they went back and asked Isaac where he had found it.

"I wrote it myself," he admitted.

-oOo-

I love this. Asimov loved to portray himself as a towering egomaniac and if you were feeling uncharitable you could use this to bolster the claim that perhaps it wasn't so much of a posture. However, when you stop to think about it, there's no real reason why he shouldn't have, except maybe barring tradition. It's akin to the (surely apocryphal) story of Picasso entering an 'impersonate Picasso' contest with the justification "I can fake a Picasso with the best of them".