Letters (34 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
December 26, 1957 Tivoli, New York
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT ON CANDIDATE FOR FELLOWSHIP
Name of Candidate: Bernard Malamud
I am an admirer of Mr. Malamud’s work, and I don’t lack for company. Mr. M. deserves the cheers the critics have given him (an exceptional case). His excellent qualities speak clearly for themselves. Among writers of Jewish descent he is distinguished by a fine and delicate sense of traditions. There is a coarse customary way of dealing with the Jew in the Anglo-Saxon world. [Israel] Zangwill started it, and Michael Gold almost ended it. I wish he had done it in for good. Alas, it hangs on. Mr. Malamud happily has no truck with it. I think his merits will be no less plain to the gentlemen of the committee than they are to me.
To Philip Roth
December 26, 1957 Tivoli, N.Y.
Dear Philip Roth—
Manuscripts around here shift and wander in huge piles, like the dunes. Yours turned up today, and I apologize to you for my disorder. It hurts me more.
My reaction to your story was on the positive side of the scale, strongly. But mixed, too. I liked the straightness of it, the plainness about biology. That kind of thing suits me to the ground. I thought Moe was excellent; Pa, too. A company of Japanese committing hari-kari, though, I wasn’t sure about. A great idea, but palpably
Idea.
I have a thing about
Ideas
in stories. Camus’
The Plague
was an
IDEA.
Good or bad? Not so hot, in my opinion. With you the
Idea
gains ground fast, easily. It conquers. What of Moe?
Idea.
I have a thing about
Ideas
in stories. Camus’
The Plague
was an
IDEA.
Good or bad? Not so hot, in my opinion. With you the
Idea
gains ground fast, easily. It conquers. What of Moe?
Look, try Henry Volkening at 522 Fifth Ave. My agent. A very good one, too. Best of luck. And forgive my having the mss. so long. I should have read it at once. But I don’t live right.
Yrs,
The story Bellow was responding to was a draft of “Expect the Vandals,” published the following year in
Esquire.
Esquire.
1958
To Ralph Ellison
February 14, 1958 Evanston
Dear Ralph—
Drop me a line sometime to say how things are coming. It doesn’t have to be a full-scale letter. I’m incapable myself of writing one. It’s been years since I could.
Chicago is—is something, I guess. No point in blaming the place. Some inward struggle no matter where you are. I suppose you experienced the same in Rome.
Anyhow, Adam is walking, and that’s nearly something. Life is just one long country fair for that kid. He’s medicinal to me. Sasha’s okay now; we all had pneumonia more or less, on arriving.
On the 1st of April we’ll be back. Come up and help me put in garden vegetables. Bring manuscript.
All the best,
To John Berryman
February 19, 1958 Evanston
Dear John—
For months now I have been lost in the remotest bush of Africa with Henderson. On Labor Day I started
de nouveau
and have written about five hundred pages since. Almost done now. The last fantasy is taking place in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. Crash fire—crash ice. I need to cool things off. Anyway, Eugene H. Henderson will give you a run for your money. And I believe he comes out sane, though he goes in mad. And that’s news.
de nouveau
and have written about five hundred pages since. Almost done now. The last fantasy is taking place in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. Crash fire—crash ice. I need to cool things off. Anyway, Eugene H. Henderson will give you a run for your money. And I believe he comes out sane, though he goes in mad. And that’s news.
Adam is one year old today. Paul, too, soon. We should bring them together; and their decrepit parents as well. How is it that we haven’t bumped into each other in nearly a year?
Love to Anne.
Ton ami très distrait
[
56
],
Ton ami très distrait
[
56
],
You owe me copies of poems. Do you remember? I don’t see them in magazines. Do I rate a private subscription?
To Pascal Covici
[n.d.] [San Francisco]
Dear Pat:
Marshall [Best]’s information comes from a note sent to Tom [Guinzburg] who had some pleasant things to say about
Henderson
. I’ve finished the book (longhand) and this morning I am about to begin on the typewriter. There are three final chapters and although the written manuscript numbers more than five hundred pages I don’t feel that this should be such a long book. You’re right, I mustn’t trample and hurry; I’ve got to work it out at leisure, now that I’ve got all the facts down. Leisure, I said. Not to be confused with idleness. I’ve worked too hard moving it to allow idle winds to blow it all away. Except in two or three places, I anticipate no deep difficulty. But those two or three places (towards the end) do exist. (The King and the lion, mostly.) The ideas have to be absorbed into the comedy. I’ve got to take a short breather before I try this. Five hundred pages since Labor Day, and most of them the right pages. I’m bushed. Between Evanston and
Henderson
, I’ve worn myself out, but I recover quickly and I should be fit to start the final campaign after a couple of weeks of sleep in Tivoli. San Francisco is all right, I guess, although it makes you feel that after a journey of three thousand miles you might at least have gotten out of America.
