Letters (57 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
I’m flying to San Francisco on the 26th. I suppose I’ll be there before the letter arrives and back in Chicago about the first of June.
Love,
On May 15, while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland, presidential candidate and Alabama governor George Wallace had been shot and seriously wounded by Arthur Bremer.
To David Grene
June 22, 1972 Chicago
My dear David,
I had thought to find some rest in Japan but it wasn’t like that at all—it never is. I found myself running up and down giving lectures and seminars to widely erudite Japanese scholars. Among them there seems to be one of everything under the sun, so that if you call out at Tokyo University for an expert on German armor of the thirteenth century he will appear in a few minutes ready to take sides. Tokyo is a fuming, hissing metropolis, and what God promised Abraham has come to pass in Tokyo, not in Jerusalem. They have what Henry James called “numerosity.” There are no small gatherings, only mobs—everywhere mobs of every description. It was desolating to see but often funny, too, and I felt myself something of a Gulliver there. The old temple cities, anyway, were very beautiful and I reached them in the right frame of mind: I was exhausted and cast myself down in the quiet of temple gardens. These were all beautifully arranged, each stone in place and every bamboo leaf quivering on cue. Then I rushed back to San Francisco and came down with some sort of
fever
. They were ten very unpleasant days. Then I had a court confrontation with Susan and then went East and collected degrees from Yale and Harvard—a double-header. Daniel and I were to have spent July in Aspen but my case continues and I am not at all sure that I’ll be able to get out of here. However, Adam and I will certainly turn up in Ireland toward the end of August. As yet, I don’t know precisely when. [ . . . ]
fever
. They were ten very unpleasant days. Then I had a court confrontation with Susan and then went East and collected degrees from Yale and Harvard—a double-header. Daniel and I were to have spent July in Aspen but my case continues and I am not at all sure that I’ll be able to get out of here. However, Adam and I will certainly turn up in Ireland toward the end of August. As yet, I don’t know precisely when. [ . . . ]
Best wishes to everyone,
Yours affectionately,
To John Haffenden
June 27, 1972 Chicago
Dear Mr. Haffenden:
Berryman’s last letters to me are still scattered about my flat. I haven’t had the heart to gather them into an envelope and put them away. Where would I put them? The relationship is still open, as it were. This may serve to explain why it has been difficult for me to answer your inquiry.
Sincerely yours,
Haffenden was beginning research for
The Life of John Berryman
, which would appear in 1982.
The Life of John Berryman
, which would appear in 1982.
To the Committee on Admissions of the Century Association
September 29, 1972 Chicago
[ . . . ] I understand that Mr. William Phillips has been nominated for membership in the Century Club. My purpose in this letter is to make clear my very strong reasons for opposing this. I am convinced that Phillips has done great harm to American literature over the last ten or fifteen years. The
Partisan Review
of which he has been an editor from the first was once important and valuable. It continued the cultural line set by
The Dial, Transition
and the best of the little magazines. It published Malraux and T. S. Eliot, Silone and Koestler and George Orwell and Edmund Wilson and Robert Lowell and John Berryman [ . . . ]. But, the founding editors resigning for one reason or another, William remained in charge, and William lost no time in selling out. He betrayed and, intellectually and artistically, bankrupted the magazine. Over the last ten years
PR
has become trivial, fashionable, mean and harmful. Its trendiness is of the pernicious sort. It despises and, as much as it can, damages literature. The values held by early editors like Philip Rahv and Delmore Schwartz it has repudiated entirely. I think it has become the breeding place of a sort of fashionable extremism, of the hysterical, shallow and ignorant academic “counter-culture.” It trades on the reputation of the magazine, and readers who still associate the old names and standards with it are deceived into reading the harmful trash it now prints. In the early days William helped to build the old
Partisan
but he is also responsible for its decay. Standards have become rather soft, I know, but it’s nevertheless difficult for me to understand how anyone who has looked into recent numbers of
PR
could think of its editor as a member of the Century Club.
Partisan Review
of which he has been an editor from the first was once important and valuable. It continued the cultural line set by
The Dial, Transition
and the best of the little magazines. It published Malraux and T. S. Eliot, Silone and Koestler and George Orwell and Edmund Wilson and Robert Lowell and John Berryman [ . . . ]. But, the founding editors resigning for one reason or another, William remained in charge, and William lost no time in selling out. He betrayed and, intellectually and artistically, bankrupted the magazine. Over the last ten years
PR
has become trivial, fashionable, mean and harmful. Its trendiness is of the pernicious sort. It despises and, as much as it can, damages literature. The values held by early editors like Philip Rahv and Delmore Schwartz it has repudiated entirely. I think it has become the breeding place of a sort of fashionable extremism, of the hysterical, shallow and ignorant academic “counter-culture.” It trades on the reputation of the magazine, and readers who still associate the old names and standards with it are deceived into reading the harmful trash it now prints. In the early days William helped to build the old
Partisan
but he is also responsible for its decay. Standards have become rather soft, I know, but it’s nevertheless difficult for me to understand how anyone who has looked into recent numbers of
PR
could think of its editor as a member of the Century Club.
