Letters (16 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Of course I am aware that I have much to be grateful for. More than ever aware since coming back from Europe. At least I write on my own terms, and on my own terms have two thousand readers. The price is pretty high, but I (we) am (are) still in a position to pay it. [Whereas] in Spain the terms are dictated by Francisco [Franco] and the Church.
Freyt mir zeyr
[
19
] that [R. P.] Blackmur thinks well of me. I hope he hasn’t seen the piece on novelists and critics that I had in
The New Leader
some time back. I had it in mind to exempt him personally, for I really learned a great deal from
The Double Agent
and
The Expense of Greatness,
but as you had put an iron for me in his fire I couldn’t very well do it.
[
19
] that [R. P.] Blackmur thinks well of me. I hope he hasn’t seen the piece on novelists and critics that I had in
The New Leader
some time back. I had it in mind to exempt him personally, for I really learned a great deal from
The Double Agent
and
The Expense of Greatness,
but as you had put an iron for me in his fire I couldn’t very well do it.
I hear hopeful things about your book from sociologists who have wind of it. Phil Selznick wanted to use it in California, I know.
Speaking of social science, who should turn up on the faculty here but Joe Greenberg, as unbevelled as ever. Hersky was here for Convocation, arms laden with African, Haitian and jazz records and his old
spiel
. Neither of us looked the other up. But I said to the disciple, “Is this the Science of Anthropology?” Stoutly he answered yes, whereupon I beat up on him without mercy.
spiel
. Neither of us looked the other up. But I said to the disciple, “Is this the Science of Anthropology?” Stoutly he answered yes, whereupon I beat up on him without mercy.
We hear nothing from Passin. Cora, who has gone out to be with him, occasionally writes. Do you correspond with him? Do you think he has given us up as part of the degenerate West?
I hope to hear from you very soon. Don’t wait until you have “news.”
Love,
To David Bazelon
March 8, 1948 Minneapolis
Dear Dave:
[ . . . ] I haven’t read
Don Juan
since my course in the Romantics, circa 1936. There you have the advantage of taking six years or so to mature before beginning to study. Principally I recall “hail Muse, etc.” and Juan and Haidee. It’s shameful. The poem is one of the things I mean to read again. One never recovers from the attacks of pedantry made in weak and impressionable times. And my list of books to re-read is getting incredibly long. There isn’t time enough in this life even to get enough sleep, says Old Man Karamazov, so how can you have time enough to repent and be saved? [ . . . ] Among the things I’ve judged of utmost importance to get back to are music and Hebrew before it is too late to recover them. On Tuesdays I translate one chapter of Job and on Wednesday nights play duets with a political scientist named Sandstrom. I still manage to keep my morning free for writing and the result is that I’m not less than a month or so behind in my duties at the university, may its name be erased (there’s the Hebrew). In all crises there I call on temperament to get me by. All the same, I haven’t got the time I need for writing and don’t get nearly enough of it done. Since October I’ve done nothing but a novelette of about thirty thousand words—a dazzlingly white elephant, too short for a book and too long for a magazine. That’s the only new thing. I did take out one of my stories, shine it up and sent it to Russell and Volkening who sold it to
Harper’s Bazaar
. Which is a hopeful sign; I have a drawerful of stories in the first draft. They’d better be marketable, for I’ve asked for a year’s leave of absence—three years of teaching straight is more than flesh and blood can endure—and while I’ve applied for a Guggenheim I don’t feel I’m really, in Guggenheim’s eyes, the Guggenheim type.
