Saul Bellow_ Letters Part 39

Dear Allan: Having someone in Chicago to whom to talk really, I go on the road, for reasons perhaps presently to be understood. I feel I've been inspecting Europe for the last time, taking the concluding view of London and Rome, places now unnecessary. In Rome the victory has gone to Henry Ford. History is is bunk, and you can't even see it because of the automobiles. n.o.body ever imagined that the Gadarene swine would rush around in circles, unable to find the precipice-living it up, meantime, but G.o.d how they long for it. bunk, and you can't even see it because of the automobiles. n.o.body ever imagined that the Gadarene swine would rush around in circles, unable to find the precipice-living it up, meantime, but G.o.d how they long for it.

My cultivated old friends are wrecked. The incessant reading of modern books wore them out. Sometimes you watch them trying to put all the puzzle pieces together while Kafka and Proust hover behind them making suggestions. [ . . . ]

I did well enough in Oxford, although I was very tired, and I met some decent people there. It was intimidating to have Iris Murdoch and [John] Bayley, her husband, in the audience, also Isaiah Berlin and more of the same, but I got through it all. Still I have bad dreams about lecturing and teaching-had one last night. You and I were about to do a cla.s.s on Antony & Cleo Antony & Cleo, and a graduate student was selling me his (valuable) paper on the play. His price was eight hundred bucks. I had counted out five hundred when it occurred to me that he was just a student, so I stopped putting down dollars and said, "This is unheard of." He was the type that has absolute knowledge of the dollar-value of a product. I have no such knowledge and therefore I give in. So in the end I missed the cla.s.s altogether, and that was unpleasant. If I were more interested in dreams I'd try to figure it out. However, dream interpretation has given way to an interest probably equally hopeless in clairvoyance. Why be a mere doctor when you can be a seer instead?

Maybe the graduate student stood for the young dons who practiced their sn.o.b-judo on me at High Table, and whom I quickly kicked in the pants.

I met lots of dear people in my travels, none clever enough for what we've got to face in Rome. I had one very bad shock. Introduced to an old slovenly woman with bad teeth, I said I was pleased-to-meetcha and so on. She seemed to know me well, reminded me that in 1948 when I was a mere ragazzo ragazzo and before I had written famous books I had often visited her-once in Anacapri. I soldiered it all out with the weapons of social charm. She must have thought me cold and aloof. When she had gone off, bending on her cane, I asked Paolo Milano who she was. Was! It was Elsa Morante, whom I had always liked so much. and before I had written famous books I had often visited her-once in Anacapri. I soldiered it all out with the weapons of social charm. She must have thought me cold and aloof. When she had gone off, bending on her cane, I asked Paolo Milano who she was. Was! It was Elsa Morante, whom I had always liked so much. That?! That?! And I remembered how st.u.r.dy and handsome she had been, and that in 1948 we would meet every night at the Antico Greco for an aperitif, and tears began to run from my eyes. My friend Milano gave me vast credit for sentiment-gold stars for progress in the cure of my hard heart. Gold stars I didn't feel that I deserved, but it was too much trouble to explain this to poor Milano, who had lived too long by best-accredited modern books to understand without efforts too great to ask a sick old man to make. Besides, I was crying also for him-the And I remembered how st.u.r.dy and handsome she had been, and that in 1948 we would meet every night at the Antico Greco for an aperitif, and tears began to run from my eyes. My friend Milano gave me vast credit for sentiment-gold stars for progress in the cure of my hard heart. Gold stars I didn't feel that I deserved, but it was too much trouble to explain this to poor Milano, who had lived too long by best-accredited modern books to understand without efforts too great to ask a sick old man to make. Besides, I was crying also for him-the dos courbe dos courbe [ [91], the shuffle, the weak legs, the pacemaker in his chest, the prostate surgery, the faded eyes. He now has a majordomo running his flat with the carefully chosen antiques and the heirlooms. This peasant from the north is small, broad, healthy and gentle, womanly. Cooks the pasta pasta, arranges the gladioli, etc. Paolo sleeps in a double bed, left-hand side-the right side is loaded with new books. The wife's side of the bed.

