Saul Bellow_ Letters Part 42

Do you think we might organize the haters of Hugh Kenner into a club? Fifty years ago, with my friend Isaac Rosenfeld, I used to join clubs of this sort. I remember that we formed a Faerie Queene Club to which n.o.body could belong who had read The Faerie Queene The Faerie Queene. When I read the first canto I was put on probation, and when I read more I was expelled. But no one could ever dislodge me from a Hate Kenner Society. [ . . . ]

Yours affectionately, To Zipporah Dunsky-Shnay May 14, 1984 Chicago Dear Mrs. Dunsky-Shnay, I wish it were possible for me to accept your very kind invitation, but I am not returning in triumph and delivering speeches in Montreal. I am making a sentimental pilgrimage to old scenes. I shall be seeing elderly cousins and friends of my childhood. To accept an invitation from the Jewish Public Library might give offense to my hosts in Lachine, who have what people in Hollywood call "an exclusive." From 1918 to 1924 I was a child of Saint Dominique Street, and was sent to a bas.e.m.e.nt cheder cheder on Milton Street. I have good Jewish credentials in Montreal, which I am happy to acknowledge, but am not free to give lectures. on Milton Street. I have good Jewish credentials in Montreal, which I am happy to acknowledge, but am not free to give lectures.

Sincerely yours,

To Barley Alison May 25, 1984 Chicago My dear Barley, The considerable success of HWHFM HWHFM should make you feel rather good about should make you feel rather good about Him Him's future in England. Of course one never knows. English book reviewing is even more desolate these days than our own, and professional book reviewers may not be ready to open their stony hearts to emanations of warmth from Chicago. Still, I'm rather inclined to think that they may welcome a change from cold-storage porridge and the awful p.o.r.no material our two countries have been exporting to each other.

My efforts to get the book out and to please Harper & Row by doing promotional ch.o.r.es have tired me out. There seem to be galvanic batteries under my bed that make me twitch in the night, and although I am not yet like Evelyn Waugh's poor noodle in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold who drugs himself with sleeping potions until he hears imaginary voices, I do need to go into dry dock in Vermont. (Alexandra, by the way, has been waiting for you to set the date for your eagerly antic.i.p.ated descent from the skies.) who drugs himself with sleeping potions until he hears imaginary voices, I do need to go into dry dock in Vermont. (Alexandra, by the way, has been waiting for you to set the date for your eagerly antic.i.p.ated descent from the skies.) Harriet tells me that copies of the English edition are now available, and I should like to ask you to send books to the following: Mr. Andrew n.o.bile, Mrs. Hildegard Nicholas (wife of the master of Brasenose) and Mr. Rudi Lissau. You will undoubtedly have sent copies to Terry Kilmartin, Richard Mayne, and young Amis. I shan't ask you to send a book for me to Keith Botsford, because I know that you would not oblige me. So I shall have Harriet s.h.i.+p one from New York. But please, do give a copy to Michael and Susan-Mary [Barley's brother and sister-in-law]. I don't remember now the name of the spirited gloomy gentleman we lunched with who gave me such burning, penetrating glances, and spoke with such taste, care and reticence that I could scarcely understand him. He needs a salutary and friendly shaking up. I liked him actually. Send him him a copy, too. a copy, too.

Love and kisses from your old friend,

To Margaret Staats August 6, 1984 W. Brattleboro Not many opportunities, with a house full of guests, but I wanted to say a few necessary things: I have never been treated with such extraordinary consideration, such feminine generosity. And you are aware that I know how extraordinary you are-that I am one of the few who can can know what your nature is. And you do need someone to know this, for it is something that demands to be known. know what your nature is. And you do need someone to know this, for it is something that demands to be known.

There's the phone, and I'm off. More to come.

