Letters (5 page)

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Authors: Saul Bellow

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1953
“Hemingway and the Image of Man” (review of Philip Young’s
Ernest Hemingway
) in
Partisan
. Bellow begins teaching at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Lives in nearby Barrytown on the estate of Chanler Chapman, son of eminent American man of letters John Jay Chapman. In July, second residency at Yaddo. In September, publishes
The Adventures of Augie March
to tremendous critical acclaim. (“My earlier books had been straight and respectable. As if I had to satisfy the demands of H. W. Fowler. But in
Augie March
I wanted to invent a new sort of American sentence. Something like a fusion of colloquialism and elegance. What you find in the best English writing of the twentieth century—in Joyce or E. E. Cummings. Street language combined with a high style. [ . . . ] I think
The Adventures of Augie March
represented a rebellion against small-public art and the inhibitions it imposed. My real desire was to reach ‘everybody.’ I had found—or believed I had found—a new way to
flow
. For better or for worse, this set me apart. Or so I wished to think. It may not have been a good thing to stand apart, but my character demanded it. It was inevitable—and the best way to treat the inevitable is to regard it as a good thing.”) At Bard, comes to know Irma Brandeis, Heinrich Blücher, Hannah Arendt, Theodore Hoffman, Anthony Hecht, Theodore Weiss, Keith Botsford and Jack Ludwig.
 
1954
“The Gonzaga Manuscripts” in
Discover
. “How I Wrote Augie March’s Story” in
The New York Times Book Review
. “A Personal Record” (review of Joyce Cary’s
Except the Lord
) in
The New Republic
. Receives National Book Award for
Augie
. Separates from Anita and resigns position at Bard. Spends summer at Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where friends and acquaintances include Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy and Harvard professor Harry Levin.
 
1955
Abram Bellow dies of aneurysm. (“[W]hen I wept at the funeral, my eldest brother said to me, ‘Don’t carry on like an immigrant!’ He had business friends there and he was ashamed of all this open emotionalism.”) Story “A Father-to-Be” in
The New Yorker.
Interviews “Yellow Kid” Weil, legendary Chicago con man, for
The Reporter
. Receives second Guggenheim Fellowship. “The French as Dostoyevsky Saw Them” in
The New Republic
. Establishes residence at Reno, Nevada, awaiting divorce.
 
1956
In Reno, marries Sondra in February. Arthur Miller, awaiting his own divorce, settles into nearby bungalow with Marilyn Monroe. “Rabbi’s Boy in Edinburgh” (review of
Two Worlds
by David Daiches) in
Saturday Review of Literature
. At Yaddo in September, meets John Cheever, whom he will rank highest among contemporary American writers of fiction. With eight-thousand-dollar inheritance from father, buys ramshackle residence at Tivoli, New York. Teaches at the New School for Social Research.
Seize the Day
published in
Partisan Review
in November. (“I think that for old-time Chicagoans the New Yorkers of
Seize the Day
are emotionally thinner, or one-dimensional. We had fuller or, if you prefer, richer emotions in the Middle West. I think I congratulated myself on having been able to deal with New York, but I never won any of my struggles there, and I never responded with full human warmth to anything that happened there.”) “The University as Villain” in
The Nation
.
 
1957
Sondra gives birth to son Adam in January. Bellow at work on new novel based freely on former Barrytown landlord Chanler Chapman. Teaches spring term at University of Minnesota, where Berryman is on faculty. In the Bellows’ absence, Ralph and Fanny Ellison living at Tivoli house. In May, visits Richard Stern’s writing seminar at University of Chicago where he meets twenty-four-year-old Philip Roth, instructor of English and author of unpublished story “The Conversion of the Jews,” which Bellow admires. Fourth and final residency at Yaddo. Autumn semester at Northwestern.
 
1958
Continues work on novel based on Chapman, now called
Henderson the Rain King
. In Minneapolis again for autumn term.
 