And no-the rest has been, for me, airports, ripoffs (the Roman word for hustlers is gli abusivi gli abusivi), anxiety over language, the vertigo of the streets, the lack of desire which defeats my lifelong attraction to shop windows-why deck out the old bod? Etc.

Now I'm in Carb.o.n.e.ras on the Mediterranean, the refrains of Barley Alison more persistent than the sea and infinitely less mysterious and beautiful. It was really really foolish of me to make this trip of final inspection. foolish of me to make this trip of final inspection.

I miss you enormously. My eyes come to life when I pick up a can of insecticide named BLOOM: BLOOM RAPIDE elimine les insects tels que les moustiques, etc. BLOOM RAPIDE se distingue par ses effets rapides et par son parfum agreable BLOOM: BLOOM RAPIDE elimine les insects tels que les moustiques, etc. BLOOM RAPIDE se distingue par ses effets rapides et par son parfum agreable. A message of love,

To Daniel Patrick Moynihan July 14, 1981 West Halifax, Vermont Dear Senator- The old girl has arrived, safe and sound, thanks to your intervention. I should have sent this news sooner, but I was sitting at conference tables in Germany, saving the humanities, and tied in knots. I write you from Vermont (on my wife's stationery). I hope you will allow us to thank you in person, on our next Washington visit. I think Aunt Anna would still be in Romania if you hadn't interceded with the Amba.s.sador.

Yours most gratefully, To Allan Bloom August 15, 1981 West Halifax Dear Allan: [ . . . ] Alexandra is very much afraid, terrified, by the harm my book [The Dean's December] may do-friends of the family in Romania persecuted; the most persistent nightmare is that Sanda [Loga] will be refused visas to visit her old parents. It also keeps me up nights. Nothing by halves. I doubt doubt that anything so dire will happen, but she astutely points out (and how astute do you need to be for this?) that these people are crazy-wicked fantasists, to put it in my own way. that anything so dire will happen, but she astutely points out (and how astute do you need to be for this?) that these people are crazy-wicked fantasists, to put it in my own way.

Hence the plan to make a public noise on publication-be interviewed on CBS and other disagreeable if not hateful places. But that may make matters worse. If I am asked to talk about the regime, I will declare myself an enemy, and it will become nasty if indeed they think me one. Maybe I should be quiet and only talk to people like Moynihan or Scoop Jackson (the former was helpful in getting the old aunt out) about strategies to be adopted if visas are refused. How could I face Sanda if I increase fame and fortune while she . . .

I can use some wise advice. In this world there seems no way to do right except in obscurity and modesty. Doing wrong will cause severe suffering in every way; inwardly; and will Alexandra forgive me?

Romanian-born physicist Sanda Loga was then and remains a close friend of Alexandra's.

To Hymen Slate August 21, 1981 West Halifax Dear Hymen: We traveled and we traveled-in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and England. Why I moved about so much I can't easily explain. Alexandra saw mathematicians in Madrid, Paris and in Germany, but I had no such excuse. I was going going. Since I was revisiting all these places I had the feeling sometimes that I was giving them the final inspection-never would see them again. I told an old friend in Rome that I'd never return. One can't even see the city for the cars, the Colosseum is fenced up because the tourists have been taking pieces of it as souvenirs, the Romans all look as though they had just gotten up after an adulterous siesta, first-cla.s.s hotels stink of bad plumbing, everybody is on the make, the exhibitionists don't even zip up between exposures, they walk around on fashionable streets with their genitals in their hands. And that healthy Pole, the Pope, is now an invalid. No more Holy City for me.

I carried my ma.n.u.script from country to country, hoping to finish the corrections. In Madrid I was able to do quite a lot in cafes, surrounded by agreeable Spaniards, but I didn't send the book to the printer till last week. Now I get a two-week break while waiting for galley proofs. Not time enough. This is no youthful fatigue. I used to bounce back. Now I drag myself outside mornings to sit under the trees. Late summer, fortunately, is very beautiful. There's only the telephone to fear-news of a new lawsuit by Susan. The wicked never let up. The lawyers learn no kindness. My own are as bad as hers, and the moronic inferno is as hot as ever.