Yours ever,

To Margaret Staats September 16, 1984 Chicago When you come right down to it, and I am down to it, forced to consider the prospect in detail, going abroad doesn't give me great happiness. In going there I am still dragging here behind me, six thousand miles of melted cheese strung out over the Atlantic. There are things urgently to be done and I'd be better off beginning, somehow, to make a frontal attack on the cheese itself. I have to promise all my friends to have a good time. Everybody's dream of a marvelous holiday pops up when the facts are stated. "Thou hast conquered, O Holiday Magazine Holiday Magazine." But one of my friends tells me, truly, that I am the solitary of solitaries, a combination of a glacier and a volcano, that I have perfected the power to be alone. Well, then, it doesn't matter where one goes. Still, I have powerful connections, known only to me, and to the connections. You are one of the princ.i.p.al ones, as you should know. It seems that I never have accepted my condition. The making of an artist; seven decades of work without being reconciled to the essential facts of my condition. Really, I am a wimp-of considerable distinction, but inarguably wimpy.

My greatest worry is that if I am found out my lady will have a nervous breakdown. I don't exaggerate. That is what most bothers me, I discover, and I owe the discovery to you. It was through you that I became able to pity rather than fight her. And the whole thing is a pity, a pity, a pity! Where a woman's warmest sympathies should be there is a gap, something extracted in the earliest years of life which now is not even felt, not recognized as absent.

Well, I'm not going to change anything now.

She wants us both to visit a shrink. That'll be great fun, you bet. The answer is yes. Of course. I'll go anywhere, do anything. I have a singular advantage in that I can use almost anything that happens. Do you suppose that that's what "Whatever is is right!" really meant?

1985.

To Richard Lourie January 12, 1985 Chicago Dear Mr. Lourie, Writers are dilatory, you say so yourself in your novel [First Loyalty], so I can hope to be forgiven for being so slow.

I have just read your excellent mixture of thrills and exotic facts about our great enemy the USSR and about the emigres of the eastern seaboard and I found it vigorous, fresh, sa.s.sy, and stirring. It's not for me, a common reader, to say how sound your scientific facts are. I am comfortable and safe with them and don't care whether they are accurate or whether the NYPD will fault you for your portrait of Solly the Detective-these are mere questions of expertise. I was interested in your millenarian or apocalyptic dialogues because they were probably perfectly characteristic and it didn't at all concern me to examine them as historical theses. I didn't care, and neither will other uncaptious readers, to apply a stern test to your account of the present state of civilization. You are located somewhere between James Bond and Heidegger, and the Bond elements, thank G.o.d, prevail. [ . . . ]

Some of the teachings of Master [Andrei] Sinyavsky, against realism and so forth, have been commendably absorbed. It's a lively book and gave me a most enjoyable evening.

All best, To Margaret Mills February 21, 1985 Chicago Dear Ms. Mills, I must ask you to excuse me from this ch.o.r.e. Singer and I are not the best of friends and while I do not grudge him this award, or any other, my dissimulation apparatus is not strong enough to satisfy your request.

Sincerely yours,

Margaret Mills had requested that Bellow write a short citation endorsing The Penitent The Penitent by Isaac Bashevis Singer for the Howells Medal of the American Academy and Inst.i.tute of Arts and Letters. by Isaac Bashevis Singer for the Howells Medal of the American Academy and Inst.i.tute of Arts and Letters.

To Robert Hivnor October 15, 1985 Chicago Dear Bob, Months later I come across your note about Mary Manheim and the letter from Katie Carver. I never knew Mary at all well. I did know her psychoa.n.a.lyst and visited him on the Cape at a time when she (Mary) was being a.n.a.lyzed in his tool-shed. Houseguests were under strict orders to keep out of sight lest we frighten her. Professional ethics did not, however, prevent him from pa.s.sing on gossip oddments. To this day I've never told a soul what Mary was up to, and even now I don't name the a.n.a.lyst, although he has probably gone to his reward, and might even now be talking his head off in G.o.d's tool-shed.

Wish he had been Katie Carver's a.n.a.lyst-a much juicier patient. I'm sorry for them both, poor girls. It's been ten years now since Katie excommunicated me. She used to keep a lightweight typewriter for me in London when she worked for Oxford Press on Dover Street, but I offended her after John Berryman's death by speaking of him while she and I were having a beer, and she said, "How dare you speak of John in a place like this?" As John's death was hastened by alcoholism I didn't see that there was anything improper in reminiscing in the presence of so many bottles. But Katie said in a trembling voice, "Take your typewriter away and never come to see me again." This guarantees that she will not be among my deathbed visitors, and is as close to an insurance policy as I can hope to get.

I can't sign this because my secretary is taking it from [my] dictation [onto a Dictaphone] and I am going to Dublin day after tomorrow.