1959
“Deep Readers of the World, Beware!” in
The New York Times Book Review
.
Henderson the Rain King
published in March. (“I was much criticized by reviewers for yielding to anarchic or mad impulses, and abandoning urban settings and Jewish themes. But I continue to insist that my subject ultimately was America.”) “The Swamp of Prosperity” (review of Philip Roth’s
Goodbye, Columbus
) in
Commentary
. Comes to know young fiction writer Alice Adams. At work on play variously entitled
Bummidge
,
The Upper Depths
,
Scenes from Humanitis
and, ultimately,
The Last Analysis
. Separates from Sondra.
 
1960
Sondra asks for divorce. Bellow does State Department lecture tour of Poland and Yugoslavia; Mary McCarthy also on tour. (“Saul and I parted good friends,” McCarthy afterward writes to Hannah Arendt, “though he is too wary and raw-nerved to be friends, really, even with people he decides to like. He is in better shape than he was in Poland, yet I felt very sorry for him when I saw him go off yesterday, all alone on his way to Italy, like Augie with a cocky sad smile disappearing into the distance.”) In Israel, meets S. Y. Agnon, greatest of modern Hebrew prose writers. Journeys to Naples, Rome, Paris, Edinburgh and Man-chester. In London, meets his new publisher, George Weidenfeld; reception in Bellow’s honor attended by Stephen Spender, Anthony Powell, Louis MacNeice, Karl Miller, J. B. Priestley and others. “The Sealed Treasure” in
Times Literary Supplement
. Begins work on novel
Herzog
. Founds
The Noble Savage
, quarterly magazine coedited with Keith Botsford and Jack Ludwig; contributors will include Ralph Ellison, Arthur Miller, Nelson Algren, Josephine Herbst, Harold Rosenberg, John Berryman, Howard Nemerov, Herbert Gold, Harvey Swados, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, Jules Feiffer, Edward Hoagland, B. H. Fried-man, Dan Wakefield, Cynthia Ozick, John Hollander, Donald Finkel, Seymour Krim, Thomas Berger, Marjorie Farber and Louis Gallo. Realizes Sondra has been having affair for more than a year with his colleague (and obsessive emulator) Jack Ludwig. Divorce from Sondra final in June. Bellow falls in love with Susan Glassman, daughter of prominent Chicago physician.
 
1961
Teaches spring term at the University of Puerto Rico. “Literary Notes on Khrushchev” in
Esquire
. Marries Susan Glassman in November and teaches autumn term at University of Chicago.
 
1962
“Facts That Put Fancy to Flight” in
The New York Times Book Review
. With other leading American writers and cultural figures, attends White House dinner to honor André Malraux. (President Kennedy, Bellow later remarks, “could be on good terms with the intellectuals because, thank God, he didn’t have to be one himself.”) Writes foreword to
An Age of Enormity
, Theodore Solotaroff ’s collection of essays by Rosenfeld. Northwestern awards Bellow honorary doctorate. “Scenes from Humanitis—A Farce,” early version of
The Last Analysis
, appears in
Partisan Review
. Bellow receives five-year appointment as professor in Committee on Social Thought at University of Chicago, where colleagues include sociologist Edward Shils, historian of religions Mircea Eliade and classicist David Grene. Death of William Faulkner. Co-teaches seminar, first of many, with Grene. In English department, novelist Richard Stern will be another close associate and friend. “Where Do We Go from Here? The Future of Fiction” in
Michigan Quarterly Review
. Writes movie reviews for Cyril Connolly’s
Horizon
.
 
1963
Childhood friend Oscar Tarcov dies of heart attack, aged forty-eight. Bellow publishes “The Writer as Moralist” in
Atlantic Monthly
. Honorary doctorate from Bard. Edits and provides introduction for anthology
Great Jewish Short Stories
. (“We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it—the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.”) Reviews
Beatrice Webb’s American Diary
in
The Nation
.
1964
Susan gives birth to son Daniel in March. Bellows spend summer on Martha’s Vineyard, where friends and acquaintances include Lillian Hellman, William and Rose Styron and Robert Brustein; Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen are houseguests.
Herzog
published in September. (“Herzog says, ‘What do you propose to do now that your wife has taken a lover? Pull Spinoza from the shelf and look into what he says about adultery? About human bondage?’ You discover, in other words, the inapplicability of your higher learning, the absurdity of the culture it cost you so much to acquire.”) Forty-two weeks on best-seller lists; one hundred forty-two thousand copies in hardcover.
The Last Analysis
premieres on Broadway in October at Belasco Theater. (“In
The Last Analysis
a clown is driven to thought, and, like modern painters, poets, and musicians before him, turns into a theoretician. I have always had a weakness for autodidacts and amateur philosophers and scientists, and enjoy observing the democratic diffusion of high culture.”) Reviews negative; closes after twenty-eight performances. In October, Pascal Covici, trusted editor at Viking after Engel’s departure, dies of heart attack. Bellow donates Tivoli house to Bard College.
 