Yours sincerely,
The Century Association, an exclusive Manhattan club, grants members a period in which to support or oppose any candidate standing for membership. Once read by the admissions committee, “red letters” (as negative appraisals are called) are destroyed. Bellow had retained a carbon copy.
To Barnett Singer
November 9, 1972 Chicago
Dear Barney Singer—
[ . . . ] When I visited Seattle in 1951, I lived in something called the Hotel Meaney and made the rounds with [Theodore] Roethke whom I adored, and Dylan Thomas whom I admired and pitied. I couldn’t keep up with them, though, for I’m not a real drinking man.
Thanks for your note.
Barnett Singer (born 1945) has for many years been a professor of history at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. He is the author of, among other works,
Maxime Wiegand: A Biography of the French General in Two World Wars
(2008).
Maxime Wiegand: A Biography of the French General in Two World Wars
(2008).
1973
To Nicolas Nabokov
February 20, 1973 Chicago
Dear Nicolas,
Your Stravinsky recollections are delightful. Your mss. gave me nothing but pleasure. To read it
made
my evening.
made
my evening.
I have a few remarks to offer, not to be taken as criticisms but only as suggestions for improvement. First, then, let me say that to address Stravinsky in the second person is confusing and unnecessary. There are long passages of exposition during which the device is forgotten, and then one is jolted by the return of the “you.” I think it would be far better to say Stravinsky or, for informality, Igor Fyodorovich. What you have to tell us is so lively that it needs no grace notes. A second suggestion is that you cut much of the technical discussion of
Les Noces.
On the whole your musical discussions are rueful and illuminating but this one is too lengthy and unless you could dramatize your meeting with the pedantic musicologists it would be better to cut. About my third and last point you may be rather sensitive—it has to do with Robert Craft, whose image in the end is not entirely clear. One feels how much is left unsaid. Perhaps other people, possibly Auden, would not mind being quoted. But when Craft is mentioned, you fall into psychological diplomacy, ambiguity, etc. This is very different from the free mordant observation which makes the rest of your memoir so delightful. [ . . . ]
Les Noces.
On the whole your musical discussions are rueful and illuminating but this one is too lengthy and unless you could dramatize your meeting with the pedantic musicologists it would be better to cut. About my third and last point you may be rather sensitive—it has to do with Robert Craft, whose image in the end is not entirely clear. One feels how much is left unsaid. Perhaps other people, possibly Auden, would not mind being quoted. But when Craft is mentioned, you fall into psychological diplomacy, ambiguity, etc. This is very different from the free mordant observation which makes the rest of your memoir so delightful. [ . . . ]
Yours affectionately,
To Louis Lasco
March 5, 1973 [Chicago]
Esteemed Zahar Neoplasmich:
The famous columnist [Sydney J. Harris] appears in my hometown paper. Should I, wishing to glance at the Final Markets or the Obituaries, read a few of his lines by mischance, my feet begin to swell. He gives me edema. Still, I am grateful for your good intentions and your wish to share your delight with me.
You will be interested to hear that when I recently spoke at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Benny Shapiro’s brother Manny turned up with his frau and an elegant young son in a Smith Bros. beard. We reminisced about old times on Cortez St. I mentioned that I had heard from you. We decided that if you were still going to Las Vegas it was a heartening sign of virility, and the fires of life had not been banked in L. Lasco. The young man asked what he should do to become a writer. I said, “Shave!” He was much offended, nettled, and turned away from me.
They said that Benny was selling electrical supplies. Now that capital punishment has ended he’s probably selling old electric chairs. There’s a story for you, a promoter who tries to peddle old electric chairs to South American dictators. For a small percentage, I give you this idea. I’m always glad to hear from you. I send you fraternal greetings.
