Letters (53 page)

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Authors: Saul Bellow

BOOK: Letters
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I’ll see you quite soon—early in October. I’ve missed you badly. Flee some, lose others, and that’s the story.
Love,
 
To Margaret Staats
September 21, 1968 [Bellagio]
Honey—I played tennis with Prof. Obolensky (Christ Church, Oxford) for nearly two hours yesterday, went to bed at 9:30 with two Gelusil pills and woke up at 8:30, having had no stomach upset. Consequently I feel like a newborn child. Many of my ailments must be caused by my reluctance to sleep nine or ten hours a day. Maybe I should simply give half my life to darkness instead of giving it
all
to confusion.
Maybe you’ll get this letter.
Love,
 
Prince Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky was at Villa Serbelloni working on
The Byzantine Commonwealth
, his history of eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.
 
 
To Margaret Staats
September 23, 1968 [Bellagio]
Dear Maggie—
[ . . . ] I think I’d better go and see Louis [Sidran], don’t you? What terrible things keep happening. And from here you have no idea how inconceivable the world is. From the peaceful mountains it’s all like the plague, down below. [Meanwhile, up here,] only old scholars, old scholars’ wives, high cuisine, choice wines, tennis, a peaceful library, Renaissance paintings. Then there are strange events. Last evening after dinner, by the fire, old John Marshall, Harvard ’21, told me that I had meant a great deal to him. My books, and myself. Then he began to weep. He’s such a decorous Wasp I hardly knew how to interpret this. He simply said that I was one of the people he loved. And he wept. I wept myself, partly at the oddity of human relations. That there should be so much to jump over—so much apparent difference or distance. And then, in people who are
not
old, whose flesh isn’t dead, whose hearts aren’t dead, one could live a life of Harvard or Chicago (dateless horror, Chicago) until love reclaims one for reality. Well, it all happens. He’s a good man.
Mosby
came today. To my horror, as I read along p. 5, six lines up from the bottom, “And her and her cowboy . . .” What nitwit let that pass? It’s awful! In a house like Viking, and in a short book. I’ve written to Denver [Lindley] abt it. I was angry, felt nasty, but held it in.
Tell me, how is the new job? I’m afraid you can’t answer that. I’ll be gone when the answer arrives.
Love,
 
Bellow’s childhood friend Louis Sidran was dying of cancer in Chicago.
 
 
To Margaret Staats
September 27, 1968 [Bellagio]
Dear Maggie:
Louie is dead. He went back to the hospital, and there he seemed to give out, his wife says, and he died. I guess he had struggled so long and so hard with the thing that he was used up. I telephoned Winnetka yesterday, and talked to Shirley. I’m very sad and heavy but not grief-sickened. I went about my business, crying some, and thinking now and then of the funeral, yesterday. He was in the ground and the family had gone home. It was his first night there. Shirley kept saying that he was so happy to have come to East Hampton before [he got too ill], and talked of nothing else. He had come to say goodbye to me, and knew it. He got my card from Bellagio and hoped I’d get back before too long. I must have expected to see him again. He died quickly and didn’t have to waste away utterly. I feel especially for his mother, who’s a fine old woman, and for Ezra [Shirley and Louie’s youngest child].
I was glad to get the red leaf. Thank you, honey. And you’re right, it’s worth a thousand
Timeses
. I keep it with the shells. I think my long celibacy has restored my contemplative eye. I spend more time sitting looking at objects. Much less coming and going at random, helter-skelter but as if I had some purpose. I do a lot of looking at Lake Como.
I am most troubled, when I am troubled, by Daniel. I haven’t seen him in nearly three months and I miss him desperately. I may go directly back to see him, and then come to New York some days later to see you. The news from Chicago is not reassuring. I want to see for myself how matters are, and I shan’t feel easy until I do. I’ll give you plenty of notice. I’ve missed you. When the fat envelopes of clippings come, I am disappointed when there is no letter, but the term has just begun so you must be over your eyebrows with work.
My German publisher Witsch (wouldn’t you know it) has died. Without him the company is floundering and I’m going down to Milan tomorrow to meet Herr Rowohlt of Rowohlt Co. and hear what he has to say. Obolensky, my tennis chum the Prince, has gone back to Oxford. None too soon, probably. I thought the other day that I would keel over on the court. Singles are much too rough for me, especially since I’m a duffer and have to run far more than a real tennis player.
Much love,
Y.D.
 
To Mark Harris
October 22, 1968 Chicago
Dear Mark:
Your letter about
Mosby
set me up for a while in the midst of a disorderly season. I see, looking back at the vanished years, that I wrote few stories and that I seem to have used them as “scale models” for bigger jobs. For that reason I was a bit worried about
Mosby
; I wondered what big job it would lead to. Even now I’m not altogether clear as to what
is
happening. I don’t think it’s all bad, however. And I hoped that I was not being choppy, only lucid. But all we worshippers of lucidity must be terribly confused to begin with.
The thing at S.F. State was very bad. I’m not too easy to offend, at my age, and I don’t think I was personally affronted—that’s not my style. The thing was offensive though. Being denounced by [Floyd] Salas as an old shit to an assembly which seemed to find the whole thing deliciously thrilling. [ . . . ] So I left the platform in defeat. Undefended by the bullied elders of the faculty. While your suck-up-to-the-young colleagues swallowed their joyful saliva. No, it was very poor stuff, I assure you. You don’t found universities in order to destroy culture. For that you want a Nazi party.
Enough said. Thanks again and all best,
 
At San Francisco State University, after delivering a talk entitled “What Are Writers Doing in the Universities?” Bellow had been denounced in the style of the day by boxer-turned-writer Floyd Salas: “You’re a fucking square. You’re full of shit. You’re an old man, Bellow.” (Bellow was fifty-two.) The episode would furnish material for a similar scene in
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
, his novel in progress.
To Willie Greenberg
December 7, 1968 Chicago
Dear Willie,
It was such a pleasure to see you after so many years. I always remembered you as a very kind boy (to me, at eight, you were a young man, really) and you confirmed the accuracy of my memory by generously giving me those photographs. I was touched by that. Enough to make a middle-aged gent cry.
Thank you, Willie.
Remember me to Molly and Harry. I hope we will meet again before the doors shut.
Love,
 
Willie Greenberg’s family had lived next door to Bellow’s in Montreal.
 
