Letters (49 page)

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Authors: Saul Bellow

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Susan sends her love, too.
 
“Mr. Pawlyk” was evidently an earlier name for the hero of what would become
Mr. Sammler’s Planet.
 
 
To Alice Adams
February 23, 1966 Chicago
Dear Alice,
It gave me a good deal of pleasure to read your novel [
Careless Love
]. Something like a personal contact. I suppose that disqualifies me somewhat as a critic. I felt it to be about you, I read it as though the woman had been you. But I suppose that’s a proof of quality, since you came forward very clearly as a very charming woman, no nonsense, level-headed and clear about everything. It’s an excellent portrait within its limits. What I object to (not very strongly since the book was so pleasing to read) are the limits which I would describe as follows: Women like your heroine do seem to live completely in relationships and think of very little apart from their own feminine happiness. This is in its own way attractive—until one strikes what one is always sure to strike, namely, wretchedness, the unreliability of men, the poor human stuff of lovers, the fact that just as in poor Emma Bovary’s time they are telling sleazy lies and carrying on their deceptions. What you want to do next, if I may make a recommendation, is to write the last book in the Bovary series. The woman who ends the trend will be gratefully remembered.
Having recorded this objection in my solemn and heavy Jewish way I feel free to express the rest, which is gratitude. I much enjoyed reading the book. It made me think of Oregon and that drunken night when you told me that I came on compulsively as a
heymish
[
76
] type.
Love,
 
To Margaret Staats
29 March 29, 1966 Chicago
Staats—
Well, I thought that if the plane blew up it would let me out of a good deal of difficulty, and I’d be well ahead, with you as my last recollection. After ten million miles of creeping—a Dutch summit! I see you like that, and I think of you all the time.
All
the time.
Haats.
 
Bellow had met Maggie Staats at the residence of Harold Taylor, president of Sarah Lawrence College, in the early months of 1966.
 
 
To Margaret Staats
[n.d.] [Chicago]
Now I know what “uneventful” means. It means a noise inside too loud to be affected by ordinary external events. Like airline turkey, gummy brownies, investment-counselors’ conversation, etc. I had an uneventful flight.
Next, over the moors of Chicago by yellow cab. Seeing my little boy in a red hood. Dandelions. Then tiresome and strained conversation [with Sondra] covering well-known points about my bad character, mental disorders. In my favor, it is agreed that I have no malice or deadly wickedness. And that is true, so far as I know.
Now and then even a loving heart. Aching at present for you,
 
To Margaret Staats
April 5, 1966 [Chicago]
I long to see you again. I miss you so much, it’s like sickness, or hunger. Childish lovesickness. I tell myself how foolish it is—“A young girl I met in NY . . .” And I remind myself of “my time of life,” and of the “official structure,” my responsibilities. But the feelings only come back more strongly.
[ . . . ]
To Margaret Staats
April 5, 1966 [Chicago]
And what’s more, I don’t know which way to turn. Every choice, in advance, looks like a mistake. I wouldn’t give up the feeling for you that I have if I could. And I couldn’t. Although the absurdity of being in love
now
is more than my sense of irony can cope with. I’m fine, somehow, to see
it
overwhelmed.
And don’t you think I
know
how different from those women you are? No, I don’t need destructive women.
Not to see you makes me suffer. And I don’t know what to do.
To Margaret Staats
April 7, 1966 [Chicago]
I didn’t believe it possible. Probably I thought I had been damaged, or self-damaged, too badly for this. Whatever the reasons, I didn’t expect that my whole soul would go out like this to anyone. That I would lie down and wake up by love instead of clocks.
If I am busy, it’s because I need activity and concealment. I should be grateful. And I am. I’m also oppressed and heavy-hearted. It’s a case of
amo quia absurdum
[
77
]—the absurdity is mine, not yours. My age, my situation! It is absurdity.
But what a super-absurdity not to love you. I feel some mystical sort of gratitude for this. I would, even if it turned out that you didn’t love me after all.
By and by, I’ll write you how I spend my time.
Evidently I cut my finger in NY to have a remembrance. I’ve got an awfully nice scar.
To Margaret Staats
April 12, 1966 [Chicago]
Well, absurd or not, when I think of you my heart fills up. I love everything I can remember of you. With you I have a feeling I’ve never had before, that of being infinitely satisfied with another and although I don’t know you I believe that going any distance in every direction with you I can never find anything to disappoint me. I expect to love you whatever happens. Even if you should be frightened off by all these grim difficulties. You’ve made humankind and the world look different. I can never again think about women as I used to, for instance. There’s my message this morning. Instead of prayers. Now I can bear to go about my business.
 