No comfortable conversations with friends of my own age. I need some of your melancholy fun. October looks good to me.

Love,

To John Cheever December 9, 1981 Chicago Dear John: Since we spoke on the phone I've been thinking incessantly about you. Many things might be said, but I won't say them, you can probably do without them. What I would like to tell you is this: We didn't spend much time together but there is a significant attachment between us. I suppose it's in part because we practiced the same self-taught trade. Let me try to say it better-we put our souls to the same kind of schooling, and it's this esoteric training which we had the gall, under the hostile stare of exoteric America to persist in, that brings us together. Yes, there are other, deeper sympathies but I'm too clumsy to get at them. Just now I can offer only what's available. Neither of us had much use for the superficial "given" of social origins. In your origins there were certain advantages; you were too decent to exploit them. Mine, I suppose, were only to be "overcome" and I hadn't the slightest desire to molest myself that way. I was, however, in a position to observe the advantages of the advantaged (the moronic pride of Wasps, Southern traditionalists, etc.). There wasn't a trace of it in you. You were engaged, as a writer should be, in transforming yourself. When I read your collected stories I was moved to see the transformation taking place on the printed page. There's nothing that counts really except this transforming action of the soul. I loved you for this. I loved you anyway, but for this especially.

Up and down on these rough American seas we've navigated for so many decades; we've had our bad trips, too-unavoidable absurdities, dirty weather, but that doesn't count, really. I've been trying to say what does count.

My son Adam, who has been visiting us in Chicago, when I told him that I was writing you wanted me to say that he was charmed by your short book [Oh What a Paradise It Seems]. I was, too.

If it isn't possible for you to come to Chicago, I will fly to New York whenever it's convenient for you.

Love,

To Bernard Malamud December 22, 1981 Chicago Dear Bern: Now I see-this book [G.o.d's Grace] was as much a departure for you as the Dean Dean was for me. You told me this one would be different, so I was somewhat prepared but not as prepared as all that. Even the best of readers are like generals in that they are always fighting the last war. Not to keep you in suspense, was for me. You told me this one would be different, so I was somewhat prepared but not as prepared as all that. Even the best of readers are like generals in that they are always fighting the last war. Not to keep you in suspense, G.o.d's Grace G.o.d's Grace excited me and in the end it moved me. Why or how I'm not able to tell you. Maybe the best approach to this mystery is to say what I was thinking as I read you. excited me and in the end it moved me. Why or how I'm not able to tell you. Maybe the best approach to this mystery is to say what I was thinking as I read you.

First, as to performance: You're always happy when you read a man who has learned his trade, perfected it. He can be trusted. You hand yourself over to him, and that's the first stage of your happiness.

Then you try to identify the species. What sort of book is it? The edge of doom, and over: the destruction of the planet, flood, apocalypse, the voice of G.o.d. Cohn is Noah, Cohn is Job, he is even Robinson Crusoe. The world's end can't put an end to Jewish wit. Your G.o.d is no humorist, however, and the novel is genuinely apocalyptic. Moreover, it is is a novel, not the unfolding of an eschatology. It's about our own preparation for the last things, the end. Our minds and feelings, decade by decade, have been forced towards it. It's not a matter of a theme that finds "objective correlatives." We have experienced the correlatives first. These prepared us thoroughly for the worst; we've seen it coming and agreed that we deserved or would deserve it. With approving vengefulness we have endorsed it. This we have done while breathing the air of nihilism and while applying the methods of "science" (the business of this science being to tell us the past, present and future of reality), but also while trying to hang on to decencies of liberalism. All this is in your book. I was intrigued, at times appalled, sometimes irritated, but by the end I found myself moved greatly. Things were as they should be at the end. My doubts pa.s.sed into the background. There was nothing to doubt in such an emotion, or after-emotion. a novel, not the unfolding of an eschatology. It's about our own preparation for the last things, the end. Our minds and feelings, decade by decade, have been forced towards it. It's not a matter of a theme that finds "objective correlatives." We have experienced the correlatives first. These prepared us thoroughly for the worst; we've seen it coming and agreed that we deserved or would deserve it. With approving vengefulness we have endorsed it. This we have done while breathing the air of nihilism and while applying the methods of "science" (the business of this science being to tell us the past, present and future of reality), but also while trying to hang on to decencies of liberalism. All this is in your book. I was intrigued, at times appalled, sometimes irritated, but by the end I found myself moved greatly. Things were as they should be at the end. My doubts pa.s.sed into the background. There was nothing to doubt in such an emotion, or after-emotion.

