Letters (41 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
Write me a note. And can you keep the Tivoli post office supplied with those large manila envelopes for forwarding?
Remember me to Fanny.
All best,
To David Peltz
February 2, 1961 Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico
Dear Dave—
Don’t ask! But Division St. seems to have made us of iron, and we survive it all. But, to the point: A very good friend of mine, Hannah Arendt, at Northwestern as visiting lecturer, wants to see Chicago. Can you show her interesting things? She’s great. Perhaps you’ve read her stuff. Well over fifty—Phyllis needn’t worry.
Love,
To Susan Glassman
February 8, 1961 [Rio Piedras]
Dolly, from your nutty but devoted and adoring lover, here are a few pages more of this impossible
Herzog
whom I love like a foster brother. I’m sorry about
your
brother. I feel so very loving towards you I could take the whole thing on myself and give you a rest under the sun—lying on the sand, well loved and recovering from the snows and grief of New York.
Sacre bleu!
What a jerk I am. But since I have gone off on you, let’s make the most of the climate, anyway. Let us cling to the climate and to each other.
Herzog
whom I love like a foster brother. I’m sorry about
your
brother. I feel so very loving towards you I could take the whole thing on myself and give you a rest under the sun—lying on the sand, well loved and recovering from the snows and grief of New York.
Sacre bleu!
What a jerk I am. But since I have gone off on you, let’s make the most of the climate, anyway. Let us cling to the climate and to each other.
Now sweetheart, list. The name of the woman at Dell is Elizabeth Shepherd. Thank heaven I’ve got that down without fucking up the spelling; never was there such a fucky-knuckled character. Tear up as many of the books as you have and give them to her, and when you come down we’ll draft the introduction and it’ll pay for the expensive apartment we’ll have to take. But the hell with that. Money will be found. There are always more wind-falls. Now the CBC has paid me an unexpected three hundred to produce [my one-act play] “The Wrecker” on TV. I should knock off a few of those little things. They earn one a lot of money over the long pull. So if one must pay two hundred fifty, one pays two hundred fifty. I’m so greedy to see you, I can’t maintain the normal greed. We’ll work matters out.
I’ve gotten a very clever and affectionate card from Greg about his grades (quite high) and I don’t see how I can turn down the U. of C.—because of him. He’s applied for a scholarship. So the money I’m paid there will be the least of it. As for you and me, dolly, I am not supposing that by next winter there’ll be such a problem ab’t Chicago as you anticipate. Boy, the ambiguity of this Bellow! But I love you very much, Susie.
To Louis Gallo
February 15, 1961 Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico
Dear Mr. Gallo:
Your letter was a little sassy but it was amusing, too, and on the whole I thought you meant well but were being awkward, and what’s the good of being a writer if you must cry every time someone makes a face? I became an editor against my will, because I’m tired of enduring the nausea that comes over me when I pick up a Little Magazine or a Literary Review. I could not bring myself to believe that matters must really be so bad—that everyone was really so spoiled and lazy and opportunistic and sly and snobbish and hopeless—that educated people really must deserve to be despised by their brothers in business (I don’t mean college-educated people but those who have developed hearts and intelligences)—that the people who have power over us might as well exercise it because we have well deserved their abuse by our stupid cowardice. In short, Mr. Gallo, not to spell out the cultural history of America in the Thirties, Forties or Fifties, I decided, together with some friends who felt as I did, that it was not very profitable to keep wringing one’s hands over this wicked condition. And, full of illusions, we therefore started a magazine. (The first aria of
TNS #3
contains—or will when it appears in about a month—my estimate of the early returns on this venture.) There is no money in it for me or any of the others. I still go out now and again and teach school. I don’t mind too much. Not to crown myself with too many flowers, more than my weak head can stand, the sacrifice is not really great. [ . . . ]
TNS #3
contains—or will when it appears in about a month—my estimate of the early returns on this venture.) There is no money in it for me or any of the others. I still go out now and again and teach school. I don’t mind too much. Not to crown myself with too many flowers, more than my weak head can stand, the sacrifice is not really great. [ . . . ]
You have guessed my religion, Mr. Gallo—Louis, if I may. If Mr. Einstein, Albert, declined to believe that God was playing dice with the universe, I—we—can’t believe, ugly as things have become, and complicated, that human life is nothing but the misery we are continually shown. I worry about Affirmation and the Life-Affirmers—the princes of the big time [New York City] across the river from where you buy your Drano [Trenton] who whoop it up for Life . . . But I’d better check myself. I have some things to add to
Seize the Day
but not in this expository style.