 
To Margaret Staats
December 9, 1968 [Chicago]
Dearest Maggie—
I am
really
down now, and I must work for an Armistice, a moratorium, some pause. I can’t go on like this. I am simply worn out, and I no longer feel natural towards you or anyone else.
I love you, I always will. You are one of the best—probably the best woman I will ever know. I respect you, I wish you every good, but I am trying to save my own sanity just now—probably my very life. I feel it threatened. We must stop. I can’t go on without a breather.
 
To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
December 10, 1968 Chicago, Ill.
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT ON CANDIDATE FOR FELLOWSHIP
Name of Candidate: Louise Glück
Miss Glück has the combination of oddity and verbal power from which something unusually good may result. I am impressed by her poems. She plays no games that I can recognize, she seems entirely independent. I think she should be freed from her stenographic duties.
1969
 
To Margaret Staats
January 2, 1969 London
Dearest Maggie—
It’s all right here. I had night-depressions but really nothing dreadful and I seem to be pulling myself together. I hope you are, too. I was encouraged by your clearer eyes and calmer ways. You’ll make it. It’s not easy, but you have what it takes—reform, imagination, courage. The courage moves me more than I can say.
 
To Margaret Staats
[n.d.] [London]
Dear M—
Good times. I am by myself. From you I have acquired a need for the soul. People without it now are terribly trying. Can’t even make them out. There was
only
one way to learn that. It was very chancey. I probably had no choice. So there it is. By now I am probably out on points.
Be back soon—
 
To Margaret Staats
[Postmark illegible; postcard of King’s College, Cambridge]
My dear Maggie—
This is where I am. Some peace, here. A sign on the sundial says,
Sic fugit vita
. Meaning: “Here the sun seldom shines, but we are prepared.” Ed [Shils] asks about you.
Love,
 
To Toby Cole
February 3, 1969 London
Dear Toby
If Eli [Wallach] wants to try [
The Last
]
Analysis
on NET, I have no objection. I’d be willing even to make myself available for consultation (on carefully measured terms).
At 3:55 P.M. I’ll be in Paris, and tomorrow I have lunch with my translator, making several additions and corrections in and to the O[range] Soufflé. I’ll keep the notes. Until I finish my novel (half-done; perhaps, at this moment half-baked as well) I’ll write no dramas. I do however have in my head two fabulous movie scenarios—one for De Sica, one for Fellini. I’d prefer De Sica for both.
I’ll arrive in NY perhaps together with this letter. I’ll telephone this time.
Love,
 
To Barley Alison
February 18, 1969 [Chicago]
My dear Barley,
Greetings.
Here’s Chicago, once again. The Lake, seen from this window, is frozen solid and so are a good many other things. Until I got to New York my tour was uneventful enough. Paris was as I thought it would be, largely a waste of time. I did see some old friends. But I did not enjoy my meeting with [Louis] Guilloux and probably I was not highly enjoyable to meet myself. Then on to the US. I was grounded by a blizzard in the East. Fifteen inches of snow. Landing at Idlewild. I telephoned my friend Arlette [Landes] in Chicago. She said she believed we should not see each other anymore. Evidently she couldn’t wait until I returned to say this. I assume that she has taken up with someone else. Women generally get the strength for these decisions from other relationships. I don’t know that
relationship
is the word for it either. Lord knows that sort of conduct. What kinds of events that poor noun has to subsume! At any rate, I haven’t seen my companion, from whom I was inseparable for a month. This is what intimacies seem made of. Of course I’m hurt. I
would
be. But it’ll wear off. It generally does.
When I spoke to Pillet, he asked for a thousand dollars in rent. I don’t think I will want to pay so much. I’ve already made plans to take Adam to England on June 23rd. I thought I would, after two weeks, hand him over to his mother in Madrid and then go on to the South to visit you near Almería. If you can put up with me for a week or so from about July 8th or 9th. Adam’s mother will continue with him to Italy. I shall probably go back to the US to spend more of the summer with Daniel on or near Martha’s Vineyard.
I seem now to be writing still another book. I was thrown from the first by Arlette and had lost the power to concentrate on what I was doing while we were together. Since I loathe and fear idleness I have opened a new project. I can complete this in about two months. It’s the
métier
that keeps me sane, bless it.
Love,
 
To Sylvia Tumin
February 21, 1969 Chicago
Dear Sylvia,
I was in London and didn’t get your note in time to wire my congratulations. I know that Mel is sensible enough to be fifty. But I do keep remembering, with enjoyment, his frivolous salad days. Enjoy the following: I telephoned Kappy from London to say that I was coming to Paris to see him. He said that he was just leaving for Switzerland, to ski. I told him that I was flying over primarily to see him. Then he said, “I am desolated.” I enjoyed that tremendously. It was worth all the shillings I had dropped into the box.

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