Letters (39 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Greg and Adam are fine, and I’m not too bad. I miss all of you. I hope you’re all well and have had an end of bad news. Send me a note or at least a copy of the Soviet book. Now the gov’t. admits espionage, I don’t see why they didn’t supply you with material.
Much love to all of you.
On May 1, 1960, a U-2 spy craft had been shot down over Sverdlovsk by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. President Eisenhower initially claimed that it was a weather plane. When Khrushchev announced a week later that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was alive and the aircraft mostly intact, Eisenhower was forced to acknowledge that the United States had been conducting espionage flights. McCloskey and John E. Turner had just published their book
The Soviet Dictatorship
.
The Soviet Dictatorship
.
To Susan Glassman
May 31, 1960 Tivoli
Dearest Susie—
Guilt smote me when I got back. The train looked seedy. I might at least have gone on it with you. I suppose I was exercising my power of autonomy. Anyway, love is better to feel than guilt. In future, I’ll try to be reasonable though human.
When I returned the Ashers arrived. They might have phoned en route!
Susie, we had a beautiful time. A beautiful time is its own reward.
Immer dein
[
61
],
[
61
],
To Susan Glassman
June 9, 1960 [Tivoli]
I’m a little bit miserable today. Lillian H[ellman] admires what I’ve written but insists it’s not a play. Well, perhaps it’s not. It’s a pity to have wasted so much time, but (I’m great at finding compensations—it’s so Jewish) I wasn’t
fit
to write anything else last year.
fit
to write anything else last year.
And then, one more reason for misery. I think Sondra is getting married [to Jack Ludwig] in October, which makes her conduct throughout even worse. She didn’t have to try to demolish me in order to re-marry. Ach! It’s not a great deal, but it’s something and temporarily it depresses me.
You un-depress me. I feel better already, Susie. [ . . . ]
With kisses and only slightly sad smiles.
Yours,
Sondra Tschacbasov and Jack Lugwig would not marry in October, or ever.
To Susan Glassman
June 15, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dearest Susie:
The Burroughs [novel,
Naked Lunch
] is shocking for a few pages and then becomes laughable because it’s so mechanical. Grand Guignol. It doesn’t have much human content, and I think it’s just the other side of all the “niceness” and “cleanliness” and “goodness” in the country. On one side the scrubbers and detergent-buyers, and on the other the dirty boys, equally anal. Black and white are the colors of paranoia, nothing in between. If I’m using clinical language, it’s because
Naked Lunch
forces it on me. It’s clinical. And that would be all right if it were the beginning of something. Raskolnikov must have been crazy, but he was more. Here there isn’t more. But I was glad of a chance to read it. Do you want it sent back?
Naked Lunch
] is shocking for a few pages and then becomes laughable because it’s so mechanical. Grand Guignol. It doesn’t have much human content, and I think it’s just the other side of all the “niceness” and “cleanliness” and “goodness” in the country. On one side the scrubbers and detergent-buyers, and on the other the dirty boys, equally anal. Black and white are the colors of paranoia, nothing in between. If I’m using clinical language, it’s because
Naked Lunch
forces it on me. It’s clinical. And that would be all right if it were the beginning of something. Raskolnikov must have been crazy, but he was more. Here there isn’t more. But I was glad of a chance to read it. Do you want it sent back?
The trouble I have reading your letters brings me to this machine. My handwriting is nearly impossible, too.
Yes, it took me an awfully long time to grow up, but I take comfort from Vol. II of [Ernest] Jones on Freud which begins “In 1901 Freud, at the age of forty-five, had attained complete materity, a consummation of development that few people really achieve.” So there, I can’t even
spell
maturity. One of these days I’ll tell you all about my therapeutic adventures. Of course I sat in a box. It removed the warts from my fingers.
spell
maturity. One of these days I’ll tell you all about my therapeutic adventures. Of course I sat in a box. It removed the warts from my fingers.
All week I’ve felt like a man who is trying to fill a test tube under Niagara. It’s not a bad simile. The rain has bent everything double for three days and I feel very wet and peevish. But your letter this morning was a very fine stimulant.
Immer dein,
To Leslie Fiedler
June 24, 1960 Tivoli
Dear Leslie:
I’ve just read your [Karl] Shapiro piece in
Poetry
, and I really think you’re way out. How you got there I don’t know but it’s time to come back. I’m in earnest. You have a set of facts entirely your own, and you interpret people’s motives most peculiarly. What is this “marketable” Jewishness you talk about? And who are these strange companions on the bandwagon that plays
Hatikvah
? It’s amusing. It’s utterly wrong. It’s (I don’t like the jargon but it can’t be avoided here) Projection. What you think you see so clearly is not to be seen. It isn’t there. No big situations, no connivances, no Jewish scheme produced by Jewish Minds. Nothing. What an incredible
tsimis
[
62
] you make of nothing! You have your own realities, no one checks you and you go on and on. You had better think matters over again, Leslie. I’m dead serious.
