Letters (14 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Sincerely yours,
To Henry Volkening
February 4, 1946 Minneapolis
Dear Henry:
A man named George Auerbach who heads a group called the American Creative Theatre at 12 Minetta St. wrote this week to ask whether I would be interested in dramatizing
The Victim.
I asked Eric Bentley about Auerbach and he reported very favorably, not on Auerbach, whom he doesn’t know personally, but on the groups (the Actor’s Lab, Hollywood, etc.) with which he is connected. So I wrote Auerbach that I was interested. I made the whole thing rather noncommittal, however. Meanwhile it occurred to Bentley that since one theatre-man had found the book dramatically promising others might also and he suggested getting in touch with someone like Elia Kazan. Which I pass on to you. Did “Dora” arrive? The more I ponder its saleability, the less saleable it seems.
The Victim.
I asked Eric Bentley about Auerbach and he reported very favorably, not on Auerbach, whom he doesn’t know personally, but on the groups (the Actor’s Lab, Hollywood, etc.) with which he is connected. So I wrote Auerbach that I was interested. I made the whole thing rather noncommittal, however. Meanwhile it occurred to Bentley that since one theatre-man had found the book dramatically promising others might also and he suggested getting in touch with someone like Elia Kazan. Which I pass on to you. Did “Dora” arrive? The more I ponder its saleability, the less saleable it seems.
Best,
Henry Volkening (1902-72) was co-founder of Russell & Volkening, the leading literary agency of its time. Volkening would remain Bellow’s agent from 1944 until his death in 1972.
To David Bazelon
[n.d.] [Minneapolis]
Dear Dave:
You should have come. We were disappointed when you wrote that you couldn’t. Though we learn to do without a great number of friends, up in the prairies, still we don’t become ascetic on principle. I did want to see you. Besides, you could have inspected the town (both towns) and the university. It would have helped you in your decision.
I agree that you could profit by a few years at school. Living on serious work is impossible now. Something has to be thrown to the wolves: to the
New Leader
or
New Republic
if not to the University. I teach two hours a day, or less. The rest of the time is mine—three weeks or so between quarters and all of the summer quarter. There are many irritants, of course, but they are not—[Seymour] Krim and Isaac to the contrary notwithstanding—crippling. I don’t think a writer could permanently stay at a university unless, like Warren, he was also a scholar or critic. Teaching often gravels me, but I’m confident that I can liberate myself from it in two or three years. Sooner, if
The Victim
goes as well as I expect it to. Moreover, in your case, you’ve had an invaluable immunization against universititis. [ . . . ]
New Leader
or
New Republic
if not to the University. I teach two hours a day, or less. The rest of the time is mine—three weeks or so between quarters and all of the summer quarter. There are many irritants, of course, but they are not—[Seymour] Krim and Isaac to the contrary notwithstanding—crippling. I don’t think a writer could permanently stay at a university unless, like Warren, he was also a scholar or critic. Teaching often gravels me, but I’m confident that I can liberate myself from it in two or three years. Sooner, if
The Victim
goes as well as I expect it to. Moreover, in your case, you’ve had an invaluable immunization against universititis. [ . . . ]
I’m half way through the second draft. Warren has read it and seems to feel that it’ll sell. He liked it. I sent Henle a copy of the first draft. He disapproved of Mr. Schlossberg and thought the restaurant scene was a set-piece—wrongly. Otherwise he approved highly of it. Last week he sent me a copy of Calder [Willingham]’s novel, of which I’ve read about two hundred pages. Calder hits savagely beside the mark. He’s very nervous. Very capable in some ways, a fine ear, but on the whole more vehement than imaginative. I don’t know what makes so many of the Southern writers gratuitously violent. Faulkner has come closest to harnessing violence to tragedy, but the off-horse pulls harder with him, too.
My feeling is that you should keep your hand in at fiction regardless. It may well be that you have a biographical talent. You should of course find the kind of writing in which your pliancy is greatest and your imagination freest. We all look for that. But it’s too early to give up fiction. How many novelists have shown their powers during their twenties?
Let me hear.
Love,
Calder Willingham’s novel, soon to be published by Vanguard, was
End as a Man.
End as a Man.
1947
To Samuel Freifeld
[Postmarked Madrid, date illegible; postcard of
El Bufón Don Sebastián de Morra
by Velázquez, Museo del Prado]
El Bufón Don Sebastián de Morra
by Velázquez, Museo del Prado]
Dear Sam—
Thomas à Becket, your friend and mine, would be without note here where the people are the martyrs, every man his own, and the blood of saints and poets would be gratuitously shed—if offered at all. Besides which, the poets own Fiats and eat ten courses at dinner.
To Edmund Wilson
October 3, 1947 Minneapolis
Dear Mr. Wilson:
Two years ago you sponsored my application for a Guggenheim. I wonder if you would do so a second time. I have a new book coming in November,
The Victim,
and I rather think I’ll be luckier this year. I know this sort of thing is a great bother to you, but the powers will have it so.