Don Juan
since my course in the Romantics, circa 1936. There you have the advantage of taking six years or so to mature before beginning to study. Principally I recall “hail Muse, etc.” and Juan and Haidee. It’s shameful. The poem is one of the things I mean to read again. One never recovers from the attacks of pedantry made in weak and impressionable times. And my list of books to re-read is getting incredibly long. There isn’t time enough in this life even to get enough sleep, says Old Man Karamazov, so how can you have time enough to repent and be saved? [ . . . ] Among the things I’ve judged of utmost importance to get back to are music and Hebrew before it is too late to recover them. On Tuesdays I translate one chapter of Job and on Wednesday nights play duets with a political scientist named Sandstrom. I still manage to keep my morning free for writing and the result is that I’m not less than a month or so behind in my duties at the university, may its name be erased (there’s the Hebrew). In all crises there I call on temperament to get me by. All the same, I haven’t got the time I need for writing and don’t get nearly enough of it done. Since October I’ve done nothing but a novelette of about thirty thousand words—a dazzlingly white elephant, too short for a book and too long for a magazine. That’s the only new thing. I did take out one of my stories, shine it up and sent it to Russell and Volkening who sold it to
Harper’s Bazaar
. Which is a hopeful sign; I have a drawerful of stories in the first draft. They’d better be marketable, for I’ve asked for a year’s leave of absence—three years of teaching straight is more than flesh and blood can endure—and while I’ve applied for a Guggenheim I don’t feel I’m really, in Guggenheim’s eyes, the Guggenheim type.
Anyway, I’m not teaching next year. Our plans aren’t definite. We wanted to go to Europe, but the putsch in Czechoslovakia makes war seem too close and the next long night (the final?) about to start. We thought of going to New Mexico but they test atom bombs there. Let me not breathe neutrons. Or the West Indies. Have you any ideas? Will furnish our own light. [ . . . ]
I regret that your friend [Philip] Rieff’s magazine went on the rocks. Now I have a long review of Bernanos’s
Joy
to dispose of. I can’t send it out as a review at this late date, so I must run it into an article or let it moulder.
Joy
to dispose of. I can’t send it out as a review at this late date, so I must run it into an article or let it moulder.
Please go on feeling epistolary.
Love,
In February, Czech Communists backed by the Soviet Union had seized political and military power in Czechoslovakia, sending shock waves throughout Western Europe, Great Britain and the United States.
To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
March 26, 1948 Minneapolis
Dear Mr. [Henry Allen] Moe:
During the past year I earned about four thousand dollars, five hundred of which came from writing. My wife and I used almost all of this money—we have a child of four—although I imagine we could have managed on thirty-five hundred.
I knew of course when I applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship that the stipend was twenty-five hundred and I was, and am still, ready to accept that amount in order to be free from academic duties to write. I have no certain resources for the coming year. I believe that from the sale of things I have already written I could earn five hundred and perhaps a little more.
If I receive the Fellowship, I would prefer it begin in October, 1948. I contemplate leaving Minneapolis and doing my work in New York State.
Sincerely yours,
The Guggenheim Foundation customarily asks successful candidates to submit a budget for the coming year prior to awarding the fellowship. Henry Allen Moe was executive director of the foundation.
To Melvin Tumin
April 21, 1948 Minneapolis
Dear Moishe:
Yes, I turned out after all to be a Guggenheim type. Who would have thought, as the Macbeths said, the old man had so much blood in him? Somehow, under deep layers, the old irremovable feeling lurks that I am a born slightee and that no one can really take very seriously the marks I set on paper. In Chicago last week my father looked, when I told him of the award, as he had looked at the gold star in my third-grade copybook. Yes, very fine, but there is still life with its markets, alleyways and bedrooms where such as you are conceived between a glass of schnapps and a dish of cucumbers and cream. So where is grandeur? Not in Guggenheims, he is perfectly right. Nevertheless, there is grandeur. Little does he
really
know. When I say slightee, I do not mean slighted in the gift of life, which is never negligible; I merely mean slighted in the award of badges and distinctions. And even that is no longer true. Lucky the Guggenheim came along when it did. I was about to accept an offer at Bard College, Annandale on Hudson (with two hyphens). If I do what Isaac has done with the Fellowship, namely, rest, I may have to go there the year after. I can very well understand why Isaac has done that; I’m tempted to do likewise. One works so hard to become eligible that one really needs an opportunity to cancel the grind. Besides, it is a very desirable thing to go fallow and wait for a second growth. It’s a kind of return to the natural self before the tilling of discipline and the nervousness of the first tries which bring about a disfigurement of the original bent or a cast in the pure eye of the original endowment—don’t mind my abuse of metaphors. It’s a harassing life, in short, for writers as for professors of sociology; they have a way of slighting the real end. I must say, here, that sociologists are the greater offenders. I listen to them around here with every effort to be fair and understanding but I can’t make out their Man. Surely that’s not
homo sapiens, mon semblable
! The creature the theologians write about is far closer to me.
