Letters (54 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Blessings on you all.
Love,
To Whit Burnett
April 30, 1969 Chicago
Dear Mr. Burnett:
[ . . . ] I wrote “Mosby’s Memoirs” on six successive mornings in the Mexican town of Oaxaca without the aid of tequila. I seemed to need no stimulants. I was in a state of all but intolerable excitement, or was, as the young now say, “turned on.” A young and charming friend [Maggie Staats] typed the manuscript for me. Reading it I found little to change. The words had come readily. I felt as they went into the story that I was striking them with a mallet. I seldom question what I have written in such a state. I simply feel gratitude and let it go at that.
Sincerely,
Whit Burnett (1899-1973), who as editor of
Story
had rejected Bellow’s early work, was including “Mosby’s Memoirs” in his anthology
America’s 85 Greatest Living Authors Present
(1970) and had inquired about the circumstances under which the story was composed.
Story
had rejected Bellow’s early work, was including “Mosby’s Memoirs” in his anthology
America’s 85 Greatest Living Authors Present
(1970) and had inquired about the circumstances under which the story was composed.
To Margaret Staats
June 5, 1969 [Bellagio]
Dear Maggie—
Never before on the fifth of June have I seen snow falling. I see it now on the mountaintops, and it is frosty down here in the valley. Not two days has the sun shone in Europe. Have we killed the atmosphere with automobiles? I begin to think the planet is going to hell.
I don’t sleep well, I am haggard, I miss you, I miss Daniel, I get no mail from the States, but I manage somehow to look after the main thing. In my chill chalet under the cypress trees. Drinking beer and waiting to creep out into the sun—when it shines again.
It is beautiful here—if you have a nineteenth-century eye. Mine must be of the twenty-first.
Love,
To Margaret Staats
June 8, 1969 [Bellagio]
Dear Maggie-o—
“Writing up a storm,” as you call it, thousands of words daily, and not stopping to type because I don’t sleep, and if I were to spend the P.M.s at the machine I’d wreck myself and lose the good mornings. What I may do is airmail Xerox copies of the mss. pages to you, just for safekeeping. I’m very cold on [Aaron] Asher. He wants to “hold his own” with me. Sometimes he seems to be pushing himself into the cockpit, but this is a solo flight.
Now: We have a house in London. Three bedrooms not far from the center of things [ . . . ] Be good. Bless you. See you
soon
.
soon
.
Love,
Upon Denver Lindley’s retirement from Viking, Aaron Asher had become Bellow’s editor.
To Richard Stern
August 1, 1969
Dear Dick—
So I’m in Nantucket, ever benevolent, watching pheasants cramming blackberries in the backyard. All is backyard from the window. Good to see American weeds again.
I finished this
Sammler
off properly in Spain, on the Mediterranean coast, Carboneras, very good moon visibility. Maggie caused me
grandes dificultades
[
82
] in England and in the south but I finished just the same. I am obstinate. I make my own obstacles but jump ’em meself.
Sammler
off properly in Spain, on the Mediterranean coast, Carboneras, very good moon visibility. Maggie caused me
grandes dificultades
[
82
] in England and in the south but I finished just the same. I am obstinate. I make my own obstacles but jump ’em meself.
I’m delighted to hear that you dare so much. It’s excellent—just great, too, that you’re rid of Candida [Donadio]. She is to Candor what bangs are to Bangor. She deserves to be whacked about the head by our dear Edward one long evening, that’s what she deserves, and may God fall asleep when she reads her apologia before His throne.
[ . . . ]
Love,
To Margaret Staats
August 4, 1969 [Nantucket]
Dear Maggie—
I’m troubled about your visit—it seems too soon. Europe has left me with still raw hurts, not likely to heal in a short time. I don’t want them reopened, nor do I want you to be hurt again, and my heart tells me to let things ride, to recover first and not to force anything. For the sake of continuing friendship, we ought to keep away from each other.
Love,
To Harvey Swados
August 30, 1969 Nantucket
Dear Harvey:
The novel I have as you say “committed” has kept me busy, and galleys, etc. will continue to keep me busy until October. If it’s only advice, mine would be no better than other people’s and probably inferior to Candida’s. But if you want me to read your book, I can do that in October. I’ll be back in Chicago as the nights lengthen. If that does you any good, I am your obedient servant.
As I read your letter I see that we don’t share very many basic assumptions. No other two college Trotskyites can have gotten so very far apart. I doubt that I have more use for Nixon and Johnson than you have. My going to the White House [in June 1965] was nonsense, probably. It pleased no one, myself least of all. I wouldn’t have gone at all if I had been obliged by my own obstinacy to mark my disagreement with all parties. First I made my views on Vietnam and Santo Domingo as clear as possible in the
Times
, and then declared that I would go to show my respect for the President’s office—the office of Lincoln. I know about Harding, too, and Chester A. Arthur, but I am not at all prepared to secede. I am not a revolutionary. I have little respect for American revolutionaries as I know them, and I have known them quite well. I don’t like the Susan Sontag bit about a doomed America. I had my fill of the funnyhouse in Coney Island.
Times
, and then declared that I would go to show my respect for the President’s office—the office of Lincoln. I know about Harding, too, and Chester A. Arthur, but I am not at all prepared to secede. I am not a revolutionary. I have little respect for American revolutionaries as I know them, and I have known them quite well. I don’t like the Susan Sontag bit about a doomed America. I had my fill of the funnyhouse in Coney Island.
A reliable source tells me that Johnson’s view of the White House culture gala was as follows: “They insult me by comin’, they insult me by stayin’ away.” Could Dwight Macdonald have been more succinct? In fact they have a lot in common.
