Letters (61 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
I began to compose a few Herzog notes in my mind. But I wouldn’t have sent any of them. You might
not
have been guilty of any offense. I do
not
defend myself anymore (in the old way). I have other concerns, now. But then your letter arrived. And you are what I always thought you were, and I am still your old loving friend,
not
have been guilty of any offense. I do
not
defend myself anymore (in the old way). I have other concerns, now. But then your letter arrived. And you are what I always thought you were, and I am still your old loving friend,
Louis Simpson’s attack on Bellow in
The New York Times Magazine
was “The Ghost of Delmore Schwartz.”
The New York Times Magazine
was “The Ghost of Delmore Schwartz.”
To Edward Shils
December 8, 1975 Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem
My dear Ed:
[ . . . ] The Committee [on Social Thought], though you may not agree, is a very useful thing; it has developed several extraordinary students in recent years. It is no small achievement to turn out Ph.D.s who know how to write English and are at home in several fields—intelligent people who have read Thucydides and Kant and Proust and who are not counterfeits or culture snobs. They will not disgrace the University of Chicago. I’ve met many graduates from other departments of whom the same cannot be said. I myself have not done all that might have been done for the Committee. I had books to write and problems to face, many of these arising from my own unsatisfactory character, but I have nevertheless taken my duties seriously. Now I think it’s the University’s turn to be serious and to demonstrate that it considers the Committee to be something more than a celebrity showpiece. The celebrities are beginning to dodder in any case. Unless new appointments are made the Committee will cease to exist. In about five years it’ll be gone.
As for that other dying institution,
Encounter,
I’ll contribute five hundred dollars for the coming year, and five hundred more in 1977, if there should be a 1977 in
Encounter
’s destiny. I think Mel Lasky should write to Thomas Guinzburg of Viking Press (Viking and Penguin have just merged) and say that I have told him that I’d be greatly disappointed if Viking didn’t make a contribution.
Encounter,
I’ll contribute five hundred dollars for the coming year, and five hundred more in 1977, if there should be a 1977 in
Encounter
’s destiny. I think Mel Lasky should write to Thomas Guinzburg of Viking Press (Viking and Penguin have just merged) and say that I have told him that I’d be greatly disappointed if Viking didn’t make a contribution.
I wish we had the time to stop in Holland en route. I’d love to see you and to talk with you about Israel and other matters. A conversation with you is all-too-rare a pleasure, these days. But my son Gregory is in Chicago for the holidays and we want to see him before he goes back to California.
With most affectionate good wishes for the New Year,
1976
To Owen Barfield
February 25, 1976 Chicago
Dear Mr. Barfield:
It’s not a case of out of sight, out of mind. I think often of you and compose quite a few mental letters. But I have no progress to report; much confusion, rather. I mustn’t be altogether negative; there are trace-elements of clarity. I continue to read Steiner and to perform certain exercises. I am particularly faithful to the I Am, It Thinks meditation in the Guidance book you so kindly gave me. From this I get a certain daily stability. I don’t know what causes so much confusion in me. Perhaps I have too many things going on at once. I had promised myself a holiday after finishing the last book. I think I told you last summer that I was going to Jerusalem with my wife. She gave some lectures at the Hebrew University in Probability Theory. My intention was to wander about the Old City and sit contemplatively in the gardens and churches. But it is impossible in Jerusalem to detach oneself from the frightful political problems of Israel. I found myself “doing something.” I read a great many books, talked with scores of people, and before the first month was out I was writing a small book about the endless crisis and immersed in politics. It excites me, it distresses me to be so immersed. I can’t mention Lucifer and Ahriman, I don’t know enough for that. Neither can I put them out of my mind.
I didn’t mention
Humboldt’s Gift
to you because I thought you weren’t greatly interested in novels. I thought it might even displease you. Besides I tend to think of a book just completed as something that has prepared me to do better next time. You asked me, very properly, how I thought a writer of novels might be affected by esoteric studies. I answered that I was ready for the consequences. That was a nice thing to say, but it wasn’t terribly intelligent. It must have struck you as very adolescent. You asked me how old I was. “Sixty,” I said. Then you smiled and said, “Sixteen?” It was the one joke you allowed yourself at my expense, and it was entirely justified. It’s a very American thing to believe that it’s never too late to make a new start in life. Always decades to burn.