The Victim,
and I rather think I’ll be luckier this year. I know this sort of thing is a great bother to you, but the powers will have it so.
Sincerely yours,
To Robert Penn Warren
October 5, 1947 Minneapolis
Dear Red—
I’m sorry we missed seeing you and Cinina (Anita came to New York to meet me). Lambert Davis said he was expecting you daily. I would have liked nothing better than to hang around another week, but as it was I came back to Mpls. three days after the start of the quarter, arrived with a congestion of Spanish and Midwestern scenes in my head and my blood overcharged by a week of gluttony. Americans
can
remain fat in Spain; I, for some reason, lost about twenty pounds there and took steps to recover some of them in New York, but went too fast. No doubt there was an ideological reason for eating so much—we may not be strong in Phoenician ruins but we
do
have steamed clams. At all events, I’m living on milk and eggs, principally.
can
remain fat in Spain; I, for some reason, lost about twenty pounds there and took steps to recover some of them in New York, but went too fast. No doubt there was an ideological reason for eating so much—we may not be strong in Phoenician ruins but we
do
have steamed clams. At all events, I’m living on milk and eggs, principally.
Meanwhile I’ve unpacked my papers and am gradually coaxing myself back to work. I have a number of stories to do; after that, a novel. I’m applying for a Guggenheim, and I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d permit me to give you as a reference.
[ . . . ] I expect you’ll put off sailing until
All the King’s Men
opens. You must be having a wonderful time with [Erwin] Piscator and his assistant.
All the King’s Men
opens. You must be having a wonderful time with [Erwin] Piscator and his assistant.
Anita asks to be remembered to you and Cinina.
All the best,
That spring, German émigré director Erwin Piscator was rehearsing Warren’s stage version of
All the King’s Men
at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School for Social Research in New York. By “assistant,” Bellow presumably refers to Piscator’s wife and collaborator, the dancer Maria Ley.
All the King’s Men
at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School for Social Research in New York. By “assistant,” Bellow presumably refers to Piscator’s wife and collaborator, the dancer Maria Ley.
To Henry Volkening
[n.d.] [Minneapolis]
Dear Henry:
This is a copy of my reply to the enclosed and little enough to relieve my swollen feelings. I definitely do not want Henle to publish my next novel. You may say what you please about hard times in the publishing business. They’re not so hard but that a book like
Eagle at My Eyes
[by Norman Katkov] can’t go through three printings in its first month with no more (to say the least) to recommend it than my book. Henle gave me an advance of seven hundred fifty. I still owe him money. And doesn’t he seem pleased in his letter. Small wonder!
Eagle at My Eyes
[by Norman Katkov] can’t go through three printings in its first month with no more (to say the least) to recommend it than my book. Henle gave me an advance of seven hundred fifty. I still owe him money. And doesn’t he seem pleased in his letter. Small wonder!
Yours,
Glad you like “Dora.” I don’t think the
New Yorker
will
.
New Yorker
will
.
To Robert Penn Warren
[Postmarked Minneapolis, Minn., 17 November 1947]
Dear Red:
Thank you very much for being so agreeable about that Guggenheim business. I am terribly superstitious about formal letters. It’s harder for me to write the insurance company than to do a story; why, an analyst may someday be able to tell me. Anyhow, I appreciate it enormously.
I do like the [Leonard] Ungers very much. So far we’ve met in company only—the social whirl this fall has been dazzling—but I think Leonard and I have sized each other up as people from the same layer of the upper air (or lower depths; whichever you like). And of course Sam Monk is wonderful as you probably well know. And the Hivnors: Bob got married last summer. We’re very lucky, in short. As far as the place itself is concerned, well, I understand what Augustine meant when he said “the devil hath established his cities in the north.” I’ve lived in Montreal and in Chicago. [ . . . ]
My friend Isaac Rosenfeld, by the way, doesn’t call gossip gossip anymore; he calls it social history. I think that’s very good, don’t you?
I wish I had a good excuse for going to New York during Christmas. I’d love to see
All the King’s Men
, but I have no such excuse and I’ll have to read about it in my two-day-old
Times
. [ . . . ]
All the King’s Men
, but I have no such excuse and I’ll have to read about it in my two-day-old
Times
. [ . . . ]
Best to Cinina,
Yours,
To Melvin Tumin
[n.d.] [Minneapolis]
Dear Mel—
[ . . . ] Anita’s family is utterly wretched. Her mother, who last year lost her eldest son, is full of hurt and, at seventy-three, only her black eyes have animation, the rest of her is rigid. The sister-in-law (married to Anita’s brother Max) had her wave of talent about twenty-five years ago, at seventeen or so, and was sent to Italy and Germany to “complete her musical studies,” came home and flopped and now teaches piano to kids who come with hockey-sticks and baseball mitts. She is very cultural
haut monde
with me and because I would rather play with Herschel’s [Gregory’s] trains than enter her cultural
haut monde,
she is vengeful and digs at me, saying to Catherine, Anita’s eldest sister, “Please buy me
The Axe of Wandsbek
, a
good
novel, at your librarian’s discount. I want to send it to my brother Raoul.” This poor Raoul, formerly a violinist who played in a good chamber group, is now a lawyer in the alien-property-custodian’s office in Washington. And then Catherine, at fifty years, has colitis and bad temper and washes herself with fifty lotions a day. So much for Anita’s family. If I were to tell you of mine—Lordy! My father spoke for an hour at a dinner given for my brother, when he turned forty, on the significance of the name Moses.