Henderson
. I’ve finished the book (longhand) and this morning I am about to begin on the typewriter. There are three final chapters and although the written manuscript numbers more than five hundred pages I don’t feel that this should be such a long book. You’re right, I mustn’t trample and hurry; I’ve got to work it out at leisure, now that I’ve got all the facts down. Leisure, I said. Not to be confused with idleness. I’ve worked too hard moving it to allow idle winds to blow it all away. Except in two or three places, I anticipate no deep difficulty. But those two or three places (towards the end) do exist. (The King and the lion, mostly.) The ideas have to be absorbed into the comedy. I’ve got to take a short breather before I try this. Five hundred pages since Labor Day, and most of them the right pages. I’m bushed. Between Evanston and
Henderson
, I’ve worn myself out, but I recover quickly and I should be fit to start the final campaign after a couple of weeks of sleep in Tivoli. San Francisco is all right, I guess, although it makes you feel that after a journey of three thousand miles you might at least have gotten out of America.
Best regards to everyone—the born, the reborn, the newborn.
Schreck dich nicht
[
57
].
[
57
].
Love,
To John Berryman
July 24, 1958 [Tivoli]
Dear John,
Many thanks, dear pal, for your handsome note. When it’s you who tells me something I rely utterly on it, and what you tell me does me infinite amounts of good. Fun comes hard—like, alas, its parents, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue. I know whom to chase, but sometimes it makes me very grim. And I do love old Henderson, but not steadfastly, as he deserves. At least the book is finished, or almost. I suspect that in the middle I was maybe too business-like and earnest. But I’m trying to give earnestness the sack. I think I’m going to be able to do it. Laying down the law too much. A bad trait, ever since Moses started it.
The
Don
[
Quixote
] is as handsome as any book I’ve ever seen. It’s going to make me take up my Spanish again; meanwhile I gloat over the plates and read the scholarly notes.
Don
[
Quixote
] is as handsome as any book I’ve ever seen. It’s going to make me take up my Spanish again; meanwhile I gloat over the plates and read the scholarly notes.
When may we see you and Anne and Paul? Tivoli stands open.
Yours, no bunk,
To Leslie Fielder
[n.d.] [Tivoli]
Dear Leslie—
I didn’t intend to sound mean. Of course, friendship (
manqué
?) or old acquaintance; it never ripened into friendship.
manqué
?) or old acquaintance; it never ripened into friendship.
In some ways, I understand and sympathize with your position. Only I think positions
emerge
in a work of art, and you seem to think they’re imposed. It makes small difference what the artist says he thinks, and a “prepared” attitude is an invitation to disaster. Perhaps you’ll think this more “misology” (hard word). I only complain that intelligence has become so naked. Ideology is of no use to us in refurnishing the empty house.
emerge
in a work of art, and you seem to think they’re imposed. It makes small difference what the artist says he thinks, and a “prepared” attitude is an invitation to disaster. Perhaps you’ll think this more “misology” (hard word). I only complain that intelligence has become so naked. Ideology is of no use to us in refurnishing the empty house.
Anyway, to be a “misologist,” if I am indeed one, is almost as subversive as possible. Only humanists are more subversive—the most subversive of all—and I am a humanist.
Henderson
is not Reichian confusion, but comedy. I shun doctrine. I am willing if I must to be a destroyer, but not on a doctrinaire basis.
Henderson
is not Reichian confusion, but comedy. I shun doctrine. I am willing if I must to be a destroyer, but not on a doctrinaire basis.
Where is Goshen, Vt.? Far from Tivoli, N.Y.? [ . . . ]
Best to Margaret.
Yours,
To Pascal Covici
October 2, 1958 Minneapolis
Dear Pat—
[ . . . ] I haven’t written my Columbia speech, and I don’t know what to say, I’m so bewildered, but I’ll arrive by plane on the 9th or 10th to say it, and I’ll probably seem self-assured and confident on the platform. God has given me that gift in exchange for what he has taken away in content.
Dr. Neuhl, after a month of conversations, believes I’m normal after all. It makes me sorry for the rest of you guys. So this is life? What I’ve got? And normal life, too? How sad for everybody! But it has been considerate of me, I declare, to defend human ideals by separating myself from the happy many. I must be a sporting type.
Sondra is well. She reads med[ieval] history sixteen hours a day and has little time for anything else. A kind sort of woman looks after Adam from 9:00 to 3:30 daily. It costs a little, but then I don’t know how to enjoy money, anyway. Haven’t a clue, and never have had. What do you do with it? If
Henderson
earns a lot, maybe Harold G[uinzburg] will agree to give me a course of private lessons.