Janis will verify that I closed with affection and good wishes.

To Teddy Kollek December 6, 1985 Chicago Dear Teddy, It was a real and earnest flu, involving the head and the gastric regions and exorbitant thermometer readings. [ . . . ]

The World Jewish Congress has invited me to Jerusalem, and I shall be showing myself publicly at a ceremony about which you undoubtedly know all there is to know. I expect to see you on about the 26th of January under, I hope, mild skies. Would you let me give you lunch at the Hyatt Hotel, with perhaps a little tour to see the latest improvements you have made? We can discuss future plans then.

Yours most affectionately,

1986.

To the Norwegian n.o.bel Committee January 8, 1986 Chicago I am entering Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem as a candidate for the next n.o.bel Peace Prize, confident that he will be seriously considered. The reasons for my confidence in this nomination are self-evident. Mayor Kollek is a very special sort of politician. In Jerusalem he is recognized by all parties, elsewhere in the Middle East waging a furious war, as the embodiment of impartial good will. Arabs in the Old City, Muslims everywhere, are aware that their holy places are respected and protected; Jews, both religious and secular, Christians of all denominations-Catholics, Protestants, Greeks, Armenians, Copts-share the city without conflict. No one is deprived of justice in Jerusalem. Offenses are impartially punished. Old feuds, factional outbursts of violence, are kept under conscientious control. Not another capital in the Middle East can compare with Jerusalem in this respect. Kollek is recognized by traditional enemies as a man who is firm and fair, morally imaginative and humane, whose administration has set an example, has made it possible for antagonists to live together in a peaceful and beautiful city. For contrast, one has only to look at Cairo and its rioters, at turbulent and tragic Beirut bombed and burned by Muslim and Christian armies. Kollek is a statesman who believes that Middle Eastern differences can ultimately be reconciled and has indeed given the region, and the world as well, a practical demonstration that such a belief is not Utopian.

To Edward Burlingame February 4, 1986 Chicago Dear Ed, It's good of you to offer to fly to Chicago. I don't think such a trip would make much difference. Several times I came to discuss Him with His Foot in His Mouth Him with His Foot in His Mouth with you, and each time I was made to feel that I was entreating Harper & Row to do right by me. It seems that all my suggestions and requests were referred to your marketing people, who simply rejected them. Not once did you do what I asked. I couldn't help feeling that I had placed myself in a humiliating position and I could only conclude that in your view I had written my books for n.o.body but your marketing experts. with you, and each time I was made to feel that I was entreating Harper & Row to do right by me. It seems that all my suggestions and requests were referred to your marketing people, who simply rejected them. Not once did you do what I asked. I couldn't help feeling that I had placed myself in a humiliating position and I could only conclude that in your view I had written my books for n.o.body but your marketing experts.

To put the matter at its simplest, I don't care to submit myself to such treatment again.

Yours without rancor,

Following the departure of Harvey Ginsberg in 1980, Burlingame had become Bellow's editor at Harper & Row.

To Karl Shapiro February 18, 1986 Chicago Dear Karl, Mailer mostly wanted a huge media event-that's what he calls living-and I'm sure that we dosed him up for months to come. It boggled my mind to see how greedy the radicals were for excitement "radical-style." I'm speaking of big-time subversives like Ginsberg, Nadine Gordimer, Grace Paley, Doctorow and other representatives of affluent revolution. There was an organization in Montreal when I was a small kid called The Consumer's League, headed by Mrs. Saunders, a cabinet-maker's wife. And when she went out in her corsets to picket the kosher butcher shop she might have been Grace Paley's mother. The comparison will allow you to imagine the political level of PEN. [Gunter] Gra.s.s listened to nothing that was said by others, and the very idea of reading an American book was inadmissible. I told him privately that if he had skimmed The Dean's December The Dean's December he wouldn't have talked such b.a.l.l.s about the South Bronx, but even the suggestion that he read one of my books made his mouth drop. I never cared for misanthropy, but I'm being coerced into it. he wouldn't have talked such b.a.l.l.s about the South Bronx, but even the suggestion that he read one of my books made his mouth drop. I never cared for misanthropy, but I'm being coerced into it.

