Authors: Saul Bellow
Letters (71 page)
The Dean
is strange, I don’t deny it, and I try to understand what it signifies to have written it and what the reactions of readers and reviewers signify. It’s charitable of you to speak of “uncharitable” reviews. [Hugh] Kenner was openly anti-Semitic. He won’t set off a wave of Jew-hatred but it’s curious that he should decide to come out openly in his Eliot-Pound anti-Semitic regalia. Perhaps he thinks it can be done now. What interests me much more than what he thinks is the effect of the Eliot-Pound phenomenon, the deadly madness at the heart of “tradition” and “culture” as represented by those two. One had to defend poor Pound against philistine, savage America—that was tantamount to protecting art itself. What Pound was actually
saying
didn’t so much matter. This was what the literary people defending him assume. A poet might be great despite his obsessions with Usura, Major Douglas, Mussolini, Jews. This was the line taken after the War by literary intellectuals. The inevitable corollary was that the poet’s convictions could be separated from his poetry. It was thus possible to segregate the glory from the shame. Then you took possession of the glory in the name of “culture” and kept the malignancies as pets. (In a democracy you can’t take away the right to harbor malignancies.) So we now have Mr. K[enner] with all the credit he has inherited from the Modernist Masters, their cultural glamour, crying “Sic ’em” to his Jew-biting dogs and turning them loose on me.
is strange, I don’t deny it, and I try to understand what it signifies to have written it and what the reactions of readers and reviewers signify. It’s charitable of you to speak of “uncharitable” reviews. [Hugh] Kenner was openly anti-Semitic. He won’t set off a wave of Jew-hatred but it’s curious that he should decide to come out openly in his Eliot-Pound anti-Semitic regalia. Perhaps he thinks it can be done now. What interests me much more than what he thinks is the effect of the Eliot-Pound phenomenon, the deadly madness at the heart of “tradition” and “culture” as represented by those two. One had to defend poor Pound against philistine, savage America—that was tantamount to protecting art itself. What Pound was actually
saying
didn’t so much matter. This was what the literary people defending him assume. A poet might be great despite his obsessions with Usura, Major Douglas, Mussolini, Jews. This was the line taken after the War by literary intellectuals. The inevitable corollary was that the poet’s convictions could be separated from his poetry. It was thus possible to segregate the glory from the shame. Then you took possession of the glory in the name of “culture” and kept the malignancies as pets. (In a democracy you can’t take away the right to harbor malignancies.) So we now have Mr. K[enner] with all the credit he has inherited from the Modernist Masters, their cultural glamour, crying “Sic ’em” to his Jew-biting dogs and turning them loose on me.
Matters are no better on the left. I anticipated its accusations, too—for which I claim no great credit, it was very easy. I was old, I had gone dry and didactic, I was a neo-conservative, I had abandoned the novel, I was mentally too weak to handle ideas, I had capitulated, I was a fink. No one was willing to face the simple proposition or question: Is this the way we live now or isn’t it?
Well, enough of that.
I haven’t been able to decide about your invitation. For one thing I can’t remember what it was, exactly, and I didn’t bring your letter to Canada. For another, I wore out my treads (or threads), I was exhausted by the
Dean
. I expect to feel stronger presently. We’re returning to Chicago next week. Will you bear with me a little longer?
Dean
. I expect to feel stronger presently. We’re returning to Chicago next week. Will you bear with me a little longer?
Best wishes,
Robert Boyers is the founding editor of
Salmagundi
and author of, among other works,
Atrocity and Amnesia
(1985). On a visit to Northwestern in the spring term of 1982, he had encountered students critical of the “ factual accuracy” of
The Dean’s December
. In the highly publicized court case on which Bellow partly based his novel, a black man and woman were charged with having murdered a white University of Chicago student by pushing him from the window of his third-story apartment. In the course of the trial, which generated support for the defendants among student radicals, an undergraduate was charged with threatening witnesses, one of whom had been shot at. Hugh Kenner’s disparaging review of Bellow’s novel, “From Lower Bellowvia,” had appeared in
Harper’s.