really
know. When I say slightee, I do not mean slighted in the gift of life, which is never negligible; I merely mean slighted in the award of badges and distinctions. And even that is no longer true. Lucky the Guggenheim came along when it did. I was about to accept an offer at Bard College, Annandale on Hudson (with two hyphens). If I do what Isaac has done with the Fellowship, namely, rest, I may have to go there the year after. I can very well understand why Isaac has done that; I’m tempted to do likewise. One works so hard to become eligible that one really needs an opportunity to cancel the grind. Besides, it is a very desirable thing to go fallow and wait for a second growth. It’s a kind of return to the natural self before the tilling of discipline and the nervousness of the first tries which bring about a disfigurement of the original bent or a cast in the pure eye of the original endowment—don’t mind my abuse of metaphors. It’s a harassing life, in short, for writers as for professors of sociology; they have a way of slighting the real end. I must say, here, that sociologists are the greater offenders. I listen to them around here with every effort to be fair and understanding but I can’t make out their Man. Surely that’s not
homo sapiens, mon semblable
! The creature the theologians write about is far closer to me.
I got a like complaint about Kappy from [Herbert] McCloskey and from Isaac. Isaac and I are, of course, in a slightly different category: Chicagoans and writers. Whereas you’re from Newark and knew the Ur-Kaplan. That’s very important, for Kappy has made himself after his own image, has chosen to be the Parisian Kaplan and has put behind him the part of his history that doesn’t fit the image. This self-incubation is a fascinating thing. Having re-explored the boundaries of freedom under God’s law (Faust) the next move logically tempts man to free himself from the definition other men give him. That’s the Nietzschean “Grand Style.” A man’s birth and all the primitive facts about him are accidental and not free. Why should he be the Kaplan his mother bore and Newark stamped when he has the power to be the Kaplan of his choice? You have felt that, I have, Passin has. Only some of us have had the sense to realize that the man we bring forth has no richness compared with the man who really exists, thickened, fed and fattened by
all
the facts about him, all of his history. Besides, the image can never be
reyn
[
20
] and it is especially impure when money and power are part of its outfit. Kappy is an official. In justice to him, however, it must be said that it would be hard to resist exploiting such great gifts, it would be hard for anyone. It’s the best, the strongest, the most talented whose lives miscarry in this way. I deeply hope, for Kappy, that he recovers before the damage to his power to feel goes any further. I thought when I heard him last summer discoursing on concentration-camps that only tragedies of that magnitude had the power to touch him, the catastrophe in gross. So many of the lovers of humanity in bulk have no feeling for persons. They only obey a compulsory healthy-mindedness for mankind in general, for sufferers in numbers. [ . . . ]
all
the facts about him, all of his history. Besides, the image can never be
reyn
[
20
] and it is especially impure when money and power are part of its outfit. Kappy is an official. In justice to him, however, it must be said that it would be hard to resist exploiting such great gifts, it would be hard for anyone. It’s the best, the strongest, the most talented whose lives miscarry in this way. I deeply hope, for Kappy, that he recovers before the damage to his power to feel goes any further. I thought when I heard him last summer discoursing on concentration-camps that only tragedies of that magnitude had the power to touch him, the catastrophe in gross. So many of the lovers of humanity in bulk have no feeling for persons. They only obey a compulsory healthy-mindedness for mankind in general, for sufferers in numbers. [ . . . ]
I got a rather disagreeable letter from Kurt [Wolff] about
The Victim
. I didn’t mind his criticisms of specific things but I disliked extremely his telling me “you aren’t there
yet
” and all his didactics, his tacking me down with neat clips. He meant less well than he thought he did. You yourself have always objected to the opinion I give of myself. But even if it were not just it would still be necessary, as you would understand if you were subjected to as much scaling down and leveling by dozens of means, from historical comparison to personal attack.