Poetry
, and I really think you’re way out. How you got there I don’t know but it’s time to come back. I’m in earnest. You have a set of facts entirely your own, and you interpret people’s motives most peculiarly. What is this “marketable” Jewishness you talk about? And who are these strange companions on the bandwagon that plays
Hatikvah
? It’s amusing. It’s utterly wrong. It’s (I don’t like the jargon but it can’t be avoided here) Projection. What you think you see so clearly is not to be seen. It isn’t there. No big situations, no connivances, no Jewish scheme produced by Jewish Minds. Nothing. What an incredible
tsimis
[
62
] you make of nothing! You have your own realities, no one checks you and you go on and on. You had better think matters over again, Leslie. I’m dead serious.
Fiedler had just published “On the Road; or the Adventures of Karl Shapiro” in
Poetry.
Poetry.
To Susan Glassman
June 29, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dearest Susie,
All present and accounted for. I think I’ve found the right channel and I’m feeling very cheerful. That is, I’m too busy to dwell on being cheerful, but I must be cheerful somewhere below, in the engine room. More soon.
With Sondra, I’ve had the regulation four-bladed duel about seeing Adam, and after being stabbed only a few times I am being allowed to have him for a week in Chicago, in August. I’m getting off easy. (She doesn’t bleed except in the natural course.)
Is
Augie March
such a drone? Hmmm! I don’t know, myself. I made the discovery in it about language and character from which
Henderson
arose but
Augie
itself is probably crude. My
Ur-Faust
. In the evening of life, about thirty years from now, I may amuse myself by doing it right. I still love Grandma, Einhorn, Simon, Mimi!! And Mintouchian. And the eagle.
Augie March
such a drone? Hmmm! I don’t know, myself. I made the discovery in it about language and character from which
Henderson
arose but
Augie
itself is probably crude. My
Ur-Faust
. In the evening of life, about thirty years from now, I may amuse myself by doing it right. I still love Grandma, Einhorn, Simon, Mimi!! And Mintouchian. And the eagle.
To Susan Glassman
July 4, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dearest Susie:
No, nothing at all wrong, only the unusual usual. Toil, tears, sweat and business-wriggling: I seem to be a great operator on a small sector. That is, I’ve always lived like a sort of millionaire without money. Never any question of “neediness” on the one side nor of greediness on the other. Somehow I’ve managed to do exactly what I like. There are certain philosophers (Samuel Butler, if he is one) who say we really do get what we want. Question: Can we bear it when we get it? That’s the question that’s the beginning of religion.
No, darling, I’m very well. I hope you are, too, and that you look forward to the 15th as I do.
To John Berryman
July 4, 1960 Tivoli
Dear John—
Not bad, now. I’m divorced and better for it. One madness at a time. It’s the least Justice can allow us. And I’m writing something, too.
Savage #2
has gone to the printer, and very good, though not as good as it would have been with the Taj, which we had to lay over till
#3
, so you’ll probably appear with Vachel Lindsay and me instead of D. H. Lawrence and Louis Guilloux.
has gone to the printer, and very good, though not as good as it would have been with the Taj, which we had to lay over till
#3
, so you’ll probably appear with Vachel Lindsay and me instead of D. H. Lawrence and Louis Guilloux.
Are you really coming to visit me in Tivoli? It’d be a great event. I am not likely to be in Mpls. much. Perhaps to see Adam now and then, though if that is “played” on me, or if my veins are going to be used to string Sondra’s harp, the child and I will not see much of each other.
Don’t you think the Bennington alumnae association owes us both wound-stripes?
Say hello to McCloskeys. And write down those squibs for [
Savage
]
#3
. What did you think of
#1
? You’ve never said.
Savage
]
#3
. What did you think of
#1
? You’ve never said.
Transcontinental blessings,
To Edmund Wilson
July 30, 1960 Tivoli, N.Y.
Dear Edmund—
I understand from Monroe Engel that you like the
Noble Savage
. This encourages me to ask you for a contribution. I think you would find yourself in good company.
Noble Savage
. This encourages me to ask you for a contribution. I think you would find yourself in good company.
