Letters (58 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Then he speaks of John as a “poetry-making machine” and so forth. Boyd’s all right, one of the Minnesota pals and all of that, but there’s something amiss with John’s disaster as confirmation of the views on life and society of a sophisticated medical gentleman—“elevating the potential of paranoia.” It rather scares me to see how very satisfactory John’s life and death can be from a certain point of view.
On this green and sunlit Colorado afternoon, that’ll be enough of that.
You’re entirely right about these great spaces and the psychic damage they do. Let’s repair some of this damage in November. Gregory and his wife are making a grandfather of me then and I shall come out [to California]. Herb and Mitzie will be gone, but the rest of us can, and should, have a grand party. I’ll keep in touch.
Yours affectionately,
Bellow had contributed a foreword to Berryman’s unfinished, posthumously published novel,
Recovery
(1973). Boyd Thomes, M.D., was Berryman’s doctor in Minneapolis.
Recovery
(1973). Boyd Thomes, M.D., was Berryman’s doctor in Minneapolis.
To Margaret Staats
September 14, 1973 [Chicago]
Where am I? I wish I knew. I’m going to be in New York next week. What about Sat. afternoon? I’ll telephone.
I hear that [—] is a women’s lib fighter. So is Susan Bellow. I am glad that these poor abused women are fighting back. I am for them a hundred per cent and think their demands should be met in full and at once. In court last week I pleaded for eight hours. I wanted the judge to realize that Susan is a freedom fighter. She belongs to some sort of national women’s organization.
Only she doesn’t agree with the alimony plank in the platform.
Love and kisses,
To Evelyn
[?]
[?]
December 14, 1973 Chicago
Dear Evelyn—
I was visiting with cousin Louie Dworkin the other night, and when he spoke of you I found that I could recall you vividly. You had one blue eye and one brown eye, and you were a charming gentle girl in a fur (raccoon?) coat. I thought you might like to know how memorable you were, so I asked cousin Louie (who loves you dearly) for your address, and I take this occasion to send you every good wish.
1974
To
The New York Times
The New York Times
January 7, 1974 Chicago, Ill.
To the Editor:
Andrei Sakharov and four other Soviet intellectuals have appealed to “decent people throughout the world” to try to protect Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from persecution.
The word “hero,” long in disrepute, has been redeemed by Solzhenitsyn. He has had the courage, the power of mind and the strength of spirit to speak the truth to the entire world. He is a man of perfect intellectual honor and, in his moral strength, he is peculiarly Russian. To the best Russian writers of this hellish century it has been perfectly clear that only the power of the truth is equal to the power of the state.
It is to be hoped that the Brezhnevs and the Kosygins will be capable of grasping what the behavior of such a man means to the civilized world. Persecution of Solzhenitsyn, deportation, confinement in a madhouse or exile will be taken as final evidence of complete moral degeneracy in the Soviet regime.
We cannot expect our diplomats to abandon their policy of
détente
(whatever that may mean) or our great corporations to break their business contracts with Russia, but physicists and mathematicians, biologists, engineers, artists and intellectuals should make it clear that they stand by Solzhenitsyn. It would be the completest betrayal of principle to fail him. Since America is the Soviet Government’s partner in
détente,
Americans have a special responsibility in this matter.
détente
(whatever that may mean) or our great corporations to break their business contracts with Russia, but physicists and mathematicians, biologists, engineers, artists and intellectuals should make it clear that they stand by Solzhenitsyn. It would be the completest betrayal of principle to fail him. Since America is the Soviet Government’s partner in
détente,
Americans have a special responsibility in this matter.
What Solzhenitsyn has done in revealing the unchecked brutality of Stalinism, he has done also for us. He has reminded every one of us what we owe to truth.
To Alfred Kazin
March 20, 1974 Chicago
Dear Alfred:
Your letter came on a day when I had a genuine grief, and that helped me to keep matters in perspective. [ . . . ] I have never met Mr. [Philip] Nobile. I can’t remember that I ever wrote to him or spoke to him. Are you sure that I did say the things he attributes to me? Have you any real evidence that I actually said them—whatever they are? By living in Chicago I hoped to avoid all this sort of literary nastiness but there’s evidently no way to avoid it. So far as I can see this sort of slander and idiocy is all the literary culture we have left.