The Victim
has its share of faults but so do many other universally and deservedly admired books. This equalitarianism of men who do not care for themselves and therefore cannot allow others to give great value to human personality is extremely dangerous to writers who are after all devoted to a belief in the importance of human actions. The Gods, the saints, the heroes, these are human pictures of human qualities; the citizen, the man in the street, the man of the mass have become their antithesis. I am against the triumph of this antithesis and Kurt in his letter put himself on the side of the enemy, the envious Casca.
The Victim
where it is successful is a powerful book. I take my own due for it. There aren’t many recent books that come close to it and I can’t take seriously any opinion that doesn’t begin by acknowledging that. There you have it. I’m not modest. Whether I’m truly aware of my shortcomings will be apparent in my next books. It will be apparent for I’m very thoroughly aware of a large number.
The Victim
. I didn’t mind his criticisms of specific things but I disliked extremely his telling me “you aren’t there
yet
” and all his didactics, his tacking me down with neat clips. He meant less well than he thought he did. You yourself have always objected to the opinion I give of myself. But even if it were not just it would still be necessary, as you would understand if you were subjected to as much scaling down and leveling by dozens of means, from historical comparison to personal attack.
The Victim
has its share of faults but so do many other universally and deservedly admired books. This equalitarianism of men who do not care for themselves and therefore cannot allow others to give great value to human personality is extremely dangerous to writers who are after all devoted to a belief in the importance of human actions. The Gods, the saints, the heroes, these are human pictures of human qualities; the citizen, the man in the street, the man of the mass have become their antithesis. I am against the triumph of this antithesis and Kurt in his letter put himself on the side of the enemy, the envious Casca.
The Victim
where it is successful is a powerful book. I take my own due for it. There aren’t many recent books that come close to it and I can’t take seriously any opinion that doesn’t begin by acknowledging that. There you have it. I’m not modest. Whether I’m truly aware of my shortcomings will be apparent in my next books. It will be apparent for I’m very thoroughly aware of a large number.
Genug
[
21
].
[
21
].
We haven’t decided where to go next year. Have you any ideas? I’m waiting to hear from you. I feel a very great warmth toward you, Moishe, and I don’t want it to lapse again. You and Isaac are the only friends to whom I write at such length.
Love,
Political scientist Herbert McCloskey and his wife, Mitzie, had become close friends of Bellow’s at the University of Minnesota.
To Henry Volkening
[n.d.] [Minneapolis]
Dear Henry:
[ . . . ] I’m teaching, not too conscientiously, three courses and though I have assistants (two of them) to grade papers I cannot rule from afar. My presence is indispensable. I took a day off last week to go to Chicago and hear [Arthur] Koestler and I’m paying for it now in heavier toil.
I haven’t written to Henle yet. I’ve just received his congratulations on the Guggenheim, so how can I? But I got a jog today from some friends in Philadelphia who couldn’t obtain
The Victim
. They wrote to friends in Passaic, and they couldn’t get it. The results in Rochester were no better. Finally they wrote New York. But that’s discouraging. I haven’t even been banned in Philadelphia. It seems I have a D rating among booksellers. God stiffen them!
The Victim
. They wrote to friends in Passaic, and they couldn’t get it. The results in Rochester were no better. Finally they wrote New York. But that’s discouraging. I haven’t even been banned in Philadelphia. It seems I have a D rating among booksellers. God stiffen them!
I didn’t know [J. F.] Powers was on your list. I’d like to meet him. Why don’t you suggest to him that he call me next time he’s in Minneapolis?
And maybe you know of a good place for me to go next year. Anywhere, within reason, in the western hemisphere.
I’ll send the novelette (it’ll be ready soon) to [Philip] Rahv and tell him that I do business through you. [ . . . ]
Best,
To Henry Volkening
April [?], 1948 Minneapolis
Dear Henry:
Last time I wrote to Henle I said that I thought I had a right to devote all my time to writing. He replied that I had indeed. No more. Other publishers have offered me the opportunity. One wanted to give me enough money for a year. I know you favor my staying with Vanguard. At least you don’t want to be the instrument of divorce. But I can’t see why I should stay. I think I’d be better off with another house.
Do you think Henle would release me if I asked him to?
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