Saul Bellow_ Letters Part 37

Ladislas Farago (1906-1980) was the author of many World War II histories including Patton: Ordeal and Triumph Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (1964) and (1964) and Aftermath: The Search for Martin Bormann Aftermath: The Search for Martin Bormann (1974). (1974).

To Edward Shils September 3, 1978 Chicago My dear Edward: Vicissitudes, yes, or perhaps the increasing contrariness of elderly friends-but it is a friendship and we both know it, and it sustains me in times of trouble. I can bear my difficulties pretty well; I am certainly equal to them mentally. I am not quite in control of them emotionally. I am and for a long time have been ready to do without the money. If the brutal order holds in the Appeals Court, I shall have to borrow to pay my persecutors, and I have no reason to be confident in the judgment of the Court of Appeals. My experience with courts and lawyers leaves no room for optimism. I've been up to the chin in sewage for nearly ten years now. It's time I did whatever I must do to extricate myself.

The whole thing is monstrous-simply monstrous. It has taught me a great deal, though. I don't say this menacingly, or with excessive bitterness. I plan no vengeance. I mean only to say that it has expanded my understanding of human beings very considerably.

However, I did not become a writer in order to make money, nor shall I stop being one because everything is confiscated. I am not quite certain how to go forward. The more I publish, the more vulnerable I am to predators. Perhaps some sort of American samizdat samizdat is the answer. (My one joke, this sad day.) is the answer. (My one joke, this sad day.) I had always thought myself quite st.u.r.dy and resistant to knocks, but it often seems that I am not quite so strong as I had believed. I wake in the night, and do not feel very strong. I sometimes find myself praying. Not for favors of any sort, not even for help, but simply for clarification. I am not especially apprehensive about dying. What does distress me is the thought that I may have made a mess where others (never myself ) see praiseworthy achievements.

I knew that you would write to me. I told Alexandra before your letter came that I would soon hear from you. Because I do, after all, know what is what (in my own quite limited fashion). And I thank you from a full heart.

And you will forgive my silliness, as you always have.

Affectionately,

An Illinois Court of Appeals would uphold the lower-court ruling that had ordered Bellow to pay Susan half a million dollars in settlement of their long-standing property dispute.

To Owen Barfield September 19, 1978 Chicago Dear Owen: I think I better stop waiting for a tranquil moment. There is no tranquil moment.

What I wished to tell you at some length I will tell you briefly. We read Saving the Appearances Saving the Appearances and and Worlds Apart Worlds Apart in a seminar last April and May. It's too soon to say how well I succeeded as your interpreter. The partic.i.p.ants were Wayne Booth of the English Department, Professor Wick, a philosopher who specializes in Kant, and a young mathematician named Zable, one of my wife's colleagues who had seen a copy of in a seminar last April and May. It's too soon to say how well I succeeded as your interpreter. The partic.i.p.ants were Wayne Booth of the English Department, Professor Wick, a philosopher who specializes in Kant, and a young mathematician named Zable, one of my wife's colleagues who had seen a copy of Saving the Appearances Saving the Appearances on my table and was keen to discuss it with me. There were also two graduate students, one of them interested in Anthroposophy. Booth and the Kantian found the book "interesting but tough," as Huck Finn said of on my table and was keen to discuss it with me. There were also two graduate students, one of them interested in Anthroposophy. Booth and the Kantian found the book "interesting but tough," as Huck Finn said of Pilgrim's Progress Pilgrim's Progress . Booth was extremely sympathetic, keenly interested, Wick was laconic and pulled at his pipe and told us that we didn't really know Kant; we would be hopelessly muddled until we had put in a year or two at the Critiques of This or That. But even he found you an attractive writer. I thought I would get this brief interim report to you while my recollection of the seminar is still fresh. For the rest, the usual difficulties-no, worse than usual. I am being deprived by the courts of all my possessions. This morning I suddenly remembered a touching photograph, taken after his a.s.sa.s.sination, of Gandhi's possessions: sandals, rice bowl, eyegla.s.ses and dhoti. Can anyone with more property than that resist the powers of darkness? I make light of it, but the threat is serious. Today I was asked for an inventory of my personal belongings, and I wonder whether the court would hesitate to put them on auction. One never knows. I manage nevertheless to concentrate daily on the distinctions between the essential and inessential. . Booth was extremely sympathetic, keenly interested, Wick was laconic and pulled at his pipe and told us that we didn't really know Kant; we would be hopelessly muddled until we had put in a year or two at the Critiques of This or That. But even he found you an attractive writer. I thought I would get this brief interim report to you while my recollection of the seminar is still fresh. For the rest, the usual difficulties-no, worse than usual. I am being deprived by the courts of all my possessions. This morning I suddenly remembered a touching photograph, taken after his a.s.sa.s.sination, of Gandhi's possessions: sandals, rice bowl, eyegla.s.ses and dhoti. Can anyone with more property than that resist the powers of darkness? I make light of it, but the threat is serious. Today I was asked for an inventory of my personal belongings, and I wonder whether the court would hesitate to put them on auction. One never knows. I manage nevertheless to concentrate daily on the distinctions between the essential and inessential.