It’s true that I didn’t like your review of
Sammler
. I didn’t dislike it more than other pieces of yours, but I disliked it. It appeared more than a year after publication of the book and I had heard that an earlier and more friendly review had been rejected by the editors, but knowing what gossip is I did not take this to be a fact. It was the conclusion of your piece—“God lives!”—that offended me. You meant evidently that I was a megalomaniac. But this didn’t seem to me to be literary criticism. About my books you may say what you like. (I seldom reply either to praise or to blame, which is why you heard no “peep” out of me when you wrote the introduction to
Seize the Day
—was an acknowledgment necessary?) For that matter, you may say what you please about my character, too. You haven’t much gift for satire and “God lives!” didn’t hurt much. What offended me was that you were not reviewing my novel, you were saying that its author was a wickedly deluded lunatic. As for [V. S.] Pritchett, I may not have cared much for his opinion of
Herzog
and perhaps I muttered in my whiskers about it. That again is no great matter. But how do
you
know what I said? And why didn’t you ask me, as an old friend, whether I had really expressed myself in that manner? Your complaint is based on nothing but silliness, gossip and slander.
Sammler
. I didn’t dislike it more than other pieces of yours, but I disliked it. It appeared more than a year after publication of the book and I had heard that an earlier and more friendly review had been rejected by the editors, but knowing what gossip is I did not take this to be a fact. It was the conclusion of your piece—“God lives!”—that offended me. You meant evidently that I was a megalomaniac. But this didn’t seem to me to be literary criticism. About my books you may say what you like. (I seldom reply either to praise or to blame, which is why you heard no “peep” out of me when you wrote the introduction to
Seize the Day
—was an acknowledgment necessary?) For that matter, you may say what you please about my character, too. You haven’t much gift for satire and “God lives!” didn’t hurt much. What offended me was that you were not reviewing my novel, you were saying that its author was a wickedly deluded lunatic. As for [V. S.] Pritchett, I may not have cared much for his opinion of
Herzog
and perhaps I muttered in my whiskers about it. That again is no great matter. But how do
you
know what I said? And why didn’t you ask me, as an old friend, whether I had really expressed myself in that manner? Your complaint is based on nothing but silliness, gossip and slander.
I know my own sins well enough. They distress me, and I struggle with them. You may not believe this but I can, oddly enough, bear to be corrected. Unfortunately, I found nothing very helpful in your letter. Nor does your huffiness at the Century Club contribute much to the improvement of my character or the progress of the species.
“Though He Slay Me . . . ,” Kazin’s review of
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
, had appeared in
The New York Review of Books.
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
, had appeared in
The New York Review of Books.
To Daniel Fuchs
April 10, 1974 Chicago
Dear Daniel—
What do I think? For one thing you know modern literature; for another you write intelligently; you correctly describe the course I took and my view of modernism; you are right about my Flaubertian and Lawrencian criticism; not quite right about my hostility towards Eliot—Eliot I respect more than you would guess, but on the evidence you are correct.
This having been said, let me add that I don’t like to read about myself—I recoil from it, heart and bowels. That is, in its own way, self-criticism. I’m not ready for judgment, the facts aren’t in; I know I’ve done wrong; we haven’t gotten to the pith and nucleus yet. We’re seeing the limbs, the heart and belly aren’t in the picture yet (etc.). Why so slow? I can’t say. Maybe it’s the situation; maybe a certain timidity or tardiness or sluggishness or laziness—or sleep (Henderson, via Shelley, wants to burst the spirit’s sleep). But you should know that I have learned (gathered, inferred) one awful thing from you. This is that I’ve been arguing too much—debating, infighting, polemicizing. The real thing is unfathomable. You can’t get it down to distinct or clear opinion. Sensing this, I have always had intelligence enough (or the intuition) to put humor between myself and final claims. And that hasn’t been enough by any means. Hattie in “The Yellow House” and
Henderson
and “The Old System” seem to me my most interesting things because they are not argued. You’ve made me see this more plainly and I’m much obliged.
