Letters (22 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Now as for the wedding, it’s true that I needn’t have stayed away. But because, as you say, I didn’t know a great deal about your relations with Margaret I had to depend on her to a large extent to furnish clues to your feelings. I gathered from her attitude that you might feel it unfriendly of me to attend. But this is all trifling. The important thing is that after nearly ten years of friendship you should discharge such a load against me for a rebuke that wasn’t unjustified and in any event wasn’t harshly made.
Did I say to you that you loyally defended me from literary attacks? You’re completely mistaken. I was thinking of what Alvin had often told me, that you spoke well of me when others spoke unkindly. In general. Now you tell me “it isn’t worth the effort” and you are speaking entirely of my writing. Had our friendship rested, childishly, on “literary loyalty” we’d have been through long before this. You must think me an idiot if you believe I haven’t known for years what attitude you took toward it. I shouldn’t say that you had ever covered me with laurels, and you’ve all too obviously spared me your opinion of what I’ve published since
The Victim
. Any writer naturally likes to have the things he does appreciated, but when have I ever twisted your arm for this? Now you “reveal” something that you think will crush me, as though you had spared me long enough, whereas in fact I had long ago come to terms with your estimate of my work, your reasons for it and the right and wrong of it, because I felt there were sympathies and attachments of greater importance than either the writing or your criticism. I don’t try for salvation through writing. From lack of foresight, I have no better profession. I’ll apply elsewhere for salvation, when I find the right place.
The Victim
. Any writer naturally likes to have the things he does appreciated, but when have I ever twisted your arm for this? Now you “reveal” something that you think will crush me, as though you had spared me long enough, whereas in fact I had long ago come to terms with your estimate of my work, your reasons for it and the right and wrong of it, because I felt there were sympathies and attachments of greater importance than either the writing or your criticism. I don’t try for salvation through writing. From lack of foresight, I have no better profession. I’ll apply elsewhere for salvation, when I find the right place.
No, you don’t belong to polite society, but you belong to a society all the same and have more of a membership in it than I have in any. It hasn’t inculcated very good things in you. There’s no need to describe these. I want no part of them, that’s all I want to say.
Sincerely,
To Oscar Tarcov
December 5, 1949 Paris
Dear Oscar:
[ . . . ] I was overjoyed at your thick letter. In the first place, we hadn’t heard from anyone in weeks and were beginning to feel really in
goles
[
37
]. And in the second, with it there came plenty of others, but what others! Junk, madness, haughtiness, injury. Enough to provoke a man to abjure all intimacy and withdraw to a tent as far as possible from sea-level, whence life came, and live on snow and hawkshit. Presently I’ll tell you about this. But you can see that something sane and kind, in the nick of time, saved me from absolute despair.
goles
[
37
]. And in the second, with it there came plenty of others, but what others! Junk, madness, haughtiness, injury. Enough to provoke a man to abjure all intimacy and withdraw to a tent as far as possible from sea-level, whence life came, and live on snow and hawkshit. Presently I’ll tell you about this. But you can see that something sane and kind, in the nick of time, saved me from absolute despair.
Speaking generally, I’m in an enviable position.
On n’a pas lieu de se plaindre
[
38
]. I’m in France, comfortable, comfortably employed, and want for nothing except some extremely necessary things which nearly everyone else lacks too. When I come back from seeing Spanish cities or speak with deportees and survivors, I know there’s nothing in my private existence that justifies complaint, or melancholy for myself, and that
Hamlet
is a luxury item in the life of mankind and adumbrates the difficulties we will all face after bread is plentiful. Save in America and this small fringe of Europe, it isn’t. After all, we’re incredibly wealthy, and if we look for a parallel to our problems I think we can find it, historically, in the annoyances of the surfeited rich. Or in Hamlets who have everything except what they really require of others and themselves. It’s a horrible thing to be Hamlet and not born a prince, Jean Genet says. I’d say, answering with the voice of the middle class, that the first is a misfortune which makes the second insignificant. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of all that sort of melancholy and boredom. France has given me a bellyful of it, France alone, not counting Chicago and New York. I’m out for
sursum corda.