I asked you in London whether you might be willing to look at the ma.n.u.script of a novel, or a portion thereof. Are you still of the same mind, or would you rather be spared? As a friend I would advise you to take the easier option. As one of those "writing fellows" (the term used by the indignant old lady in The Aspern Papers The Aspern Papers), you may, I hope, find it in your charitable heart to let me send you a hundred pages or so.

Very best wishes, To Isaac Bashevis Singer October 5, 1978 Chicago Dear Singer: Rachel [MacKenzie] just called with the news. Zol es aykh voyl bak.u.men Zol es aykh voyl bak.u.men [ [88].

My wife and I happily congratulate you.

On October 5, 1978, I. B. Singer became the first-and, in all probability, last-Yiddish-language writer to receive the n.o.bel Prize for Literature.

To Julian Behrstock October 9, 1978 Chicago Dear Julian: I didn't see the item in the British paper, so I don't know whether the sum was accurately reported. But it was stupendous, and the legal fees, two hundred thousand, also stupendous. If these judgments hold, I will be where I was in 1937 on the campus, living on an allowance of three bucks a week. I may ask the President to revive the WPA for my sake. When it happened, my lawyer called me and said, "You've got to bite the bullet." So I bit for one, two, three months. Now it's back in my cartridge belt. What's the point of biting bullets? I shall go back to writing books. I may not publish the books, because they will produce money, and the Philistines will be after me again. Samuel was right to be furious with Saul because he did not deliver all the Philistine foreskins on demand. It was wrong of Saul to be so soft-hearted. We are paying for this, now. Come-oddly-to think of it, most of the fellows who have ganged up on me are fully and legitimately circ.u.mcised. Well, to h.e.l.l with it. I'm always happy to hear from you. I'm glad you're feeling pretty good despite the wife-mistress setup. I can say nothing to you today about the Chicago-Jewish sensibilities.

Yours affectionately,

Julian Behrstock (1915-1997), an old friend from Northwestern days, had after the war moved permanently to Paris where he worked at UNESCO.

To Louis Lasco October 19, 1978 [Chicago]

Dear Arkady Ivanovich: I grieve to hear of your diminishing s.e.x drive. Are you really giving up women for art? I remember a time when Chicago was one of the great cultural centers of the world, and elderly Jewish physicians used to announce that they were going to lay down the scalpel and take up the pen. For pen, read Remington. But what are you laying down?

Could I induce you to send a copy of your ma.n.u.script here? As one who has admired you for fifty years, I feel I have the right to make such a request.

Yours ever, Taras Bulba

1979.