My best to Bette.
Yrs,
To Philip Roth
December 12, 1969 Chicago
Dear Philip:
Your note did me a lot of good, though I haven’t known what or how to answer. Of course the so-called fabricators will be grinding their knives. They have none of that ingenuous, possibly childish love of literature you and I have. They take a sort of Roman engineering view of things: grind everything in rubble and build cultural monuments on this foundation from which to fly the Bullshit flag.
Anyway, it pleases me greatly that you liked
Sammler.
There aren’t many people in the trade for whom I have any use. But I knew when I hit Chicago (was it twelve years ago?) and read your stories that you were the real thing. When I was a little kid, there were still blacksmiths around, and I’ve never forgotten the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil.
Sammler.
There aren’t many people in the trade for whom I have any use. But I knew when I hit Chicago (was it twelve years ago?) and read your stories that you were the real thing. When I was a little kid, there were still blacksmiths around, and I’ve never forgotten the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil.
Do you like Woodstock? I lived across the river for eight years.
Was
it living? But the place was not to blame. It was beautiful.
Was
it living? But the place was not to blame. It was beautiful.
Yours,
PART FOUR
1970-1982
Y
ou know? There’s the most extraordinary, unheard-of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it. But now this is true of the world as a whole. The agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way. Now I begin to understand what Tolstoi was getting at when he called on mankind to cease the false and unnecessary comedy of history and begin simply to live.
ou know? There’s the most extraordinary, unheard-of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it. But now this is true of the world as a whole. The agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way. Now I begin to understand what Tolstoi was getting at when he called on mankind to cease the false and unnecessary comedy of history and begin simply to live.
—Humboldt’s Gift
1970
To John Berryman
January 19, 1970
Dear John—
Without preliminaries, we have a magazine—Harold Rosenberg, Keith Botsford and I, and of course no magazine involving me can work without you. Poems are essential. Could you also, as with Shakespeare at thirty, think of doing Mozart at twenty, or Bach at forty? [ . . . ]
I am going to London for three weeks to escape the book reviews.
Love,
The magazine was
Anon,
a single issue of which would appear.
Anon,
a single issue of which would appear.
To Margaret Staats
February [?], 1970
[Postcard of “Tippoo’s Tiger” at Victoria and Albert Museum]
The sultan had the device wound up, and the British soldier being killed would cry “Help, Mercy.” It gave the sultan endless pleasure.
As ever,
To Frances Gendlin
[Postmark illegible; postcard of
Debre Berhan Selassie Church, Gondar, Ethiopia]
Dear Fran—
Now Ethiopia. Swept through Kenya and Uganda. Minimum of dysentery. Great fatigue. Bought a mine with Peltz. Feeling grand but I miss you.
To Frances Gendlin
February 9, 1970 New Avenue Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya Well, the whole mining deal was pure con. Peltz’s man w’d not appear. Evidently it was an intercontinental swindle. Hugely funny.
So we are making a safari, and this is written on a bucking plane en route to Kampala, to Murchison Falls. We shall see elephants and crocodiles.
I’d have been very glad if you had joined me, for I do miss you, and no number of elephants and crocodiles can take your place. Nights especially. Forgive me for hoping mildly that the weather is bad in Chicago. African planes
are
hot. I’m sweating. But in Africa one must. Imagine: “He toured Africa without sweating” (said of a cold man, and I am not cold).
are
hot. I’m sweating. But in Africa one must. Imagine: “He toured Africa without sweating” (said of a cold man, and I am not cold).
Love,
To Frances Gendlin
[Postmark illegible; postcard of two lionesses, Uganda]
Dear Fran—
This, the Upper Nile, is simply astonishing. If the tsetse fly doesn’t bite me I shall never forget it. If it does, give away my Mercedes and burn my bills. I sh’d have asked you along.
Love,
To Frances Gendlin
[n.d.] Hotel Raphael, Rome
I am writing with a ballpoint quill in the lobby of this hotel—an original idea. Why didn’t I think of it? The hotel is entirely like that, up-to-date Renaissance. You’d adore it.
I planned to go back to London today, but it’s raining fiercely in Rome and I haven’t the flying stomach for it after the trips from Addis Ababa to Asmara to Khartoum to Cairo to Athens and here, twelve hours that left me somewhat vacant and pill-bilious (for the troubled gut, for malaria and for sniffles I took a weird mixture of tablets, and Peltz and I drank beer continually, dying of thirst and fearing the water).
This trip I think has met the purpose. I am better, more settled in mind and am willing—no, longing—to come back to 5805 [Dorchester Ave.]. You’re a lovely woman, Fran, I’ve been fortunate, and I’ve missed you greatly. I’ll phone from London in a few days. I expect to depart from Europe about the 26th.
Love,
To Edward Shils
February 25, 1970 Chicago
Dear Ed—
The porter at King’s [College] said that you were in the U.S. and that you were expected on Thursday, therefore I was certain I would see you in Chicago but we must have missed each other by a few hours, for on Monday (Feb. 23rd) you were already gone.
I didn’t want to spend time in Europe: I was eager to get to Africa. It did not disappoint me. Murchison Falls and the White Nile stunned me. With my “civilized” habit of diminishing or scaling down large impressions in advance, I had thought myself ready for Nature’s grandeur (having seen the movies) but all my preparations were (luckily) driven away by the actual sight of the great river.
In Nairobi, Peltz and I seem to have acquired an interest in a beryllium mine. Of course it is mere playfulness for me. I did it in a carnival spirit. Peltz I think is very earnest about it. In any case, it absorbed and amused me for a while and helped to clear my mind of shadows.
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