Lift up the heart. Still, the bad tidings keep coming in and that makes it a kind of Quixotic job. There’s no other worth taking, however.
On n’a pas lieu de se plaindre
[
38
]. I’m in France, comfortable, comfortably employed, and want for nothing except some extremely necessary things which nearly everyone else lacks too. When I come back from seeing Spanish cities or speak with deportees and survivors, I know there’s nothing in my private existence that justifies complaint, or melancholy for myself, and that
Hamlet
is a luxury item in the life of mankind and adumbrates the difficulties we will all face after bread is plentiful. Save in America and this small fringe of Europe, it isn’t. After all, we’re incredibly wealthy, and if we look for a parallel to our problems I think we can find it, historically, in the annoyances of the surfeited rich. Or in Hamlets who have everything except what they really require of others and themselves. It’s a horrible thing to be Hamlet and not born a prince, Jean Genet says. I’d say, answering with the voice of the middle class, that the first is a misfortune which makes the second insignificant. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of all that sort of melancholy and boredom. France has given me a bellyful of it, France alone, not counting Chicago and New York. I’m out for
sursum corda.
Lift up the heart. Still, the bad tidings keep coming in and that makes it a kind of Quixotic job. There’s no other worth taking, however.
I’ll tell you specifically what things are like. I get up, have breakfast, read the papers; Herschel goes off to school, Anita to her office, the maid puts up a lunch for me, I stick it in my briefcase and walk about a mile to my room, past the Russian embassy and curiosity shops. The weather is generally dark and gray, but the spirit only balks at it once in a while. In my room, 33 Rue Vaneau, I light the woodstove with ancient copies of
Le Rire
, pausing to look at some of the smutty cartoons of 1906. Then I fiddle around a bit and go to work. Late in the afternoon I come out again. This is the difficult part of the day, especially if it’s raining. I go home, shave, play with the kid awhile, go out along the Seine, read in a café, etc. Twice a week I play casino with an American painter at the Rouquet and drink cocoa. I have almost no friendly, that is, really intimate, intercourse with anyone except Anita. We see the Kaplans, Nick Chiaromonte and his wife and several other people. We have few French acquaintances because you have to make an enormous effort to justify yourself to the French and prove that you’re not a barbarian at best and pain in the ass at worst. So far as my observation goes, there are two kinds of people in France, the workers and the other French. The workers are infinitely superior and are, really, what we at home have always considered
French
, the others what we meant by bourgeois. You see then what it’s like. In many ways, it’s the best sort of life you can arrange, nowadays, given what things are, but it’s anything but warm. That’s why what I hear from you and others at home is so important—the source of first connection—and Anita and I take great pleasure in talking about you. In what goes on, you and Edith are not only your own “switzerland,” as you say, but ours, too. Well, then, when you write of Sam [Freifeld] it’s terribly disappointing. Isaac was even less charitable about him, describing his visit to New York. But then Isaac is probably not far from thinking the same things of me. I don’t know how you stand with him these days. Better, I hope. I’m entirely in the dog-house, I feel.
Le Rire
, pausing to look at some of the smutty cartoons of 1906. Then I fiddle around a bit and go to work. Late in the afternoon I come out again. This is the difficult part of the day, especially if it’s raining. I go home, shave, play with the kid awhile, go out along the Seine, read in a café, etc. Twice a week I play casino with an American painter at the Rouquet and drink cocoa. I have almost no friendly, that is, really intimate, intercourse with anyone except Anita. We see the Kaplans, Nick Chiaromonte and his wife and several other people. We have few French acquaintances because you have to make an enormous effort to justify yourself to the French and prove that you’re not a barbarian at best and pain in the ass at worst. So far as my observation goes, there are two kinds of people in France, the workers and the other French. The workers are infinitely superior and are, really, what we at home have always considered
French
, the others what we meant by bourgeois. You see then what it’s like. In many ways, it’s the best sort of life you can arrange, nowadays, given what things are, but it’s anything but warm. That’s why what I hear from you and others at home is so important—the source of first connection—and Anita and I take great pleasure in talking about you. In what goes on, you and Edith are not only your own “switzerland,” as you say, but ours, too. Well, then, when you write of Sam [Freifeld] it’s terribly disappointing. Isaac was even less charitable about him, describing his visit to New York. But then Isaac is probably not far from thinking the same things of me. I don’t know how you stand with him these days. Better, I hope. I’m entirely in the dog-house, I feel.