It may surprise you to learn how Jewish, Jewish-American, Eastern seaboard and "liberal" I found G.o.d's Grace G.o.d's Grace to be: Cohn teaching the chimps, the lower primate branch destined perhaps to take its turn at the summit; Cohn deciding to make his human contribution to this development. G.o.d rejects this; the laws of animal nature can't be waived in a day, thousands of millennia are needed. Yes, and also Shakespearean grace descending temporarily on Mary M. to be: Cohn teaching the chimps, the lower primate branch destined perhaps to take its turn at the summit; Cohn deciding to make his human contribution to this development. G.o.d rejects this; the laws of animal nature can't be waived in a day, thousands of millennia are needed. Yes, and also Shakespearean grace descending temporarily on Mary M.

After the final disaster Cohn starts over again (like a good Jew, one must keep trying), teaches speech, gives lectures, cultivates minds and morals. I identified myself often with the apes. I too was fascinated (long ago) by the Darwin-Wallace orthodoxy, but later it seemed to me that this materialist orthodoxy could not satisfy deeper questions about the nature of human consciousness. All this gave Cohn's lectures a certain pathos. So did the Ethical Culture spirit of the community he wanted to create. All was to be well. You do treat this with the irony it deserves and see clearly the defeatism implicit in this form of "goodness," but you appear to suggest that no alternative could ever occur to Cohn. The political sense of this is plain to you. Cohn's sentimental will-to-goodness is fatal. It can't antic.i.p.ate evils, has no force, is unable to defend itself, and is just as unacceptable to G.o.d as human wickedness; indeed Cohn must, like the rest of humankind, die. Or should I rather have said "like the West which Cohn so completely represents"? Anyway, Cohn's Isaac sacrifice profoundly moved me. I couldn't say why, or was alles bedeutet was alles bedeutet [ [92].

I may not be your most representative reader, but I am an admiring one. You may find my reactions odd. For one thing they are unexpectedly political (I myself didn't expect them to be that). But you wrote with a certain openness, and the book is unsettling and I predict that it will invite an unusual diversity of interpretations. For it is is an unsettling book. In that respect it has much in common with an unsettling book. In that respect it has much in common with The Dean's December The Dean's December. What this may bedeut bedeut is that as honorable writers we have nothing else in these times to record. is that as honorable writers we have nothing else in these times to record.

I congratulate you and send you an affectionate embrace.

To Philip Roth December 31, 1981 Chicago Dear Philip, Thanks for your generous note. Disappointing that I'm not going to be in Chicago in February. Alexandra and I are clearing out for the winter to British Columbia, which I look forward to as to a sanitarium. I've warned them in the English Department there that if they run me too hard I may have a breakdown. I'm not pretending, I'm ready for a padded cell. The Dean The Dean took it out of me; I wrote it in a kind of fit and I'm left with the peculiar residue that I don't know how to get rid of. I can't even describe it. took it out of me; I wrote it in a kind of fit and I'm left with the peculiar residue that I don't know how to get rid of. I can't even describe it.

I discovered some time ago that there was nothing to stop me from saying exactly what I thought. I expected flak, and unpleasant results are beginning to come in, but I'm getting support too, which I hadn't looked for.

Your capacity for looking things in the face is not inferior to mine. It's presumptuous of me to go into a senior-citizen routine with you, but I'm being as straight with you as you are with me.

I thank you again for your letter. We'll have dinner some other time.

Yours ever,

1982.

To William Kennedy February 4, 1982 Victoria, B.C.