Henderson
earns a lot, maybe Harold G[uinzburg] will agree to give me a course of private lessons.
Can you read my hand?
Give my love to Dorothy, and make sure she’s the right Dorothy, and ask if she will be my guest at Granada’s on Sat. of next weekend. You come, too. I’m inviting my mother-in-law as well.
Your dear friend,
But I haven’t been able to write anything. I’m still swimming towards the life-raft.
To Ralph Ellison
[n.d.] [Minneapolis]
Dear Ralph:
What’s the news? The proofs [of
Henderson the Rain King
] are in and I’m trying to make a rest cure of this University teaching. The administration fights back. I’m being worked comparatively hard but I try to sleep through most of it, and victory seems to be on my side. Meanwhile Sasha reads vast volumes of Byzantine history. I swear she’s going to end up in Coptic church history. Boring subjects delight her. I take a deep interest in them (fast asleep). But we do manage to have a good time often. The political rallies have been pretty hot, and tonight’s election night and I’m off for D
7
C HQ with a clutch of beer bottles to whoop it up for my candidates. [Adlai] Stevenson was here last week, as funny as Mort Sahl.
Henderson the Rain King
] are in and I’m trying to make a rest cure of this University teaching. The administration fights back. I’m being worked comparatively hard but I try to sleep through most of it, and victory seems to be on my side. Meanwhile Sasha reads vast volumes of Byzantine history. I swear she’s going to end up in Coptic church history. Boring subjects delight her. I take a deep interest in them (fast asleep). But we do manage to have a good time often. The political rallies have been pretty hot, and tonight’s election night and I’m off for D
7
C HQ with a clutch of beer bottles to whoop it up for my candidates. [Adlai] Stevenson was here last week, as funny as Mort Sahl.
Luckily there’s nothing here like Madison Sq. Garden or the Coliseum and you get a chance to kid with the politicians.
Adam has most of his teeth now, and a considerable vocabulary—some of it unfortunate. He’s caught us unprepared by the speed of his learning-power before we could remember to stop saying shit. However, a little honest shit does no harm.
Anything I say next will be compromised by the above.
Any leaks?
And can we save that pine tree? It’s getting serious.
Tanti saluti.
What do they say?—
Auguri!
What do they say?—
Auguri!
Love,
1959
To Josephine Herbst
January 31, 1959 Minneapolis
Dear Josie:
You know what hard luck is and therefore I shan’t be impressing you with the following—I offer it only in explanation of my failure to answer your letter.
Sondra and I had a blowup last June and she took the kid and went to the city. I had to hold together the house and my impossible book and take care of my older son who came to spend the summer with me. We had one of those struggles, Sondra and I, that you’ve probably seen before. No account of them can be given without full details and that is a hopeless job. She was working in an art gallery while I was re-writing
Henderson
by dictating the text, revising as I went, to a typist. Eight, ten, twelve and fourteen hours a day for six weeks. By mid-August I was near suicide.
Henderson
by dictating the text, revising as I went, to a typist. Eight, ten, twelve and fourteen hours a day for six weeks. By mid-August I was near suicide.
A nephew of mine, my sister’s son, had this even more seriously in mind. Toward the end of the month, in his Army barracks in San Francisco, being in great trouble and seeing no way out, he killed himself.
I drove to Chicago for the funeral.
Then I came on to Minneapolis. Sondra and I patched things up. Which means just about as much as it says. Patches, for two or three months, were all we had to bless ourselves with. More recently we’ve done better. It turned out that Sondra has a nervous disorder, in itself not too serious. It doesn’t affect her health but it does account for our marital disorders to a considerable extent. Anyway, life has brightened, if it doesn’t glitter downright. But then there isn’t enough glitter in half a lifetime to dunk your toast in. The baby is handsome and quick, and Sondra has enrolled in graduate school where she’s doing extremely well.
I don’t tell you this to have it weigh on your heart (“Man’s trouble!”) but only because it will seem loutish of me not to have answered. Josie, I couldn’t do it. I’ve had enough in the last year to justify a decade of paralyzed silence but I claim no special privilege that way. I’m fond of you, more than a little, and I want to hear from you. Can you spare me a few lines?
How is your book? May I see some of it? I’ll send you a copy of
Henderson
very soon. [ . . . ]
Henderson
very soon. [ . . . ]
Affectionately,
Bellow’s nephew Lawrence Kauffman had hanged himself in his barracks at the Presidio while awaiting military trial on a charge of theft.
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