Humboldt’s Gift
to you because I thought you weren’t greatly interested in novels. I thought it might even displease you. Besides I tend to think of a book just completed as something that has prepared me to do better next time. You asked me, very properly, how I thought a writer of novels might be affected by esoteric studies. I answered that I was ready for the consequences. That was a nice thing to say, but it wasn’t terribly intelligent. It must have struck you as very adolescent. You asked me how old I was. “Sixty,” I said. Then you smiled and said, “Sixteen?” It was the one joke you allowed yourself at my expense, and it was entirely justified. It’s a very American thing to believe that it’s never too late to make a new start in life. Always decades to burn.
As if this weren’t enough, we’ve had to travel a great deal, my wife and I. In the last month we’ve been to San Francisco, Boston and Miami. We had promises to keep. We’d been away for three months, and couldn’t put things off until spring.
I’m a bit ashamed to present such a picture of confusion. You probably knew it wasn’t going to be easy to change from one sort of life to another. This is not a very satisfactory letter but I feel that I owe you some account of myself—I feel it because I respect you and because you tried so generously to help me.
Best regards,
The book about Israel that Bellow had set to work on,
To Jerusalem and Back
, would appear first in back-to-back issues of
The New Yorker
in July, then in book form in the autumn.
To Jerusalem and Back
, would appear first in back-to-back issues of
The New Yorker
in July, then in book form in the autumn.
To Walter Hasenclever
March 3, 1976 Chicago
Dear Walter,
We were delighted to see you in Jerusalem—the best sort of bonus, the unanticipated and undeserved. It isn’t altogether true that I had recovered my spirits in Jerusalem—I was still suffering from my concluding efforts with
Humboldt
. Teddy Kollek kept telling me that I must have a holiday. But to have a holiday in Jerusalem is something like consummating a marriage in a laundromat. I’m glad to hear that K[iepenheuer] & W[itsch] approves your translation [of
Humboldt’s Gift
]. I’m sure they are right. The yeoman in
Ivanhoe
was right too: “A man can do but his best.” It was only Sir Walter who was not doing at all well. Now you had better get a good rest in the Austrian mountains because you will soon be facing a new task, my short book on Jerusalem. I spend half the night boning up on my subject, half the day writing; the rest of my time I’m free to devote to my wife, my children, the University of Chicago and my business affairs and my duties as an unpaid cultural functionary.
Humboldt
. Teddy Kollek kept telling me that I must have a holiday. But to have a holiday in Jerusalem is something like consummating a marriage in a laundromat. I’m glad to hear that K[iepenheuer] & W[itsch] approves your translation [of
Humboldt’s Gift
]. I’m sure they are right. The yeoman in
Ivanhoe
was right too: “A man can do but his best.” It was only Sir Walter who was not doing at all well. Now you had better get a good rest in the Austrian mountains because you will soon be facing a new task, my short book on Jerusalem. I spend half the night boning up on my subject, half the day writing; the rest of my time I’m free to devote to my wife, my children, the University of Chicago and my business affairs and my duties as an unpaid cultural functionary.
Now let me try to answer a few of your questions:
1. Drag racing is the strictly illegal sport of adolescent amateur automobile mechanics who transform an ordinary car into a racer. They hold outlaw matches on back roads, attain speeds of a hundred fifty m.p.h. or better, and are often killed.
2. One can “cock” the wheel of a Thunderbird—that is the driver’s wheel can be pushed forward so that the driver may seat himself without inconvenience.
3. I don’t remember what I meant by an axle type but I may have been thinking of [Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s]
Axel,
the one about the young man who says, “As for living, our servants can do that for us.”
4. Hog belly should really be pork belly. Pork bellies are traded in the commodities market.
5. A pig-in-a-wig is reminiscent of a pig-in-a-poke in the old saying, poke being an old word for sack or bag. Then there is pig-in-a-blanket or ground meat cooked in cabbage leaves. Lastly, we come to the nursery rhyme
Barber, barber, shave a pig, how many hairs to make a wig?
Put this all together and you get the image of a porcine man wearing what looks to be artificial hair.