S. B. Pamunyitzoff
To Zero Mostel
March 16, 1973 Chicago
Dear Zero,
I can’t recall that I was ever able to persuade you to do
anything
but the University of Chicago wants me to try, so here goes: Would you be willing to come to Chicago in May to give a lecture on a subject close to your heart—Painting, for instance? The University has a series called the William Vaughn Moody Series. Only very eminent persons are asked to deliver Moody Lectures (I suppose I mean people like W. H. Auden). The students have a festival of the arts in May and spring has not yet drowned in dust. Harold Rosenberg will be there and you’ll have a jolly time, I’m sure.
anything
but the University of Chicago wants me to try, so here goes: Would you be willing to come to Chicago in May to give a lecture on a subject close to your heart—Painting, for instance? The University has a series called the William Vaughn Moody Series. Only very eminent persons are asked to deliver Moody Lectures (I suppose I mean people like W. H. Auden). The students have a festival of the arts in May and spring has not yet drowned in dust. Harold Rosenberg will be there and you’ll have a jolly time, I’m sure.
Yours, with best wishes,
A decade earlier Mostel had declined to star in
The Last Analysis,
signing instead to play Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof.
The Last Analysis,
signing instead to play Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof.
To Frances Gendlin
April [?], 1973 Monks House, Rodmell, East Sussex Well, it’s beautiful and spooky, the gardens are grand, the house cold, everything creaks but I was not haunted by the ghost of Virginia. I am exhausted, but well. I have no telephone and as yet no car, but I sh’d get the car. The phone is doubtful.
Can you ask Esther to mail me some Committee on Social Thought stationery,
immedjiat
?
immedjiat
?
I miss you.
Love,
Bellow was at the start of a six-week residency in East Sussex at what had been the country house of Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
To Frances Gendlin
[n.d.] [Cambridge]
Cara mia Francesca,
To meet you (but on which of two dates?) I can come into London. It means staying overnight at Barley Alison’s, but that’s feasible. It involves a backgammon tournament, with me rolling disgusting dice. Even worse than in Chicago. I look forward to your arrival (not because of the backgammon). Anyway we can speak on the phone now. This A.M. I am in Peterhouse, Cambridge, black tie unused—an amusing story which I will tell you after more important things (which I have terribly missed).
Lewes is one hour from London. I leave the car and take the train. Then getting to the airport isn’t easy, so I’ll come a day earlier. Phone me.
Love,
To Frances Gendlin
June 16, 1973 Belgrade
Dear Fran:
Like a Western sheriff with guns drawn, ready to shoot anything that moves—that’s [Samuel S.] Goldberg with his dollars. “How much—what is it?” Bang bang. Yesterday he bought four heavy rare volumes of American history. He has them at home in paper, but this edition is worth forty bucks. How will he get them home!? The Serbs have never heard of book-rate postage to the US. So we tote the hilarious bundles while Sam scouts for a Hermès shop. All the old broads in his office have commissioned him to buy perfume, which I daresay they desperately need. Today I’m dragging him off to visit unbuyable monasteries. But we look forward to cheap strawberries.
I’m well but tired, and miss you and my Dorchester [Avenue] comforts. And Daniel. I had my troubles with Adam. I think I told you I was not “received” by his mother—should say not vouchsafed an audience. But soon there will be bills. [ . . . ]
Much love,
To Ralph Ross
August 14, 1973 Aspen
Dear Ralph:
The subject was painful but your letter was very pleasant. I don’t know what we survivors should do with this slaughter-legacy our old friends have made us (I think of Isaac, of Delmore Schwartz). Maybe my little foreword made things too easy. It had the conventional charm for which John himself had a weakness or talent. I was sincere enough, but there were terrible things to say, and I didn’t say them. You touched on some of those in your letter. John telling you that he’d never drink again, that he wanted more love affairs. At the same time he knew he was a goner. One moment the post-tomb Lazarus, the next Don Juan, and much of the time someone who merely looked like John, as you put it. I knew that feeling.
Having written a few lines about him I now have the “privilege” of observing the attitudes of people towards the poet and his career. There’s something culturally gratifying, apparently, about such heroic self-destruction. It’s Good-old-Berryman-he-knew-how-to-wrap-it-up. It’s a combination of America, Murderer of Poets, and of This Is the Real Spiritual Condition of Our Times. Perhaps you’ve seen Boyd Thomes’s review of
Recovery
. Maris [Thomes] sent me a copy. It may not have reached you, so I’ll quote a few sentences.
Recovery
. Maris [Thomes] sent me a copy. It may not have reached you, so I’ll quote a few sentences.
“This combination of erudition and progressively more suicidal chaos has become his subject matter, and it was his artistic triumph to create a style sufficiently flexible and powerful to express it . . . John did more to elevate the potential of paranoia than anybody of our generation.”
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