In your kindness you say, "Be well." But it's not exactly in my power to take your advice and good wishes. After eleven years of marriage and at the age of seventy I find myself evicted on the basis of grievances largely imaginary. But any American has the special gift of making a fresh start in life, so I am girding myself to meet yet one more challenge.

The scene of this unusual effort is Apt. 11E, 5825 S. Dorchester, Chicago, Illinois, 60637, telephone (312) 684-0758. A new group of lawyers is gnawing at my foundations. This brings to mind T. S. Eliot and one of the most hateful poems of this century ("Burbank"). Why send mysterious disturbing communications? Better to state the facts simply.

Yours (both of you) most affectionately,

Bellow refers here to an acrimonious meeting of PEN International in New York at which, attacked by Gunter Gra.s.s, he had counterattacked by saying, "No intelligent writer is devoid of political feelings. On the other hand, one must not get megalomaniacal notions of the powers of writers." The president of the PEN American Center and host of the event was Norman Mailer. In his anti-Semitic poem "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," T. S. Eliot wrote: "The rats are underneath the piles, / The jew is underneath the lot. / Money in furs," etc.

To Barley Alison February 27, 1986 Chicago Dear Barley, As you may have read in the papers, I shall be coming over to give a talk at PEN [in London]. I am not altogether on fire with eagerness to travel, but in view of the lamentable changes in my life, it may be constructive to go abroad. It won't cure heartache but it will probably divert me.

My last dinner at The Hungry Horse was so abominable that I shall presume on an old friends.h.i.+p to suggest a small dinner at Harley Gardens. If If you are up to it, it would be wonderfully agreeable to see Martin Amis and his wife, and one or two other old friends-perhaps Mel Lasky. I'm very fond of him, and haven't seen him in a dog's age. After the guests have gone, you and I can have a chat about Alexandra. Like one of the more forbidding tales in Herodotus, that will be-the one in which the severed head of the defeated prince is plunged into a tub of blood by the barbarian who has killed him. A little will go a long way. I don't want to go back to the Capitol Hotel to be rigid with hateful insomnia all night. you are up to it, it would be wonderfully agreeable to see Martin Amis and his wife, and one or two other old friends-perhaps Mel Lasky. I'm very fond of him, and haven't seen him in a dog's age. After the guests have gone, you and I can have a chat about Alexandra. Like one of the more forbidding tales in Herodotus, that will be-the one in which the severed head of the defeated prince is plunged into a tub of blood by the barbarian who has killed him. A little will go a long way. I don't want to go back to the Capitol Hotel to be rigid with hateful insomnia all night.

Please don't plan any office parties for me. I am in no mood to face your personnel-all those pretty girls whose reward is to gaze upon celebrities.

I shall be bringing a considerable chunk of ma.n.u.script. I view this as a consoling piece of information.

With love from your devoted old friend,

To Philip Roth February 27, 1986 Chicago Dear Philip, This bulletin will inform you that I am arriving on March 20th, and putting up at the Capitol Hotel on Basil Street. I think Harriet Wa.s.serman has accepted a dinner invitation from Heath and Co. (my agent in London, Mark Hamilton) for the 21st. I give my PEN spiel spiel on the 22nd, and I should by rights be free for dinner on that evening. Or the next, or the next. I need this trip like a hole in the head, but among the many holes already disfiguring it, one more will never be noticed. Please call me to set a date, I don't think I have your number anywhere-I'll try to get it from my son Adam. on the 22nd, and I should by rights be free for dinner on that evening. Or the next, or the next. I need this trip like a hole in the head, but among the many holes already disfiguring it, one more will never be noticed. Please call me to set a date, I don't think I have your number anywhere-I'll try to get it from my son Adam.

I think I said in my earlier note that I was traveling alone.

All best,

To Rachel E. G. Schultz March 16, 1986 Chicago Dear Rache, My punctilious papa, your great-grandfather B., always paid his bills before taking a trip. A version of the clean-underwear thing for ladies. Shock n.o.body in the Emergency Room. [ . . . ]

It was a lovely thing to do for your dad's birthday . . . pleasures that make it possible to go on in what is possibly not not the best of worlds. the best of worlds.

Love to you both,

Rachel E. G. Schultz, M. D. (born 1960), is a granddaughter of Saul Bellow's brother Samuel.