To John Berryman
April 19, 1966 Chicago
Dear Pal:
I’m due in California May 1st, and thought to go earlier but now that I know you’re coming I’ll wait up until the 30th. My own life-dealings have not been too prosperous—on the spiritual side. Some creatures have it simple. A thorn in the paw removed by a dear young Christian and everybody becomes immortally happy ever after, and exists on a calendar adored by maidens and kiddies.
I’ll prepare for our rendezvous by reading a few Dream Songs. Contact in space.
I started some inquiries here for you. They were met with great interest and enthusiasm. If you want to arrange a conversation or two, say the word. This place seems to me better than Mpls. Nice to meet people like [—] if you happen to be on an ice floe, but why live on ice? I don’t know how serious you may be about leaving. In any case, it’s nice to have options.
Perhaps I am about to write something. (“When may we expect a new work from your pen?” said the late E. Waugh to E. Wilson, like a divil.)
We await you,
 
To Margaret Staats
April 20, 1966 [Chicago]
In spite of my desire to ease up, I can’t let things alone, and I think I’m behaving badly; close to blindness; I sense it. It can’t be right to aggravate the disorders at the most disorderly painful stage. And I don’t think any good can come of such raw feelings. I think it would be best to force myself to stop, and wait. Only I keep thinking of you.
(Interrupted by ten students.)
Love!
To Margaret Staats
April 21, 1966 [Chicago]
One gets home late afternoon and rages inside till about midnight, falling into bed and sleeping like a stone in the exhaustion of anger and disappointment. So different from our sleep together. In conversation there have been no holds barred but one. To hear and say such things is degrading. But perhaps everything ought to come out.
When I’m not quieter at heart, I can’t remember you as I want to remember. That hurts. This afternoon, though, I feel you again, very sweetly inside me.
I’m the one in sole charge, from Sunday evening, for most of the week. Perhaps we could keep Sunday evening for ourselves and the following Monday. You’d lose only one day’s work. And I will try to be in NYC earlier in May.
The picture shows you’ve always had the same dear character as well as the knock-knees. I’ll keep it awhile, to absorb the mystery of it. If I may.
Same message.
 
To Margaret Staats
April 23, 1966 [Chicago]
It was very different, a week ago. A sad difference.
Sometimes I think all these
personal
differences—“I was happy a while ago, now I am sad”—are a sort of joke. (Henderson’s “I
want!
”)
Why should people, like me, who have won so much freedom, or had it handed to them, feel themselves in jail? Maybe because a week has gone by which might have been full of love but instead was empty. It’s not really a very funny joke.
But I’d better not try thinking today. My mind isn’t very good. It’s like the weather coming over the Lake: foggy. The sparrows are sitting in my tree waiting for spring to start again. I knew their ancestors.
 
To Margaret Staats
April 28, 1966 [Chicago]
I keep wondering about you—what you must be feeling, what your fears may be. I feel extravagantly protective towards you. It’s odd, loving a creature whom I will probably not understand, but only bless without comprehension, and gratefully. I recognize at the same time that it would be better if my protection weren’t really needed. My vision of your family makes me anxious, too, and I wonder how much fight is left in me. I used to be quite strong, but it would be only natural to wear out. I don’t feel it, but somehow I expect to, having seen vigorous people crack, give out and die—friends and contemporaries. No wonder I think about this. I’d better.
 
To Margaret Staats
May 31, 1966 [Chicago]
I find it harder and harder to wake up each morning and cling to sleep and dreams. Meantime paper builds up over me like the white cliffs of Dover. Then most of the day I’m drowsy and heartsick and I hear Chicago carrying on its business, like a bad brass band playing all the old tunes. I’ve been hearing that noise since I was nine years old. Last evening old T[ed] H[offman] gave me a Dutch uncle’s lecture about my inability to grasp my own idea except when writing fiction. Almost anybody can profit by my clairvoyance, but I personally can never do it. Maybe that’s what it means to be at the edge of the expanding universe. You go forward because everything there is pushes from behind.
I suppose I’m doing my best to come clean, and I listen carefully when I’m told what’s wrong with me. But can I understand? I used to have a flourishing literary business to which I could turn but something has gone wrong with that, too.
I miss your voice, eyes, touch and body.
 
To Margaret Staats
June 2, 1966 [Chicago]
I’d be a lot better if I could put my arms about you and kiss you even once a day, and be kissed—you’ve never yet accepted a kiss from me without kissing; the fact is important. So my missing you is nothing abstract.
I’ve been using sleeping pills because, in the night at least, I don’t want to know what’s going on. In the evening, especially, there are dismal conversations here, and I am put into situations in which hard words (not angry but hurtful) have to be spoken. After which it’s better simply to cap out. I’ve been going to bed at 11:00 and sleeping ten hours or better. You’d think I wouldn’t be tired. But it’s not sleep I need, it’s you.
Today I wrote a few sentences. Then the mail brought the London reviews [of
Under the Weather
, an evening of one-act plays]. Those were all favorable, but since people can’t let things alone it was said, here and there, that I am cold and self-centered and that I could never, of course, sustain a full-length play. Which helps to strengthen my opinion that the arts and government attract the worst people. The best are astronomers and geneticists. And pure souls like you.
 
To Margaret Staats
June 3, 1966 [Chicago]
Here’s a change-purse from Paris. Some would call it a
porte-monnaie
, some
une blague
, though strictly speaking a
blague
is for tobacco.
You know, I really don’t care for the sort of life that has formed about me in the last few years—accountants, tax-experts, investment counsellors, organizations and fronts, fund-raising, autobiographing, speechifying, mail-answering, lawsuits, interior decorations, spleen and other antipoetic phenomena. I feel it all today. One half hour at my desk. Two at the telephone. And now I’m going to play squash with my friend David Peltz, for relief. I can think of better things to do. With you. As I wish I were now. This separation is very hard.

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