Sammler
isn’t even a novel. It’s a dramatic essay of some sort, wrung from me by the crazy Sixties. The trouble, in these mad times, is that so many adjustments and examinations have to be made for the sake of some balance and nothing else, and the expenditure of mental energy for mere equilibrium is too costly.
Henderson
and “The Old System” seem to me my most interesting things because they are not argued. You’ve made me see this more plainly and I’m much obliged.
Sammler
isn’t even a novel. It’s a dramatic essay of some sort, wrung from me by the crazy Sixties. The trouble, in these mad times, is that so many adjustments and examinations have to be made for the sake of some balance and nothing else, and the expenditure of mental energy for mere equilibrium is too costly.
Anyway—many thanks and good luck.
Daniel Fuchs’s
Saul Bellow: Vision and Revision
would appear in 1984. It remains among the best accounts of Bellow’s work.
Saul Bellow: Vision and Revision
would appear in 1984. It remains among the best accounts of Bellow’s work.
To Ann Birstein
May 22, 1974 Chicago
Dear Ann—
My correspondence with Alfred was disagreeable, so I didn’t associate you with it at all. You and I have never had disagreeable relations. I hope we never shall.
There used to be something like a literary life in this country, but the mad, ferocious Sixties tore it all to bits. Nothing remains but gossip and touchiness and anger. I’m past being distressed by it—I mean merely distressed.
So there it is! Nobody will speak for you to me. One of these days I hope we will have our own private conversation. It’s been a long time.
As ever,
To Lionel Trilling
July 7, 1974 [Carboneras, Almería, Spain]
Dear Lionel:
You may think me silly when you read a piece I’ve written for
Harper’s
. I’ve had regretful second thoughts about it, myself. Such remarks as I make about you are based solely on your
Commentary
essay “Authenticity and the Modern Unconscious” and refer only to the first part and the impossibility of being held “spellbound.” It was certainly wrong of me not to read the whole book before sounding off. I feel guilty—no, that won’t do—I feel remorseful about it. You do, however, appear to agree with the views of Eliot and Walter Benjamin, and you do say that the narrative past has lost its authenticating power, and perhaps you are too ready to take for permanent what I see to be a mood. What is permanent in this age of upheavals is hard to make out, but I am reluctant to grant moods their second papers. For writers the most important question is simply, What is interesting? I try, inadequately and frivolously, to say something in my article about what it is that intellectuals do or do not find interesting. I’ve thrown no light on this, and perhaps I’ve even thickened the darkness a little, but the matter was worth mentioning. I take it we agree, as square old liberals, that without individuals human life ends in a cold glutinous porridge—despite our different opinions as to what makes an “identity.” Freudian theory is, to me, another story, albeit a fascinating one. I take the Unconscious to be what we don’t know, and don’t see that it advances us much to take this unknown psychologically. Why not metaphysically? However, I prefer to remain an amateur in these matters. What I wish to say here is that it was idiotic of me to fix on one chapter of your book. I shall get a copy of it when I come back from Spain later in the month and read it attentively.
Harper’s
. I’ve had regretful second thoughts about it, myself. Such remarks as I make about you are based solely on your
Commentary
essay “Authenticity and the Modern Unconscious” and refer only to the first part and the impossibility of being held “spellbound.” It was certainly wrong of me not to read the whole book before sounding off. I feel guilty—no, that won’t do—I feel remorseful about it. You do, however, appear to agree with the views of Eliot and Walter Benjamin, and you do say that the narrative past has lost its authenticating power, and perhaps you are too ready to take for permanent what I see to be a mood. What is permanent in this age of upheavals is hard to make out, but I am reluctant to grant moods their second papers. For writers the most important question is simply, What is interesting? I try, inadequately and frivolously, to say something in my article about what it is that intellectuals do or do not find interesting. I’ve thrown no light on this, and perhaps I’ve even thickened the darkness a little, but the matter was worth mentioning. I take it we agree, as square old liberals, that without individuals human life ends in a cold glutinous porridge—despite our different opinions as to what makes an “identity.” Freudian theory is, to me, another story, albeit a fascinating one. I take the Unconscious to be what we don’t know, and don’t see that it advances us much to take this unknown psychologically. Why not metaphysically? However, I prefer to remain an amateur in these matters. What I wish to say here is that it was idiotic of me to fix on one chapter of your book. I shall get a copy of it when I come back from Spain later in the month and read it attentively.