Shtel sikh for!
[
16
]
haut monde
with me and because I would rather play with Herschel’s [Gregory’s] trains than enter her cultural
haut monde,
she is vengeful and digs at me, saying to Catherine, Anita’s eldest sister, “Please buy me
The Axe of Wandsbek
, a
good
novel, at your librarian’s discount. I want to send it to my brother Raoul.” This poor Raoul, formerly a violinist who played in a good chamber group, is now a lawyer in the alien-property-custodian’s office in Washington. And then Catherine, at fifty years, has colitis and bad temper and washes herself with fifty lotions a day. So much for Anita’s family. If I were to tell you of mine—Lordy! My father spoke for an hour at a dinner given for my brother, when he turned forty, on the significance of the name Moses.
Shtel sikh for!
[
16
]
On Saturday Herschel became ill and I had to return to Minneapolis alone. He’s still sick—in protest, I’m sure, if we’re made alike, at the horrors of Chicago,
Yemach ha shem.
[
17
]
Yemach ha shem.
[
17
]
Freifeld is in a really bad way, trapped, Melvin. His father died while he was in Germany and when he returned he had to keep the business in order to pay off debts and support his mother, who has turned into an incubus in revenge for thirty years of servitude to the paralyzed old man. Rochelle holds one arm, Mama the other and fortune pummels all three. Rochelle is still punishing Sam for his German infidelities, which he was foolish enough to confess. Because she was virtuous she won’t forgive him.
You ought to write. Sam feels bypassed and abandoned. He’s in danger of losing his great gift of life in drought. I hate to see it happen to Sam who was so full and overfull.
Well, enough woe. There are still beauty, fucking, little children and friendships in this world.
Best love,
To Henry Volkening
[n.d.] [Minneapolis]
Dear Mr. Volkening:
Here are some extracts from the letter I was about to send [to Henle]:
“I have had the disappointment in the last two weeks of receiving letters from friends and acquaintances in various parts of the country who had seen reviews of
The Victim
and tried to buy it only to be told by local booksellers that they had never heard of it. Knowing nothing of the mysteries of book distribution, I had always assumed, innocently, that the leading stores in every city automatically received a few copies. It rather shocked me to learn that the University of Chicago bookstore and Woolworth’s didn’t even know I had published a new book. As a Chicagoan and a Hyde Parker, I feel hurt by this. Until Red Warren’s review was printed, only a handful of people knew
The Victim
had appeared, and those who missed the
Daily News
of Dec. 3rd have had no further opportunity to learn of it. Since I have been tolerably well reviewed, I can’t understand why that should be.
The Victim
and tried to buy it only to be told by local booksellers that they had never heard of it. Knowing nothing of the mysteries of book distribution, I had always assumed, innocently, that the leading stores in every city automatically received a few copies. It rather shocked me to learn that the University of Chicago bookstore and Woolworth’s didn’t even know I had published a new book. As a Chicagoan and a Hyde Parker, I feel hurt by this. Until Red Warren’s review was printed, only a handful of people knew
The Victim
had appeared, and those who missed the
Daily News
of Dec. 3rd have had no further opportunity to learn of it. Since I have been tolerably well reviewed, I can’t understand why that should be.
“I know you will accuse me again of putting off the philosopher’s robe and of being too impatient, and that you will repeat that before I have published five or six books I can’t expect to live by writing. But as I write slowly I will be forty or so before my fifth book is ready and I don’t think it is unreasonable of me to expect that the most should be made of what I do produce. When I see my chances for a year or two of uninterrupted work going down the drain I can’t help protesting the injustice of it. This year I have been ill and teaching leaves me no energy for writing. I had hoped that I would be able to ask for a year’s leave but I shall have nothing to live on if I do, and I see next year and the next and the one after that fribbled away at the university. My grievance is a legitimate one, I think. I don’t want to be a commercial writer or to be taken up with money. I have never discussed money matters with you in four years, not even when I signed contracts, except for the letter I wrote you last spring about the new book. You were annoyed with me; you said it was impossible to speak of plans five months in advance of publication. But now the book is out, it hasn’t been badly received and already it seems to be going the way of
Dangling Man . . .”
Dangling Man . . .”
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