Salmagundi
and author of, among other works,
Atrocity and Amnesia
(1985). On a visit to Northwestern in the spring term of 1982, he had encountered students critical of the “ factual accuracy” of
The Dean’s December
. In the highly publicized court case on which Bellow partly based his novel, a black man and woman were charged with having murdered a white University of Chicago student by pushing him from the window of his third-story apartment. In the course of the trial, which generated support for the defendants among student radicals, an undergraduate was charged with threatening witnesses, one of whom had been shot at. Hugh Kenner’s disparaging review of Bellow’s novel, “From Lower Bellowvia,” had appeared in
Harper’s.
To Eileen Simpson
April 10, 1982 Chicago
Dear Eileen:
Your splendid book reached me in Canada and I read it at once. I put off writing to you about it for all kinds of reasons. The Canadian mails are notorious. Letters had been lost. I wanted time to think. There was no hurry, really. The fact was that although I luxuriated in your reconstructed Forties the pleasure was also painful and heavy. Those were not at all the good old days out of which our reputations grew, they were bad times. What was worst about them for me I was reluctant to face, understandably. Then, and later, I declined to examine the phenomena. What were John [Berryman] and Delmore and Cal [Lowell] about, really? I admired their poems, I relished their company; but I was so deeply immersed in my own puzzles, programs, problems that I drove past in my dream-car . . . Something like that. Not without feeling, no; I certainly felt for them but I was a thousand times less attentive than I was capable of being. It came home to me sharply as I read your memoir. I suppose that if John and Delmore hadn’t been such entertainers, comic charmers, stylists, if they hadn’t had hundreds of intriguing tricks in presenting themselves . . . But really it does no good, this remorse for being so
like
them. Was I to be some singular moral genius, or super-psychologist? Moral geniuses were not in great supply. Your book, then, took me by surprise. I hadn’t known, I couldn’t have known, what you knew. Besides I hadn’t the patience, in my thirties and forties and fifties, to investigate. I can start now. I have started. A project to close out with.
like
them. Was I to be some singular moral genius, or super-psychologist? Moral geniuses were not in great supply. Your book, then, took me by surprise. I hadn’t known, I couldn’t have known, what you knew. Besides I hadn’t the patience, in my thirties and forties and fifties, to investigate. I can start now. I have started. A project to close out with.
One trifling oddity: I too was interviewed by Whittaker Chambers [for a job at
Time
], introduced to him by [James] Agee. He quarreled with me in the same absurd way. With me the pretext was Wordsworth. I suspect that Agee was aware that he was sending hopeless cases to Chambers who baited and dismissed them. Did those two have an arrangement? Funny that John and I should never have discussed this. Agee was saintly, and Chambers prophetic and both did the work of Henry Luce . . . John and I missed that one. Perhaps he would have disagreed with me, as he did about [Edmund] Wilson and, in some degree, [Allen] Tate. But we needn’t go into that here. Sufficient to say (as my paper gives out) that you’ve written a book of permanent value, a fascinating book. I hope it will have the success it deserves and I send you my affectionate congratulations and thanks (for enlightening me).
Time
], introduced to him by [James] Agee. He quarreled with me in the same absurd way. With me the pretext was Wordsworth. I suspect that Agee was aware that he was sending hopeless cases to Chambers who baited and dismissed them. Did those two have an arrangement? Funny that John and I should never have discussed this. Agee was saintly, and Chambers prophetic and both did the work of Henry Luce . . . John and I missed that one. Perhaps he would have disagreed with me, as he did about [Edmund] Wilson and, in some degree, [Allen] Tate. But we needn’t go into that here. Sufficient to say (as my paper gives out) that you’ve written a book of permanent value, a fascinating book. I hope it will have the success it deserves and I send you my affectionate congratulations and thanks (for enlightening me).
Yours ever,
Eileen Simpson had just published
Poets in Their Youth
, a memoir about her marriage to Berryman including also portraits of R. P. Blackmur, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz, Jean Stafford and Robert Lowell.
Poets in Their Youth
, a memoir about her marriage to Berryman including also portraits of R. P. Blackmur, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz, Jean Stafford and Robert Lowell.
To Anthony Hecht
May 20, 1982 Chicago
Dear Tony:
A few years back Red Warren said to me, “Still giving lectures? Bad idea.” I fell into a sulk when he said this but as my sixty-seventh birthday approaches (or I approach it in the sense that a fellow jumping from the top of the Empire State approaches the sixty-seventh floor) I better understand his opinion. Write a lecture, board a plane, see one old friend, yes, but also a very large platoon of non-friends, including followers of Lacan and de Man each of whom can be identified by a rictus of jeering rejection. Add to this an incomprehensible failure to agree on the simplest fundamentals not alone of literature but also of politics, sex, drink, nutrition; abrasive seminar rooms; dinners that will not end, etc. I used to wag through all this with puppy vitality, knocking down bricabrac with my tail, but now . . . (why say it?). You and I and your wife will sit down in a nice carpeted and quiet bar and talk of old [Chanler] Chapman and Irma B[randeis].
Yrs fondly,
Irma Brandeis (1905-90) was a colleague of Bellow’s and Hecht’s at Bard, where she taught Romance languages. Author of
The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante’s Comedy
(1960), she had been in the 1930s the muse and lover of Eugenio Montale, greatest of twentieth-century Italian poets. A gratuitous insult to Brandeis by Bellow in the early 1950s would haunt him for decades until he expiated it in his long comic story “Him with His Foot in His Mouth,” published in
Atlantic Monthly
in November 1982.
The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante’s Comedy
(1960), she had been in the 1930s the muse and lover of Eugenio Montale, greatest of twentieth-century Italian poets. A gratuitous insult to Brandeis by Bellow in the early 1950s would haunt him for decades until he expiated it in his long comic story “Him with His Foot in His Mouth,” published in
Atlantic Monthly
in November 1982.
To Margaret Shafer
May 21, 1982 Chicago
Dear Margaret—
Your note did me much good.
The Dean
made many enemies. The powers of darkness were attracted. I seem to send impulses they readily pick up. Perhaps I should consider more earnestly what
that
signifies.
The Dean
made many enemies. The powers of darkness were attracted. I seem to send impulses they readily pick up. Perhaps I should consider more earnestly what
that
signifies.
When C[hanler] Chapman died the
N.Y. Times
tried to get me to certify that he was the original Henderson, and I declined to comment. But I’ve often thought, half guilty, half amused, that I’d suggested to Chanler how he might emerge from chaos, I’d solved his “identity-problem”; and that although I’d given him some
formal
assistance I hadn’t made him more kindly or pleasant. If anything, I’d suggested new forms of hysteria, cunning and aggression. After the book appeared he would come to Tivoli to visit me in his truck. But he was always incoherent—a non-angelic Billy Budd. The purpose of his incoherency was to startle, or frighten. What an oddity he was.
N.Y. Times
tried to get me to certify that he was the original Henderson, and I declined to comment. But I’ve often thought, half guilty, half amused, that I’d suggested to Chanler how he might emerge from chaos, I’d solved his “identity-problem”; and that although I’d given him some
formal
assistance I hadn’t made him more kindly or pleasant. If anything, I’d suggested new forms of hysteria, cunning and aggression. After the book appeared he would come to Tivoli to visit me in his truck. But he was always incoherent—a non-angelic Billy Budd. The purpose of his incoherency was to startle, or frighten. What an oddity he was.
Please remember me to Irma [Brandeis]—I didn’t know of her tender attachment to cyclamens. It doesn’t surprise me [ . . . ]
All best,
Mrs. Shafer had remarked in her letter that like Albert Corde, hero of
The Dean’s December
, Irma Brandeis was a cultivator of cyclamens.
The Dean’s December
, Irma Brandeis was a cultivator of cyclamens.
To Louis Lasco
May 29, 1982 [Chicago]
Dear Polykarp:
Many thanks for the poetical greetings. We missed you at the Tuley reunion. Not all the classmates were well. Bananas Landau didn’t seem quite himself, although physically not greatly changed. With many it was, “We meet again—and so farewell.” My sharpshooting memory brought down
scores
of targets. The ladies were flattered. “You knew me!” One was from the third grade at Lafayette.
scores
of targets. The ladies were flattered. “You knew me!” One was from the third grade at Lafayette.
I hope you’re happy in retirement, and haven’t retired on all fronts.
Yours ever,
Gapon Khoraschevsky
To Eleanor Clark
May 30, 1982 Chicago
Dear Eleanor—
I sh’d think Paolo Milano would answer your questions about [G. G.] Belli. He hasn’t answered my letters. The reasons? Ill health, bitterness, general shrinkage. A cook-butler-valet takes care of him, a short peasant, a discreet death-watch kind of man. Paolo is so stooped by now that he has to force his gaze upwards when he wants to look at you. He reads more than ever—i.e. continually—and shares his bed with books. But you don’t want all this, only his address.
I think I’ll be able to give some money to Yaddo. A man named Brown, in N.Y., says he can sell some of my manuscripts.
We look forward with pleasure to the summer and our annual meetings.
Affectionately,
To Alfred Kazin
June 7, 1982 W. Halifax
Dear Alfred,
A happy birthday to you, and admiration and love and long life—everything. Never mind this and that, this and that don’t matter much in the summing up.
Love from your junior by five days,
Your daughter is a charming young woman. We had drinks together in Chicago two weeks ago.
To Marion Meade
June 16, 1982 W. Halifax, Vermont
Dear Ms. Meade,
Dorothy Parker was the nicest of all the participants in the
Esquire
symposium mainly because she was the quietest. Miss Parker was far from young when we first met and seemed depressed when she didn’t, more sharply, appear heartbroken. I can’t remember that we ever had a personal conversation although I met her on several occasions. We were occasionally invited by Lillian Hellman for tea, and Lillian and Dashiell Hammett did most of the talking. I said little because these great figures were my seniors and Miss Parker said little because she was evidently downcast.
Esquire
symposium mainly because she was the quietest. Miss Parker was far from young when we first met and seemed depressed when she didn’t, more sharply, appear heartbroken. I can’t remember that we ever had a personal conversation although I met her on several occasions. We were occasionally invited by Lillian Hellman for tea, and Lillian and Dashiell Hammett did most of the talking. I said little because these great figures were my seniors and Miss Parker said little because she was evidently downcast.
Sincerely,
Biographer Marion Meade was researching
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
which would be published in 1988.
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
which would be published in 1988.
To Nathan Gould
August 4, 1982 W. Halifax, Vermont
Dear Natie:
[ . . . ] I attended the Tuley reunion and it was a depressing affair, on the whole—elderly people nostalgic for youth and the Depression years. There seemed nothing for them (for us) to do but to turn into middle-class Americans, all supplied with the same phrases and thoughts from the same sources. Some came from far away (Rudy Lapp from Oakland, Cal.) and some were crippled and required wheeling. Some, built for stability, appeared not greatly changed, like Bernice Meyer Landau. Her brother [Bananas] who seemed well preserved turned out to have a hereditary disorder affecting his memory so that he was groping, while we talked, and his new wife was deeply uneasy (but behaving well). As for some of the others you name, I haven’t seen Passin in some years. We had lunch in Chicago four or five years ago and he was in many respects like a Japanese mask, a bright man but devious. Freifeld a stumbling old chaser and thoroughly undistinguished lawyer. Melancholy. Miserable. George Reedy, whom I used to see in Washington when he was Johnson’s press secretary, has remained lively and quite original. He’s Dean of the Journalism School at Marquette, in Milwaukee. But my closest friends were Oscar and Isaac, dead for many years. In every decade I try to think what they might have been like had they lived.
As for me, Natie, I have become a sort of public man, which was not at all my intent. I thought, in my adolescent way, that I would write good books (as writing and books were understood in the Thirties) and would have been happy in the middle ranks of my trade. It would have made me wretched to be overlooked, but I wasn’t at all prepared for so much notice, and I haven’t been good at managing “celebrity.” That’s a long story and I shan’t go into details. I can’t do the many things I’m asked to do, answer the huge volume of mail, keep up with books and manuscripts and at the same time write such things as I want and need to write. I write to you because I remember you so vividly and affectionately from the old days, and I would feel alienated from my own history,
false
, if I didn’t make time (something like creating a dry spot under this Niagara of mail). I’m delighted to hear from you, I’d be happy to see you, we could talk for many evenings. But to write an introduction for the collection of Mr. [Arthur] Leipzig, clearly a distinguished photographer, I would have to put aside my own manuscripts—give up my frontline defenses against chaos.
false
, if I didn’t make time (something like creating a dry spot under this Niagara of mail). I’m delighted to hear from you, I’d be happy to see you, we could talk for many evenings. But to write an introduction for the collection of Mr. [Arthur] Leipzig, clearly a distinguished photographer, I would have to put aside my own manuscripts—give up my frontline defenses against chaos.
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