Seize the Day
but not in this expository style.
I hope
The Noble Savage
will work, or at least start something, and I hope to see more of your writing, a great deal more, in the magazine and elsewhere.
The Noble Savage
will work, or at least start something, and I hope to see more of your writing, a great deal more, in the magazine and elsewhere.
As for your views of what I do—well, yes, your judgment is pretty sound, I believe. When I got the idea for
Augie March
—or rather when I discovered that one could free oneself, I became so wildly excited I couldn’t control the book and my hero became too disingenuous. However, I don’t enjoy discussing old books.
Augie March
—or rather when I discovered that one could free oneself, I became so wildly excited I couldn’t control the book and my hero became too disingenuous. However, I don’t enjoy discussing old books.
I must now go and read the menu at the lunch counter below. It’s noon, and I get hungry by the clock.
To Jack Ludwig
[n.d.] [Rio Piedras]
Dear Jack;
I have tried very hard to avoid writing this letter, but I suppose there’s nothing else to do now. Your phenomenal reply of February 4th forces me to tell you a few of the things I feel about your relations to the magazine and me, personally.
First, as regards
TNS
. I know how well you can tell yourself, within your Ludwig Disneyland, that you have done things, edited, attended to the needs of the magazine. With you, the intention is enough. A few passes of the Ludwig wand and
voilà
—a magazine! You have done nothing in months but read a few manuscripts. Others you have detained for periods up to half a year, and when asked about them have simply answered that your secretary [ . . . ] had stashed them away. Is that all? When I asked you to edit things, you said you couldn’t, you had TV programs, lectures and other obligations. Still the manuscripts kept coming back from you, when in their own sweet time they did come back, with scrawled notes recommending editing. I have those notes, a whole collection of them. Therefore, I did the [Jara] Ribnikar [piece], and thoroughly, did this and that, and would, let me add, have continued to carry you—I think my letters of last summer made that clear, those unanswered letters which were never without friendly inquiries—if you had shown the slightest sign of commitment to the magazine. I know nothing of what you felt. Only God knows that. But I do know what your actions were. And the “unintended slight” has nothing to do with it. What do you mean by “slight”? I can’t figure that out. It’s perfectly true that I was off in Poland for a time for reasons you understand as well as I do, and perhaps even better. By now I can’t be sure that I
do
know more about them. And Keith [Botsford] was off in Venice, that’s true too. I assumed that during my absence you two would take charge of
TNS,
and Keith assumed that we would do the same while he was gone. But I was in Warsaw and he in Venice, not in New York. You, an editor of the magazine, come to town on business of your own, and to mend your fences, and call neither me nor [Aaron] Asher, but conceal your presence, and then, after having done practically nothing since early summer, you write from Mpls. to ask me for a table of contents you might have gotten on the phone from Aaron. What can you, without hallucination, believe you have to do with
TNS
? You were looking forward to the two of us in PR handling
#4
! And what did you do about
#3
? You sent two inept and scarcely readable paragraphs for the arias which I threw out in disgust. I don’t think you are a fit editor of the magazine. You have, in some departments, good judgment. I trusted your taste and thought you might be reliable as an editor, but you are too woolly, self-absorbed, rambling, ill-organized, slovenly, heedless and insensitive to get on with. And you must be in a grotesque mess, to have lost your sense of reality to the last shred. I think you never had much of it to start with, and your letter reveals that that’s gone, too.
TNS
. I know how well you can tell yourself, within your Ludwig Disneyland, that you have done things, edited, attended to the needs of the magazine. With you, the intention is enough. A few passes of the Ludwig wand and
voilà
—a magazine! You have done nothing in months but read a few manuscripts. Others you have detained for periods up to half a year, and when asked about them have simply answered that your secretary [ . . . ] had stashed them away. Is that all? When I asked you to edit things, you said you couldn’t, you had TV programs, lectures and other obligations. Still the manuscripts kept coming back from you, when in their own sweet time they did come back, with scrawled notes recommending editing. I have those notes, a whole collection of them. Therefore, I did the [Jara] Ribnikar [piece], and thoroughly, did this and that, and would, let me add, have continued to carry you—I think my letters of last summer made that clear, those unanswered letters which were never without friendly inquiries—if you had shown the slightest sign of commitment to the magazine. I know nothing of what you felt. Only God knows that. But I do know what your actions were. And the “unintended slight” has nothing to do with it. What do you mean by “slight”? I can’t figure that out. It’s perfectly true that I was off in Poland for a time for reasons you understand as well as I do, and perhaps even better. By now I can’t be sure that I
do
know more about them. And Keith [Botsford] was off in Venice, that’s true too. I assumed that during my absence you two would take charge of
TNS,
and Keith assumed that we would do the same while he was gone. But I was in Warsaw and he in Venice, not in New York. You, an editor of the magazine, come to town on business of your own, and to mend your fences, and call neither me nor [Aaron] Asher, but conceal your presence, and then, after having done practically nothing since early summer, you write from Mpls. to ask me for a table of contents you might have gotten on the phone from Aaron. What can you, without hallucination, believe you have to do with
TNS
? You were looking forward to the two of us in PR handling
#4
! And what did you do about
#3
? You sent two inept and scarcely readable paragraphs for the arias which I threw out in disgust. I don’t think you are a fit editor of the magazine. You have, in some departments, good judgment. I trusted your taste and thought you might be reliable as an editor, but you are too woolly, self-absorbed, rambling, ill-organized, slovenly, heedless and insensitive to get on with. And you must be in a grotesque mess, to have lost your sense of reality to the last shred. I think you never had much of it to start with, and your letter reveals that that’s gone, too.
In fact it’s a fantastic document and I’m thinking of framing it for my museum. You thought I’d be at the boat to greet Keith? Which boat? I’ve heard of no boat. You took Sondra’s word for it that I was in Tivoli? Well, for several days with Adam I was there. But I was in New York a good deal of the time, and so were you, before Sondra arrived. And besides, why take Sondra’s word for it? She and I exchange no personal information. How would she know where I was? Did I write her that I would be at Tivoli? Without consulting me, you phoned [my lawyer] John Goetz in Mpls. to find out whether I was giving you an accurate account of the legal situation last spring, but without a second thought you simply accept what Sondra tells you of my whereabouts. There seems to me to be a small imbalance here. Especially since we’re not only colleagues but “friends,” and haven’t seen each other in nearly a year. Pretty odd, isn’t it? And if you had phoned (and I believe you’d have had the strength to resist my invitation to Tivoli) would I have come to New York to see you? In all this there is some ugliness, something I don’t want explained, though I’m sure that as a disciple of the Hasidim and believer in Dialogue and an enthusiast for [Abraham Joshua] Heschel, and a man of honor from whom I have heard and endured many lectures and reproaches and whose correction I have accepted, you have a clear and truthful explanation. All the worse for you if you are not hypocritical. The amount of internal garbage you haven’t taken cognizance of must be, since you never do things on the small scale, colossal.
It wouldn’t do much good to see matters clearly. With the sharpest eyes in the world I’d see nothing but the stinking fog of falsehood. And I haven’t got the sharpest eyes in the world; I’m not superman but superidiot. Only a giant among idiots would marry Sondra and offer you friendship. God knows I am not stainless faultless Bellow. I leave infinities on every side to be desired. But love her as my wife? Love you as a friend? I might as well have gone to work for Ringling Brothers and been shot out of the cannon twice a day. At least they would have let me wear a costume.
Coventry, pal, is not the place.