To Philip Roth April 27, 1986 Chicago Dear Philip: Was much moved by your piece on Malamud in the Times. Times. It showed me the man's life as I couldn't otherwise have seen it. You saw him at first as an insurance agent. I privately thought of him as a CPA. But I have a secret weakness for the hidden dimensions of agents and CPAs. I never could bring myself to judge by appearances. No faith in the categories (the social categories, I mean). Well, he did make something of the crumbs and gritty bits of impoverished Jewish lives. Then he suffered from not being able to do more. Maybe he couldn't have, but he looked forward to a fine old age in which the impossible became possible. Death took care of that wonderful aspiration. We can all count on it for that. It showed me the man's life as I couldn't otherwise have seen it. You saw him at first as an insurance agent. I privately thought of him as a CPA. But I have a secret weakness for the hidden dimensions of agents and CPAs. I never could bring myself to judge by appearances. No faith in the categories (the social categories, I mean). Well, he did make something of the crumbs and gritty bits of impoverished Jewish lives. Then he suffered from not being able to do more. Maybe he couldn't have, but he looked forward to a fine old age in which the impossible became possible. Death took care of that wonderful aspiration. We can all count on it for that.

I want to thank you again for looking after me in London. As you realized, I was in the dumps. The Royal Athletic Club was just the place for me. The Shostakovich quartets did me a world of good. There's almost enough art to cover the deadly griefs with. Not quite, though. There are always gaps.

And also dinner with Edna [O'Brien], the Joan of Arc of Irish s.e.x, armies of h.o.r.n.y men behind her. That was lovely. d.i.c.k [Stern] says that Claire [Bloom] gives wonderful imitations of her. I hope to see those one day.

Yours ever,

Bernard Malamud had died on March 18.

To John Auerbach April 28, 1986 Chicago Dear John, Not writing many letters because of the hysterical nature of my circ.u.mstances. Your letters to me, however, have great value, and I read them with loving attention and store the contents in a locked compartment of my head. So then: I have cancelled my trip to Paris, depending on the stability of your new plans. Since you're going to be in Ma.s.sachusetts, there will be a room waiting for you in Vermont when you are ready to travel. I am now fairly well settled in new quarters, facing life anew for the thousandth time. Arrangements for the divorce have been agreed to by both parties. Alexandra has arranged compensation for the terrible injuries she received from me at the rate of a thousand dollars per fantasy trauma. Apparently, she suffered one hundred twenty permanently damaging abuses. So, I shall have to earn more money and that need will be an interesting test of my faculties. I I think I still have all my marbles. So now we'll see about that. [Anthony] Kerrigan came to spend two days here with his new white beard. It makes him look like the Gloucester fisherman from the cod-liver-oil bottle, the smell of which made me hold my nose when my mother poured the oil down my throat. He seems well enough, although flat-broke-one of those flat-broke bohemian millionaire types. Until I published think I still have all my marbles. So now we'll see about that. [Anthony] Kerrigan came to spend two days here with his new white beard. It makes him look like the Gloucester fisherman from the cod-liver-oil bottle, the smell of which made me hold my nose when my mother poured the oil down my throat. He seems well enough, although flat-broke-one of those flat-broke bohemian millionaire types. Until I published Herzog Herzog, I was one of those myself, rich enough for anything at all. He lives on Social Security checks and on his GI pension, and apparently supports his son, Elie, as well. They seem to sleep in dresser drawers and eat canned chile con carne. Being on the wagon, Tony has no whiskey bills. Also, he plans to visit Cuba soon, and his fantasy is that Castro will kill him there and solve all his (Tony's) financial worries by making a rich martyr of him. He's as charming as ever and very much like an old, old streetcar transfer, punched full of holes by the conductor but there's always room for one more punch. He earned five hundred bucks here, which will probably buy his ticket to Cuba. More might be done for Tony, but I don't know just what more would be. I do my best to find a few bucks for him here and there.

I am dictating this letter to Janis, one of my aims being to entertain all of us.

It will make me very happy to see you again.

Much love to you both,

Anthony Kerrigan (1919-1991) was noted for his translations of Borges, Neruda, Ortega y Ga.s.set, Cela and others. In 1973 he won a National Book Award for his translation of Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations. Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations.