Saul Bellow's Heart (26 page)
While it was difficult to hear criticism, in almost every instance I moved to address the shortcomings pointed out by Robert Cornfield, Ramsay Breslin, Elise Miller, Elizabeth Stein, and the members of the San Francisco Bay Area Psycho-biography Study Group, who correctly found fault in draft after draft while urging me forward.
As those years of writing in solitude came to an end, Kimberly Witherspoon of Inkwell Management, ably assisted by
William Callahan, saw an elegant little book therein and Nancy Miller of Bloomsbury found a memoir that, with her help and that of Lea Beresford as well, I am pleased to have completed.
A thank-you for waiting is due to many who checked their curiosity and were patient until a very picky author was satisfied. They are my children, Juliet and Andrew; my brothers, Adam and Dan; my stepmothers Sasha and Alexandra; my cousin Lesha; Miriam Tarcov; and friends and relatives with whom I have spoken during the five years I have been working on a book that I hope will touch them as well.
Lescha and her children, 1918. Left to right: Saul, Lescha, Morris (rear), Samuel, and Jane.
Anita Goshkin at sixteen.
Saul at sixteen.
Saul and Anita, 1937.
Ethel and Benjamin Freifeld. (Courtesy of Judith Freifeld Ward)
Sam Freifeld.
Herb and Cora Passin.
Saul with Oscar and Edith Tarcov.
Saul, Anita, and Harold “Kappy” Kaplan, 1940.
Saul and Greg, 1945.
Greg and Grandma Goshkin.
Isaac Rosenfeld and daughter, Nitza.