In some ways it’s having chosen to become a writer that places me in this position. Anyhow it seems the more I write and publish, the more “public” things become, the less
first
contacts live. People draw off into coldness and enmity who’d have kinder feelings toward me if I were a photographer of dogs or a fish-expert. I hope with all my heart that your experience and Edith’s will be different.
first
contacts live. People draw off into coldness and enmity who’d have kinder feelings toward me if I were a photographer of dogs or a fish-expert. I hope with all my heart that your experience and Edith’s will be different.
For instance, I got a hideous letter from Bazelon, full of rage; really one of those doggish, clawing things that want to go snarling straight into your inmost spirit and destroy you. I assure you I’m not exaggerating. He says, “I don’t speak up for you” (when my writing is criticized) “because it naturally isn’t worth the effort, first. Secondly, some people just don’t care for your writing for literary reasons of their own. And third, I didn’t understand that our friendship rested on literary loyalty.” The cause of this? One of Dave’s girl friends, to whom he was much attached, got married recently in Paris. I had gotten to know her well and consider her a friend of mine. Just before her wedding, Dave sent me a perfectly nauseating letter about her, attacking her sexually, etc. I answered that it was bolshevistic of him to express himself so about anyone. That since he had always been a loyal friend to me, he might understand my being loyal to her. That, however, I hadn’t gone to her wedding because he might not have liked it, etc. A perfectly inoffensive letter in which I said not a single thing about “literary loyalty”—as though by now it weren’t perfectly clear what opinion his Hudson Street friends had of my writing. I shan’t say that I don’t care at all, but I don’t, effectively, care. I’ve never policed any of my friends on this score or twisted any arms. I’ve never quarreled with Sam or Isaac on this subject, their attitude has never essentially affected my feelings toward them.
Ecco!
My first contacts! Evidently Dave had been getting this ready for a long time and I had only to mention something so foolish as loyalty to have him gush it into my face.
Ecco!
My first contacts! Evidently Dave had been getting this ready for a long time and I had only to mention something so foolish as loyalty to have him gush it into my face.
Where does this bring me? To coming back to the States. Ay, the happy day. Probably I could remain in Europe, if I wanted to work out a deal. But just now I want to come back. At least for a year. I don’t any longer have my job at Minnesota, but I’ve written to apply to other places.
[William] Phillips of
PR
is here. Better acquaintance with him shows me what you’re up against with editors. As we used to say in Tuley, “His taste is in his mout.” They don’t believe there can be writing, he and his mob, and know from nothin’.
PR
is here. Better acquaintance with him shows me what you’re up against with editors. As we used to say in Tuley, “His taste is in his mout.” They don’t believe there can be writing, he and his mob, and know from nothin’.
Best love, and write soon,
Write to 33 Vaneau. We have to move again.
Nicola Chiaromonte (1904-1972) was a leading essayist and theater critic both in America at
The New Republic
and
Partisan Review
and in Italy at
L’Espresso
and
La Stampa.
With Ignazio Silone, he founded the magazine
Tempo Presente.
The New Republic
and
Partisan Review
and in Italy at
L’Espresso
and
La Stampa.
With Ignazio Silone, he founded the magazine
Tempo Presente.
To Herbert and Mitzie McCloskey
[n.d.] [Paris]
Dearest Herb and Mitzie,
After a year and a half in Paris,
bien isolé
, a very mysterious and above all friendless life, letters like yours are in the most literal sense from another world where I have friends from whom, inexplicably it sometimes seems, I have separated myself. But of course such separations are the characteristic ones, now, and
sans le savoir
[
39
] I get into the path—
put
myself there, I mean—of the characteristic. I can’t say why I left Mpls. any more than I could explain why, when it happened, I pulled out of Chicago. I submitted to an intuition, and later understood that I had (for me) done right. There are things you can’t comprehend by staying with them. But many of these moves are heavy. They are Jonah journeys.
bien isolé
, a very mysterious and above all friendless life, letters like yours are in the most literal sense from another world where I have friends from whom, inexplicably it sometimes seems, I have separated myself. But of course such separations are the characteristic ones, now, and
sans le savoir
[
39
] I get into the path—
put
myself there, I mean—of the characteristic. I can’t say why I left Mpls. any more than I could explain why, when it happened, I pulled out of Chicago. I submitted to an intuition, and later understood that I had (for me) done right. There are things you can’t comprehend by staying with them. But many of these moves are heavy. They are Jonah journeys.