To Elisabeth Sifton January 23, 1979 Chicago Dear Elisabeth: I, too, am sad at leaving Viking. For thirty years I was a Viking author. It was there that whatever feeling I had for monogamy expressed itself most completely. And I don't want you to think that my decision to move implied any criticism of you. You were in all respects an excellent editor, and certainly the most attractive of them all. I shall miss the good advice and the attractions. After Pat Covici died and Katie Carver entered the spirit world and Denver Lindley retired there came a hiatus during which I went it alone. Then you came along, and I wouldn't for a single instant have you think that you failed me as an editor. You have nothing to do with my decision to go elsewhere. I shall miss you too and I wish you well, and there is no reason why we shouldn't continue to laugh together when we meet.

My affectionate best,

To Barnett Singer February 12, 1979 Chicago Dear Barney: Stone walls may not a prison make but I have enough ma.n.u.scripts here for a lockup. Today I was presented with three, yours and two others of the same dimensions, all required reading sous peine d'amende sous peine d'amende [ [89]. When am I supposed to cook curry, wash the dog or examine my toes? I do expect to be in Chicago on the 25th of March and if I have not disappeared under hundreds of reams of paper I'll be glad to talk. In moderation. I don't grudge you the time but I don't want to be discomfited by your hurricane breeziness. You probably don't know what I'm talking about but I will give you a clue: My father, an old European, was incensed when one of my brothers complained to him (my father was then in his seventies) that he had never been a pal to his sons. My father justifiably exploded, "Pal! Has he gone mad? Has he no respect for his father?" I was taught to be deferential to my seniors. If a historian can't understand that, who can?

Yours in candor,

To Bernard Malamud March 25, 1979 Chicago Dear Bern, By direct inheritance from my old man I have the habit of attending to certain necessities before going on a trip-I then find out what I consider most necessary. Alexandra and I are about to leave for Washington to attend the signing of the Egyptian treaty and I can't go without thanking you for Dubin's Lives Dubin's Lives. I was glad to get it, delighted to be moved by good writing, by intelligence, style, into a better articulated and ordered world than the one I've been living in. A first-rate book develops organs in me which I carry about in a state of latency or blindness. I've been seeing seeing better since I read better since I read Dubin Dubin. Your Nature-intimacy took me by surprise, glad surprise. You weren't moved to it by the demands of a book. It's something you've done to yourself, you've achieved it. For Jews from Chicago or New York this has to be done later in life. It's not a birthright. Not Not to be cheated of flowers and landscapes, living and dying under subway gratings or elevated trains-that's what it is. to be cheated of flowers and landscapes, living and dying under subway gratings or elevated trains-that's what it is.

The Lawrence theme didn't do much for me. I read him very closely at one time. Devout admiration, yes; not sainthood though, by a good bit. Anyway, I drove through the Lawrence territory with my dims on. What impressed me very deeply was the nasty winter, the paralyzed writer. That was all too d.a.m.n real. I've never suffered from the fatal "block." I've been in despair, in h.e.l.l, but if I'd been asked what was happening it would never occur to me to describe it as "a block."

I had great sympathy with the wife, less with f.a.n.n.y. But I tell you this naively, not critically. How could I be critical? I am too grateful for the pleasure you gave me. Perhaps I've known too much of that sort of s.e.xual sadness to be able to judge it dependably. I am disqualified, therefore; I don't trust myself in this department and I hope you won't take my uneasiness as fault-finding. Your book delighted me.

Affectionately,

To Ann Birstein April 12, 1979 Chicago Dear Ann: So Alfred thought that living with you was like living with me! I can't quite define my reaction, I never took the slightest s.e.xual interest in him. The best I could do was to appreciate his merits. But esteem, you know, is far from attraction.

Hearing that he was at South Bend, I wrote to him in a Christian spirit (what a pity the Christians have a corner on the Christian spirit; isn't there some way to break the monopoly?) and gave him my telephone number and he called me, but we were both too much in demand to make a date, and then we were snowed in for some months, so we haven't seen each other yet. I'm going to try again now that strolling weather is nearly here.