Yours apologetically,
Trilling’s essay in
Commentary
was an excerpt from his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, published in book form as
Sincerity and Authenticity
. Bellow’s essay in
Harper’s
was “Machines and Storybooks,” to which Trilling would respond angrily, ending all contact between them.
Commentary
was an excerpt from his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, published in book form as
Sincerity and Authenticity
. Bellow’s essay in
Harper’s
was “Machines and Storybooks,” to which Trilling would respond angrily, ending all contact between them.
To David Peltz
July 14, 1974 [Carboneras, Almería, Spain]
Dear David,
I’m sorry you feel hurt. I’m baffled as well. Three years ago Bette [Howland] told you that I was writing about you. You were angry and forbade it. It wasn’t
you
who were the subject. People have written about me. Their me is not me. It couldn’t matter less. What matters is that good things be written. Dear God, how we need them! [ . . . ] I promised not to write Your Life. But this was all I
could
promise. We’ve known each other forty-five years and told each other thousands and thousands of anecdotes. And now, on two bars suggested by one of your anecdotes, I blew a riff. Riffs are irrepressible. Furthermore, no one should repress them. I created two characters and added the toilets and the Playboy Club and the fence and the skyscraper. What harm is there in that? Your facts are unharmed by my version. Writers, artists, friends, are not the Chicago Title and Trust Company or the Material Supply Corp. These aren’t questions of property, are they? It might even make you happy that in this world writers still
exist
. And I should think it would touch you that I was moved to put a hand on your shoulder and wanted to remember you as I took off for the moon. For what you think is so major is really quite minor, a small feel taken by your goofy friend to reassure him as he got going. Your facts, three or four of them, got me off the ground. You can’t grudge me that and still be Dave Peltz.
you
who were the subject. People have written about me. Their me is not me. It couldn’t matter less. What matters is that good things be written. Dear God, how we need them! [ . . . ] I promised not to write Your Life. But this was all I
could
promise. We’ve known each other forty-five years and told each other thousands and thousands of anecdotes. And now, on two bars suggested by one of your anecdotes, I blew a riff. Riffs are irrepressible. Furthermore, no one should repress them. I created two characters and added the toilets and the Playboy Club and the fence and the skyscraper. What harm is there in that? Your facts are unharmed by my version. Writers, artists, friends, are not the Chicago Title and Trust Company or the Material Supply Corp. These aren’t questions of property, are they? It might even make you happy that in this world writers still
exist
. And I should think it would touch you that I was moved to put a hand on your shoulder and wanted to remember you as I took off for the moon. For what you think is so major is really quite minor, a small feel taken by your goofy friend to reassure him as he got going. Your facts, three or four of them, got me off the ground. You can’t grudge me that and still be Dave Peltz.
Now, David the nice old man who wants his collection of memory-toys to play with in old age is not you! You harm yourself with such fantasies. For the name of the game is not Social Security. What an error! Social Security is an entirely different game. The name of the game is Give All. You are welcome to all my facts. You know them, I give them to you. If you have the strength to pick them up, take them with my blessing. Touch them with your imagination and I will kiss your hands. What, trunk-loads and hoards of raw material? What you fear as the
risk
of friendship, namely that I may take from the wonderful hoard, is really the risk of friendship because I have the power to lift a tuft of wool from a bush and make something of it. I learned, I paid my tuition most painfully. So I know how to transform common matter. And when I give that transformation, has that no value for you? How many people in Gary, Chicago, the USA, can you look to for that, David? As for me, I long for others to do it. I thirst for it. So should you.
risk
of friendship, namely that I may take from the wonderful hoard, is really the risk of friendship because I have the power to lift a tuft of wool from a bush and make something of it. I learned, I paid my tuition most painfully. So I know how to transform common matter. And when I give that transformation, has that no value for you? How many people in Gary, Chicago, the USA, can you look to for that, David? As for me, I long for others to do it. I thirst for it. So should you.
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