Dear Bill: What a delay! But The Dean The Dean, eighteen months of high excitement, a long spree for a codger, wore me out. To get away from the ensuing noise of battle we made plans to retreat to British Columbia. We were smarter than we could know, because we got away from a disastrous winter, too. Here it rains and rains, but the green moss is delicious to see and there are snowdrops out already. The nervous system was not attuned to this sanctuary. For the first month I suffered acutely from what I called boredom: It was was boredom but with a wash of deep fatigue, black-and-blue spread over the gray. boredom but with a wash of deep fatigue, black-and-blue spread over the gray.

By now I've read Ironweed Ironweed (when I saw the heading (when I saw the heading Lemonweed Lemonweed, I preferred it; the novel has as much iron in it as it needs). It's as good as Billy Billy [ [Phelan], in my opinion. The key is lower, closer to death at every point. This must be the first human examination of skid row. I never saw another. Of an older American generation, Francis and Helen carried a more respectable, organized humanity with them when they began to sink. My guess is that today people sink from a more prosperous base but also a more disorderly one; they start out more chaotic, without Helen's music or Francis's conscience. Francis, a murderer, is also a traditional champion, the fated man, a type out of Icelandic or Irish epic. To kill is his destiny, and he kills American-style, with techniques learned in play, throwing a stone like a baseball and then swinging a bat in Hooverville. He considers himself a man of sin. No family refuge for him.

All this you do beautifully. Here and there you go a bit too far. The Katrina idyll, for instance, is too idyllic. You ought to reconsider. Not that there were no beautiful pagan ladies, I knew a few myself, but I'm not entirely comfortable with K.

Your Esquire Esquire article wasn't badly edited, as editing goes. As much as the subject permitted it was slanted towards sensationalism. Your original piece was excellent. If now and then I shrank, it was myself that made me shrink. I article wasn't badly edited, as editing goes. As much as the subject permitted it was slanted towards sensationalism. Your original piece was excellent. If now and then I shrank, it was myself that made me shrink. I do do say things like "my f.u.c.king mouth." All Americans do, but in print it looked out of character. say things like "my f.u.c.king mouth." All Americans do, but in print it looked out of character.

Tell Cork [Smith] he can count on me, and remember me to Dana.

Yrs, as ever,

Kennedy's article in Esquire Esquire was "If Saul Bellow Doesn't Have a True Word to Say, He Keeps His Mouth Shut." K. Corlies (Cork) Smith was Kennedy's editor at Viking. was "If Saul Bellow Doesn't Have a True Word to Say, He Keeps His Mouth Shut." K. Corlies (Cork) Smith was Kennedy's editor at Viking.

To Alfred Kazin March 9, 1982 Victoria, B.C.

Dear Alfred- It made me very unhappy to learn that you were ill. As a member of the cla.s.s of'15, I have a special concern with your well being; and despite decades of differences and disagreements-misunderstandings-I am attached to you and am distressed when you are sick.

We will discuss my failings (there is such a mult.i.tude of them) when you are better.

Yours affectionately, To Leon Wieseltier March 12, 1982 Victoria, B.C.

Dear Leon: I don't think you expected a quick reply to your Arendt articles; the subject (not Hannah but Jewish history) is denser than the Amazon jungle, and even if I were the Paul Bunyan of the machete I could never hack my way through. It would take a long conversation (years, no doubt) to begin to sort out the main problems. Hannah was rash, but she wasn't altogether stupid (unlike her friend Mary McC[arthy]). You do grant her that in your essay. The trouble is that her errors were far more extensive than her judgment. That can be said of us all, but she was monumentally vain, and a rigid akshente akshente [ [93]. Much of her strength went into obstinacy, and she was the compleat intellectual-i.e. she went always and as rapidly as possible for the great synthesis and her human understanding, painfully limited, could not support the might of historical a.n.a.lysis, unacknowledged prejudices, frustrations of her German and European aspirations, etc. She could often think clearly, but to think simply was altogether beyond her, and her imaginative faculty was stunted.