No, I didn't know that you and he had finally separated. Inevitably, I had heard rumors, but gossip can never damage you-I don't mean anybody, I mean you specifically. After three divorces I can't say that I am ever pleased to hear of a divorce. In your case, however (you will forgive me if I tell you this), the delay must have been very damaging. But one can never really regret the course one's life has taken. There are always perfectly sound reasons why it couldn't have gone any other way. It's only my fondness for you (I remember still how Isaac and I were taken with you when you became Alfred's fiancee; I've never changed my mind) that makes me speculate sentimentally.

I take it as a sign of health that you have written a novel. I want to read it when Doubleday begins to send out copies.

Love, To John Cheever May 2, 1979 Chicago Dear John, Do you realize we haven't seen each other's dear faces in nearly a year? I have seen you in the papers pulling down one award after another and that has given me great satisfaction. I am somewhat sorry for you because you have only the occasional satisfaction of remembering me. We ought to do something about this, especially as it has not been a happy year, and it would do me good to see you. [ . . . ]

Atop the Hyde Park Bank building in Chicago thirty years ago there was a Russian nightclub called the Troika where they sang "Don't Forget Me," a sentimental Lied Lied which applies to us. which applies to us.

Love,

To Hymen Slate June 28, 1979 West Halifax, Vermont Dear Hymen, A note. So that I don't disappear through the trapdoor until September. When we got here, I discovered that I wasn't so well. It is a beautiful place but I was too tired and dejected to like it. I had no idea that I was in such bad shape. You don't know until you begin to relax the tensions and feel the acc.u.mulated fatigue. For two weeks I was extremely depressed-depleted. I couldn't even try to pull myself together. If I took a sleeping pill I paid later with insomnia for the night's sleep I got, so I stopped taking the pills. Alexandra went on doing mathematics. She had a paper to prepare for the conference she's attending now in Germany. I was very pleased. The one good thing that was happening. Her youthful vitality, like my own at her age . . . I can remember how quickly I was able to pull myself together after exhausting exertions. Curiously, I seem to have made secret arrangements to enjoy myself through her. In restaurants I ask her to eat desserts I can no longer order for myself.

I miss our Sundays. I hope you're not in the dumps.

Love to you both, To Allan Bloom August 10, 1979 West Halifax Dear Allan, Splendid, then we'll run a tutorial on any afternoon convenient to you. I refrain from coming to campus in the morning. My habit is to work until noon at whatever I happen to have in hand and then seek refreshment in Hyde Park. We should have a splendid time with Stendhal and Flaubert, against a background of Jean-Jacques. There must be a few students in the Committee who read French. During the winter Alexandra and I will be at Cal Tech, so we're going to have to crowd everything into a single quarter.

We return shortly after Labor Day and there should be plenty of time to lay our schemes. Whenever I taught with David [Grene], there was always a preliminary session for the two of us-at Jimmy's, naturally. You and I can find another suitably grimy spot, if Jimmy's is too much for you. Some people can't take it.

With great expectation, Ever yours,

Bloom and Bellow would teach seminars together until Bloom's death, in 1992.