1965
Catharine Carver now Bellow’s editor at Viking. “A Wen,” one-act play, appears in
Esquire
. Awarded National Book Award for
Herzog
; accepting it, says: “Without the common world the novelist is nothing but a curiosity and will find himself in a glass case along some dull museum corridor of the future.” Mayor Richard J. Daley confers five-hundred-dollar prize on behalf of Society of Midland Authors. (Bellow later remarks: “Art is not the mayor’s dish. Indeed, why should it be? I much prefer his neglect to the kind of interest Stalin took in poetry.”) In June, attends White House festival of the arts, boycotted by Edmund Wilson, Robert Lowell and others. In the East Room, reads aloud from
Herzog
; John Hersey reads from
Hiroshima
; Dwight Macdonald circulates antiwar petition among festival participants. (President Johnson says afterward: “They insult me by comin’, they insult me by stayin’ away.”) Bellow spends second summer on Martha’, Vineyard. Receives Formentor Prize. “Orange Soufflé,” another one-act play, in
Esquire
.
 
1966
Lengthy
Paris Review
interview, conducted by Gordon Lloyd Harper. Dramatized version of
Seize the Day
, directed by Herbert Berghof and starring Mike Nichols as Tommy Wilhelm, performed in workshop at Theatre of Ideas. Bellow accepts assignment from
Life
to write profile of Robert F. Kennedy, then candidate for Senate from New York; abandons project after discouraging week in Kennedy’s entourage. Delivers ill-received keynote at PEN Congress in New York: “We have at present a large literary community and something we can call,
faute de mieux
, a literary culture, in my opinion a very bad one.” Meets Margaret Staats. Evening of one-acts,
Under the Weather
, premieres at Fortune Theatre, London, to generally favorable reviews. Delmore Schwartz dies in July.
Under the Weather
on Broadway in October at Cort Theater, starring Shelley Winters; reviews savage; closes in less than two weeks. Separates from wife Susan. Begins work on novel
Mr. Sammler’s Planet.
Upon departure of Catharine Carver, Denver Lindley becomes his editor at Viking.
 
1967
Travels to Middle East to cover Six-Day War for
Newsday
. (“Many of the dead are barefooted, having thrown off their shoes in flight. Only a few have helmets. Some wear the headdress. After leaving Gaza, I saw no live Egyptians except for a group of captured snipers lying bound and blindfolded in a truck. The tent dwellers had run off. Their shelters of old sacking and tatters of plastic were unoccupied, with only a few dogs sniffing about and the flies, of course, in great prosperity.”) Balance of summer at East Hampton, New York, where Saul Steinberg and Harold Rosenberg are among his friends. Delivers “Skepticism and the Depth of Life” at various American colleges and universities.
 
1968
Spring in Oaxaca with Maggie Staats; summer in East Hampton. In September at Villa Serbelloni, Rockefeller Foundation retreat at Lake Como, where he befriends young poet Louise Glück. Childhood friend Louis Sidran dies of cancer.
Mosby’s Memoirs
, collection of stories, published in October. Divorce from Susan. Aaron Asher succeeds Denver Lindley as Bellow’s editor at Viking. In London, confers with George Weidenfeld, his British publisher. Chance meeting with Graham Greene. Death of John Steinbeck in December.
 
1969
In January, Josephine Herbst dies. Bellow enters treatment with Heinz Kohut, Chicago-based founder of influential “self-psychology” school of psychoanalysis. Returns in June to Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio; August on Nantucket.
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
published in back-to-back issues of
Atlantic Monthly
.

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