I once asked Alexander Donat, author of The Holocaust Kingdom The Holocaust Kingdom, how it was that the Jews went down so quickly in Poland. He said something like this: "After three days in the ghetto, unable to wash and shave, without clean clothing, deprived of food, all utilities and munic.i.p.al services cut off, your toilet habits humiliatingly disrupted, you are demoralized, confused, subject to panic. A life of austere discipline would have made it possible for me to keep my head, but how many civilized people lead such a life?" Such simple facts-had Hannah had the imagination to see them-would have lowered the intellectual fever that vitiates her theories. Her standards were those of a "n.o.ble" German intelligentsia trained in the cla.s.sics and in European philosophy-what you call the "tradition of sweet thinking." Hannah not only loved it, she actively disliked those who didn't share it, and she couldn't acknowledge this dislike-which happened to be dislike of those (so inconveniently) martyred by the n.a.z.is. What got her gets us all: attachment to the high cultures of the "diaspora." The Eros of these cultures is irresistible. At the same time a.s.similation is simply impossible-out of the question to reject one's history. And insofar as the Israelis are secular, they are in it with the rest of us, fascinated and also eaten up by Greece, France, Russia, England. It is impossible for advanced minds not to be so affected. At the same time you are precisely where the Jew-hatred of those same cultures has situated you-in Tel Aviv. To complicate matters still more your survival depends upon a technology which . . . but you know more about this than I do. The more complex the problem of armament and the a.s.sociated problems of diplomacy and of finances become, the more the a.s.sumption of a distinct Jewish destiny in Israel dwindles. It is possible to be a mini-superpower without ceasing to be an "excluded" people. (I wouldn't call Israel a "pariah" among the nations.) It is also possible that this mini-superpower, which began as the national home of Zionists and of Jews fleeing destruction, presents itself to America's leaders, some of them, as a convenient package to be traded for this, that or the other. What you call the p.o.r.nographic strain in Western politics, mingling with supply-side economics, with the State Dep't. Middle Eastern Contingent advising and partic.i.p.ating, may not distinguish between diasporas and homelands.

Anyway your Arendt pieces are wonderful, even though the concluding sentence . . . but what else can one conclude but "on course" and "in the dark"? We mustn't surrender the demonic to the demagogic academics. Intellectual sobriety itself may have to take the powers of darkness into account.

All best,

Wieseltier's two-part essay on Arendt had appeared in back-to-back issues of The New Republic The New Republic, where he concluded as follows: "There are not anti-Semites because there are Jews, and there are not Jews because there are anti-Semites. There are peoples, and a longing for paradise. The Jews are there for when the longing goes bad, when it ends in tumbrils or in boxcars. But now they have Israel, and America, and the night vision that has always sustained them, that has helped them to believe in the best even as they know the worst, and kept them steady, and on their course, in the dark."

To Robert Boyers March 12, 1982 Victoria, B.C.

Dear Boyers: Well, yes, I suppose I will weather the storm, veteran that I am, although when it's time to founder one simply founders. I was grateful for your letter, for supportive intelligence rather than "emotional" support. I quite clearly understood what I was getting into by writing the Dean Dean. Characteristic of those young people at Northwestern to accuse me of distorting the facts-such facts as surround them and may be read daily in the papers, heard daily in the courts (where, however, they never go). The facts themselves shouldn't much matter in a novel, but I went carefully into this particular case, talking to the lawyers and reading the materials in their files. I'm sure the Northwestern kiddies didn't do that, they just told one another over and over that I had misrepresented the facts and out of this repeated telling they made a case and convicted me. Perhaps things have always been done like this but the crisis that surrounds us increases the will-to-lie and the gases given off by intellectual heads cause strange atmospheric distortions and bring down a special sort of acid rain.

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 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 saying didn't so much matter. This was what the literary people defending him a.s.sume. 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. didn't so much matter. This was what the literary people defending him a.s.sume. 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 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 Salmagundi and author of, among other works, and author of, among other works, Atrocity and Amnesia 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 (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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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, s.e.x, 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 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 (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 Atlantic Monthly in November 1982. in November 1982.