With best wishes,
To Susan Glassman
September 1, 1960 [Tivoli]
Baby, I know you’re going through all kinds of difficulty, enough to account for all the strange phenomena. It is all the more important now that I should not lose my bearings, too, and you should not be displeased by my holding on to them. One of us must, if we’re not both to be overboard. I do have myself in pretty good order, and I can help you when you come East. Much that seems very difficult to you will look fairly elementary to me, and as long as we keep this balance we needn’t fear panic on all fronts. The move East is
not
so hard. Towards your parents you’ve always had an independent bearing but you’ve never been independent in naked fact. Well, that’s not so difficult. What will be more formidable will be making a life of your own in a strange city, but that’s not too awful either, once you’ve seen the world. And you
have
seen it, and it’s the world you’ve got to cope with, not NYC or Chicago. Besides, in me you have a friend. I’ve never refused my friendship, now have I? I said I wasn’t going to write a letter, and I’ve gone and done it. Shows how much I know my own mind. But I’ve got myself tranquil at the center, somehow. Maybe it’s my convalescence. And it doesn’t even bother me to be ignorant of my next moves.
not
so hard. Towards your parents you’ve always had an independent bearing but you’ve never been independent in naked fact. Well, that’s not so difficult. What will be more formidable will be making a life of your own in a strange city, but that’s not too awful either, once you’ve seen the world. And you
have
seen it, and it’s the world you’ve got to cope with, not NYC or Chicago. Besides, in me you have a friend. I’ve never refused my friendship, now have I? I said I wasn’t going to write a letter, and I’ve gone and done it. Shows how much I know my own mind. But I’ve got myself tranquil at the center, somehow. Maybe it’s my convalescence. And it doesn’t even bother me to be ignorant of my next moves.
Be my sweet and balanced Dolly.
To Alice Adams
[n.d.] [Tivoli]
Dear Alice -
I’m very sorry to hear of this, and I hope you’re better. I always have more to say about life when it’s myself that’s in trouble. The most useful thing perhaps I can say is that I’ve always had a great liking for you and thought you very vital, a woman evidently built to make it.
Sometimes what I’m sorriest about and most puzzled by is this feminine belief that one makes it in love, only in love, and that love is a kind of salvation. And then women, and sometimes men, too, demand of each other everything—everything! And isn’t it obvious by now that no human being has the power to give what we require from one another. When I saw that, the external world began to come back. My great need had made it almost disappear.
I hope the worst of this is over for you, or will soon be: I hate to think of you suffering. Never mind what I said earlier. I said that for myself. For you I’d prefer something else.
Yours very affectionately,
To Alice Adams
September 10, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dear Alice -
The only sure cure is to write a book. I have a new one on the table and all the other misery is gone. This is the form any refusal to be unhappy takes now, and I suppose it saves me from a merely obstinate negative. Because it isn’t merely for oneself that one should refuse a certain alternative. It’s also because we owe life something.
Do you ever come East? I don’t think I’ll be in SF for a while. In January I go to Puerto Rico to teach for four months. My first assignment in more than two years.
Don’t fly through these parts again without notifying me.
Yours affectionately,
To Keith Botsford
October 4, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dear Keith,
[ . . . ] I want the magazine to go on, want it badly, but I haven’t come up to expectations, and have to go into this with myself very honestly. This is a great age for sleepers, myself snoozing with the rest, now and then sending out a call to awaken. No, it’s not as bad as all that, but it’s not what I had planned and hoped. But let’s not quit yet. [ . . . ]
All the best,
Love,
To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
October 12, 1960 Tivoli, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Ray:
Thank you for your letter. I’ve seen lots of stuff since I was so rash as to become an editor—new stuff, that is. Most of it is pretty poor, of course, but there are six or eight young writers, relatively unknown, who are first-rate. James Donleavy who wrote
The Ginger Man
is to my mind one of our best writers. I don’t think his book sold well, and I can’t say how he supports himself. Then there’s Grace Paley (
The Little Disturbances of Man
), a housewife with two or three children and a husband who earns a rather modest living. Thomas Berger who wrote
Crazy in Berlin
is very good; so is Richard G. Stern, author of
Golk
. I’m sorry you were unable to give a fellowship to Leo Litwak who applied last year. He’s
got
it, I think, and he should be encouraged to apply again. I hope this list will be useful to you.
The Ginger Man
is to my mind one of our best writers. I don’t think his book sold well, and I can’t say how he supports himself. Then there’s Grace Paley (
The Little Disturbances of Man
), a housewife with two or three children and a husband who earns a rather modest living. Thomas Berger who wrote
Crazy in Berlin
is very good; so is Richard G. Stern, author of
Golk
. I’m sorry you were unable to give a fellowship to Leo Litwak who applied last year. He’s
got
it, I think, and he should be encouraged to apply again. I hope this list will be useful to you.
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