To Owen Barfield August 15, 1979 West Halifax Dear Owen- It's been a long time-one thing and then another. It was kind of you to send the C. S. Lewis book, but I've not been able to read it as attentively as I'd like. Shortly after it came we were called to Bucharest. Alexandra's mother was dying. The circ.u.mstances-well, I shall spare you the full description, but my wife was allowed to see her mother no more than three times in ten days. Then death, and another mysterious struggle with the bureaucracy about property. Alexandra came back sick with grief. Some three months of illness-and then more difficulties. I know it's not kind of me to speak to you of difficulties. You have so many of your own which, with English restraint, you don't speak of. But I am only trying to tell you why there have been no letters. I continue to read your books and to think about you, and to go on reading Steiner and working at Anthroposophy. I wouldn't like you to think that I am fickle and that I've dropped away. No, it's not at all like that. I am however bound to tell you that I am troubled by your judgment of the books I've written. I don't ask you to like what you obviously can't help disliking, but I can't easily accept your dismissal of so much investment of soul. It may have come out badly, but none of it was ever false, and although I can tolerate rejection I am uneasy with what I sometimes suspect to be prejudice. And my "heaping of coals," as you expressed it in a letter last year, quite turned me off. I didn't know what to say to that. You don't like novels? Very well. But novels have for forty years been my trade; and if I do acquire some wisdom it will inevitably, so I suppose, take some "novelistic" expression. Why not? A juggler "illuminated" would go on juggling, wouldn't he? I find some support in Steiner: ". . . if a man has no ordinary sense of realities, no interest in the details of others' lives, if he is so 'superior' that he sails through life without troubling about its details, he shows he is not a genuine seer." (Anthroposophy: An Introduction, p. 202) p. 202) Having gotten that off my chest, I want to tell you that my affection for you is very great, and I am sure you know how much I respect you. For my part, I feel safe with you-i.e., I know you will forgive my idiocies.

Ever yours,

To Hymen Slate August 19, 1979 West Brattleboro Dear Hymen: Don't knock your way of talking, I miss it out here in the green country. I need the green for my mental and bodily health, but it's far from all-sufficient. Someday, when you're inclined to listen, I'll take pleasure in drawing a free-flowing sketch of what gives with me this decade-you ought to be told, and you'd certainly understand. I a.s.sume that you'd dispute some of my premises. I a.s.sume also, since you're a man of a definite style, that you would listen selectively, with an eye to what seemed to you harmonious. Each of us has his own way of screening esthetically, and the older we grow the fussier we become about the facts we accept. I see that now. It's a lucky man who has a generous style and can accept the wider range of other people's facts. You have a generous style, and that's what makes listening to your talk so agreeable. I've tried some of my facts on you with varying success. You don't really like it when I talk about the cultural void. You insist that there are human characteristics that have nothing at all to do with the cultural void, and to an important extent you're right. The human characteristics have a clear priority. Philistinism is not as important as all that. Still, I have had monstrous encounters with it. My position is peculiar, and there are times when I have a pressing need to tell you what it's like. We are the survivors of a band of boys who were putting something of their own together in cultureless Chicago forty years ago. Now we drink tea together of a Sunday afternoon, and I feel the touch again. It would be merely sentimental if we weren't really really talking. As you yourself have often observed, we talking. As you yourself have often observed, we talk talk, the subjects are real. Even when you send an amusing note it has to do with matter and consciousness-a certain arrangement of matter resulting in consciousness. And then I say, yes, but does the arrangement arrange itself by the hit-or-miss method of what the fellows like to call "emergent evolution" or is it a supervised arrangement directed by some power or spirit which uses the physical brain as its instrument? You know which side I favor.

Maybe I'm saying this under the influence of today's thick fog, which cries out for penetration and lucidity. [ . . . ]

Love to you both,

To Eleanor Clark October 10, 1979 Chicago Dear Eleanor, Reading [your novel] Gloria Mundi Gloria Mundi made my return to Chicago considerably easier, lessened the culture shock. In the summer I am in Vermont, not of it (trees, skies, books, wife-an aesthetic sanctuary). Yours, the real Vermont, put things in perspective. There made my return to Chicago considerably easier, lessened the culture shock. In the summer I am in Vermont, not of it (trees, skies, books, wife-an aesthetic sanctuary). Yours, the real Vermont, put things in perspective. There are are connections between Wilmington and Chicago. connections between Wilmington and Chicago.