6. A Roto-Rooter man is an expensive American specialist who unstops clogged drains by inserting a long phallic segmented steel instrument called a “snake.” And that is what a Roto-Rooter man is.
7. “Pet” [means here] arbitrary—one’s favorite form of obstinacy or crankiness.
8. Vacate the personae simply means to abandon one’s favorite masks.
9. To launder money is a well-known Mafia expression. The illest-gotten gains of gangsters cannot legally be declared as income. The underworld has its own ways of making dirty money respectable by sending it through channels, etc.
10. Castro is a manufacturer of folding beds or “hideaway” sofa beds. These generally have dangerously prominent hinges which have been known to injure hasty lovers.
11. What Charlie means on p. 89 is that he believes he can see Cantabile’s aura, a personal quality generally invisible.
12. P.102, line 7, “There were a few windbreaks up here on the 50th or 60th floor, and those the wind was storming.” These windbreaks, made of stout canvas, protect the workers from the weather. When the wind is high the canvas flaps mightily. On this occasion, the wind was storming, i.e., assaulting the canvas.
13. “Sailing to Byzantium” is a poem by Yeats.
14. Hegel, in his
Philosophy of History.
15. The “quiet” quote is from Rudolf Steiner and comes, I believe, from a book called
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.
Alexandra and I will be knocking about in June, probably in England. In July and August we will be at Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard and in September we will return to Chicago. I will tell her what you say about her smile.
As ever,
To Norman Podhoretz
March 8, 1976 Chicago
Dear Norman:
I did give a talk in Miami but I intend to make it part of a longer piece.
And now tell me this: If you were described in someone’s magazine as a “burnt-out case” would you be at all inclined to contribute articles to that magazine?
Sincerely yours,
In his unfavorable review of
Humboldt’s Gift
in
Commentary
, Jack Richardson had wondered whether Bellow was “a burnt-out case.”
Humboldt’s Gift
in
Commentary
, Jack Richardson had wondered whether Bellow was “a burnt-out case.”
To Ben Sidran
May 21, 1976 Chicago
Dear Ben:
You’re right about your father [Louis Sidran] and me. And I often feel, when I’m writing, that I’m a composite person. Your father is certainly part of the mixture. It comes over me now and then that I’m trying to do something he wanted done. When, dying, he drove so many hundreds of miles in the station wagon with Ezra from Gettysburg to East Hampton to see me, I got the message quite clearly. I knew what he wanted, whom he loved. I admired and loved him.
I can see why it was hard for you to write to me. The difficulty makes your letter all the more valuable.
Best wishes,
To James Salter
May 26, 1976 [Chicago]
Cher collègue:
I write, as always, in nasty haste, a chronic condition. I am doing what I oughtn’t to do, a journalistic job. Dreadful pressure.
Yes, I was miffed by the Graham Greene thing, but not seriously nor for long. Greene didn’t find me “difficult”—by “difficult” he meant Jewish. I can’t see how any reader of his novels can miss that. American is bad enough [according to Greene]. But to be Jewish as well—well, no combination could be worse.
That’s all there was to that.
Alexandra and I are taking off for Dublin and Milan tomorrow. I haven’t finished my piece either. I must, tonight.
Yrs. as always,
In an interview Salter conducted for
People
magazine, Graham Greene had recalled Bellow as “difficult.”
People
magazine, Graham Greene had recalled Bellow as “difficult.”
To Samuel S. Goldberg
July 26, 1976 Chicago
Dear Samuel,
[ . . . ] A gossip item from the Chicago newspapers announcing the triumph of Susan Bellow greeted me when I returned from Europe. I thought you might like to run your jurist’s eye over it. You know, I’m really beginning to think badly of the legal profession. Judges and lawyers simply don’t understand how a writer makes his way through life. Page five speaks of the “defendant’s misrepresentations.” I didn’t misrepresent. I simply had no idea what my future income would be. It’s true that I took an advance of fifty thousand, but suppose I had been unable to complete the book?
Maybe when you have studied the document you will be able to explain it all to me and especially the murky paragraph at the bottom of page six.
As ever,
The First District Court of Chicago had issued a ruling that Bellow misled former wife Susan Glassman Bellow about his income and directed him to pay increased alimony and child support.
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