So I needn’t say “frankly” in preface to the following: that I don’t really know where I ought to be. You must be as well aware of it as I am. My intuitions are more made up than my mind.
I wrote to Sam Monk because both Gug. and Viking money will have run out by March, to ask
whether
he knew of any jobs for me. He was very solicitous, and he inquired at Harvard. I’ve not definitely turned anything down. It’s still possible that I may go to Harvard. Meanwhile I’ve applied for a Gug. renewal. My difficulty is explained by the fact that I worked eight months at a book I’ve decided to put aside. Since October, I’ve finished about two-thirds of
Augie March
—an on the whole much better performance. If I’m to live by my writing I can’t afford such eight-month losses.
whether
he knew of any jobs for me. He was very solicitous, and he inquired at Harvard. I’ve not definitely turned anything down. It’s still possible that I may go to Harvard. Meanwhile I’ve applied for a Gug. renewal. My difficulty is explained by the fact that I worked eight months at a book I’ve decided to put aside. Since October, I’ve finished about two-thirds of
Augie March
—an on the whole much better performance. If I’m to live by my writing I can’t afford such eight-month losses.
So I don’t know what we’ll be doing. Economically, it might be just us well to stay in Europe, though we’re coming home for a visit in September. Europe is not the Great Good Place for me, though with all my dissatisfaction it has taught me a great deal about what and who I am. That is, really, what and who
others
are. These discoveries are not true when condensed, so that I’ll leave to wait till fall to tell you of them, and to hear yours and see you again, a pleasure I often have in daydreams.
others
are. These discoveries are not true when condensed, so that I’ll leave to wait till fall to tell you of them, and to hear yours and see you again, a pleasure I often have in daydreams.
Yes, I’d like to be in Mpls. again; I need a
pied-à-terre
. But I know it would be temporary again. I am very hostile, I tell you once more what you surely know, to “literary culture.” I think of it as an enemy. I am not thinking only of
des gisants funestes
[
40
] like H[untington] Brown and a host of others who have made literature originate in itself, for whom even
belief
is literature.
pied-à-terre
. But I know it would be temporary again. I am very hostile, I tell you once more what you surely know, to “literary culture.” I think of it as an enemy. I am not thinking only of
des gisants funestes
[
40
] like H[untington] Brown and a host of others who have made literature originate in itself, for whom even
belief
is literature.
And, along with “literary culture,” the other vanities of “culture” that have no meeting with chaos. If there’s anything that dwelling in this French park has shown me it is the blindness that a great cultural inheritance bequeaths. The idea of a university, as Ortega says, is in classicism; the true life of poetry, as he also tells us, is in shipwreck.
That’s been the teaching of my intuitions, too, and that’s why I spoke of Jonah. I haven’t been able to resist safety, and I haven’t been able to rest in it. I know that if I don’t get the Guggenheim, I’ll jump at the chance to be at Mpls. The greatest charm of it would be living with you once more. But I know also that I’ll jump again; that I couldn’t permanently stay.
Because I understand that the best of me has formed in the jumps.
The theory of it apart, I’m moved at being wanted by people who know I disagree with them and disapprove of what they do, people like Leonard [Unger] and [William Van] O’Connor.
We’re going to Salzburg in April, in May to Venice, in June to Rome, and we’re sailing at the end of August. Will you be in the East around Labor Day? If you could be, what great pleasure to see you in New York.
Tumin is conducting a tour from Princeton and I expect him here in July. He’s written kindly to me, but we’ve had a sort of quarrel over I[rving] Howe.
Best love to all of you,
PART TWO
1950-1959
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