I admired your book. I took particular pleasure in the speed with which you got over the foothills to reach the necessary alt.i.tude, the place where things happen, the stripped-for-action, unenc.u.mbered plainness of the narrative. A complex subject presented without awkwardness, complication or rhetorical backing and filling. "Short views, for G.o.d's sake!" That's what Sydney Smith said. That's what the art of describing our breakdown demands. I took great satisfaction in your Vermonters, satisfaction of a different sort in the parachuting clergyman and the brat-maniacs. I was happy with your sketch of the Old Man, too. He took such pride in his culture. You remember his Celine essay, I'm sure, and the statements about the future of culture under socialism. Then the common man will be a Goethe, a Beethoven. He had me fooled. Alas for poor him, and poor us.

Alexandra still talks about the evening we spent together. It made [Saul] Steinberg's visit too. Next summer you come and dine with us.

Thanks for the book.

Yours ever,

"The Old Man" was Trotsky, on whose Mexico City staff Clark had served in the later 1930s.

To Owen Barfield November 11, 1979 Chicago Dear Owen: With my "meaning to write" I am like a drunkard who says he will reform: going on the wagon, as drinkers here say, and the wagon is very different from the winged chariot. Your letter moved me by its warmth, kindness and candor. I have too much respect for what you have done, have made of yourself, to answer lightly and easily. Four or five years of reading Steiner have altered me considerably. Some kind of metamorphosis is going on, I think, and I am at a loss for words when I sit down to write to you. You will think it absurd that I should make a judge of you. It is is absurd, and you must find it disagreeable as well, but the position carries no duties, you owe me nothing. I see you-it came through in your letter-as a man who has learned what to do with the consciousness-soul, has managed to regenerate severed connections and found pa.s.sages that lead from thought to feeling. I won't embarra.s.s you by going on about this; you may think it bad form. I've observed in your books how you shun all such claims yourself, and that just as the Meggid calls himself the least of Michael's servants you prefer to diminish yourself. The best of us have been destroyed in the wars of this century. Among the survivors there's only the likes of ourselves to go on with. "I am myself indifferent honest, but . . ." Yes, it is like that. I am even more "indifferent honest," myself, so it amused me to be described as a tank surrounded by pea-shooters. absurd, and you must find it disagreeable as well, but the position carries no duties, you owe me nothing. I see you-it came through in your letter-as a man who has learned what to do with the consciousness-soul, has managed to regenerate severed connections and found pa.s.sages that lead from thought to feeling. I won't embarra.s.s you by going on about this; you may think it bad form. I've observed in your books how you shun all such claims yourself, and that just as the Meggid calls himself the least of Michael's servants you prefer to diminish yourself. The best of us have been destroyed in the wars of this century. Among the survivors there's only the likes of ourselves to go on with. "I am myself indifferent honest, but . . ." Yes, it is like that. I am even more "indifferent honest," myself, so it amused me to be described as a tank surrounded by pea-shooters.

I wanted to see you in Michigan, but it was impossible to go just then. I wouldn't have had much time with you in any case. I have to satisfy myself by re-reading your books. I don't think I shall be coming to England very soon. In Edinburgh two years ago an Anthroposophical lady, admonishing me, said, "Mr. Barfield will have to take you in hand in Kamaloca." But perhaps I will have made some progress by that time and you won't have to be so quite severe with me.

Yours most affectionately,

"Kamaloca" is the first stage of the afterlife, according to Anthroposophy.

1980.

To Louis Lasco January 3, 1980 Pasadena Dear Luigi- Peltz loves to tell of a visit to a Polish girl on Iowa St.-third floor. He blew the opportunity-pants down, two bucks gone. The girl was concerned. She said, "Oh, kid, you need practice-practice, practice practice!"

As an old Polish girl, of a sort, I too am a bit concerned. You're a witty writer, but in the mss. you've lost your two bucks. Now, with a little practice you can get, and give, great satisfaction.

Ever yours, with love, Soolabodoff