To Richard Stern
February 27, 1961 [Rio Piedras]
Dear Dick:
Don’t worry about a thing. [Jules] Feiffer has all the wit, charm and pathos you could possibly want. I think this thing is going to go. For
TNS
however—well, we have to deal with eternities. World Pub. is so slow it takes four or five months after we’re done with the issue to manufacture; it’s a
krikhik
[
64
]—the word is Yiddish—schedule; two issues a year, and awfully frustrating. Chapter 1 of the new novel is very good, but so obviously part of a longer work we can’t take it.
TNS
however—well, we have to deal with eternities. World Pub. is so slow it takes four or five months after we’re done with the issue to manufacture; it’s a
krikhik
[
64
]—the word is Yiddish—schedule; two issues a year, and awfully frustrating. Chapter 1 of the new novel is very good, but so obviously part of a longer work we can’t take it.
I’ve been hammering at Herzog’s back for months, and have several hundred pages of narrative about as steady as the moon’s orbit. The whole now looks far different from what you saw, and that will look even more different in the end. It seems I used to work by adding steadily, and I now do it by adding and then boiling down. I know it sounds like cookery, but that’s what Plato said poetry was, one of the arts of flattery, like hairdressing and soup-making.
I’ll show up in Chicago towards the end of May, quite willing to talk. Even about Susan, if you like. I think by now I know her quite well. I can tell you more about her than most others can tell me. I shrink from marriage still, but not from Susan.
About May 29th, I think.
Meanwhile, give my best to Gay, to Shils, and to the kids. I’m sorry you didn’t get the Gug, but I think it’ll come one of these years. Keep after it.
À bientôt,
To Gregory Bellow
February [?], 1961 [Rio Piedras]
Dear Greg:
Your letter amazed me. What’s all this solemnity about honest men and faith and credit? I thought you were a socialist, for liberty and equality. It seems you really are a capitalist, all for the buck. Or do you think you’re saving your mother from my swindles, or protecting her from bankruptcy or starvation? What sort of nonsense is this? You have two parents. Both love you. The interests of both should be close to you.
Both
.
Both
.
What is it that’s not rightfully mine—the alimony? Is it rightfully Anita’s? By what right? Because I injured her? But I’ve never billed her for the pain she caused me. Or is it a one-way street? This is money I work very hard for, for I am somewhat slipshod and incompetent about my earning, and inefficient. Normally (whatever that is—what’s normal with me?) I don’t mind too much. But I’ve had a difficult time. Don’t you know that? Really I’m so surprised at your failing to realize that I’ve had a hard time I’m tempted to laugh. After all, the difficulty and the weeping and all of it has involved you! And that’s really quite funny, don’t you think, that you should now be so indignant and send me boyscout messages about how a scout is honorable. But really, socialist to socialist, what’s the sense of alimony rain or shine? She has a job and a guaranteed income. I haven’t. She’s neither sick nor in dire need whereas I can without exaggeration claim I’ve had a wretched time. I don’t suppose you think the Sondra-Adam business was fun. And with the heartbreak of it went the expense. You can’t imagine how much it all costs to lose a wife and child. I’ve exhausted my credit. I owe Viking ten grand, and my English publisher eighteen hundred, and Sondra’s mother a thousand, and [Samuel S.] Goldberg, and taxes and so on and on and on. Wouldn’t it have been nice of Anita, who knew of these hardships, to let me off a bit and say, “See here, I know it’s rough. But though you’ve done me wrong I am not vengeful. You can start paying again when you’re able”? Now that would have been something like humane. I could have sworn socialists were a little like that. I must have been reading the wrong books. You may ask why, with these views of alimony, I ever consented to pay it. Well, I did it because Anita’s lawyer wouldn’t allow me to return from the West and reside in New York unless I agreed to the terms. So to be near you I agreed. And I was good about it for years and years. But now I’m on rather lean days, so you say, Take him to court. And she says, in sorrow, I can’t afford it. Not quite accurate, Greg. It would have cost her nothing if she were in the right. In that event I would have to pay the court costs, too. But she and I would have to submit statements of financial condition to the court, and perhaps the alimony might be taken away altogether. For my financial condition is pretty bad. Yes, it looks palmy. I earn six thousand here for the term, but I pay more than five thousand to Anita and Sondra, so one might say that I’ve come here to make that money. It only takes five months or so. But what do I do in June, Greg?
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