Letters (65 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
March 29, 1978 Chicago
Dear Jim,
You won’t know anything about Jeffrey Harding unless you come here and look at the County Jail. I don’t know what sort of movie one could make about it but the jail itself is worth seeing, if Jeff can get you in (and out) safely.
At the moment it seems a more tranquil spot than Asolo [where Salter was vacationing]. What do you want to go to Italy for, and tempt kidnappers and terrorists? I’m having this out with my son Adam who wants to live in Florence next year and study Dante and Petrarch under the auspices of Smith College. I sent him clippings from the papers, which make no impression on him. I had him talk to my agent [Erich] Linder, who sends his own son to a Swiss university. And I don’t know whether you noticed a recent dispatch from Rome about the rage of the Mafia against those kidnappers of Aldo Moro. They denounce the terrorists for ruining the rackets in Italy and threaten to have their people inside the prisons execute the terrorists there if Moro is not set free by March 30th.
Seems to me that you and Adam are being pretty old-fashioned about Italy. I know you want to drink wine and breathe the delicious mountain air, but how much breathing do you think they’ll let you do? I suggest you come and look at the County Jail. We can go to Gene and Georgetti’s and eat our steak in nice quiet
local
Mafia surroundings.
local
Mafia surroundings.
Ciao
to you,
to you,
Jeffrey Harding, who was making a movie about prison life in Chicago, had been referred to Salter by Bellow.
To John Cheever
May 18, 1978 Chicago
Dear John:
I write to you as a member to the Chairman of the Awards Committee [of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters]. I perish of greed and envy at the sight of all these awards which didn’t exist when we were young and mooching around New York. I have no one to recommend for the [American] Academy in Rome—just as well, I wouldn’t want any of my friends shot in the legs—but I would like to recommend David Pryce-Jones who wrote the book on the Mitford girls for the E. M. Forster Award. I’d like also to put up a young author named Max Apple who has written a very good book called
The Oranging of America
and also Bette Howland, author of
Blue in Chicago
.
The Oranging of America
and also Bette Howland, author of
Blue in Chicago
.
There are no critics I could nominate for anything but crucifixion.
Yours with very sincere affection (this because you signed yourself very sincerely yours),
Love, too,
To Leon Wieseltier
May 19, 1978 Chicago
Dear Leon:
In Chicago when spring comes and the great sun stirs all this great mess and nature begins to produce all its spring phenomena, it’s not so much the budding trees and the blooming flowers that come into their own as the machines and the tarnish and the old building materials, and atmospheric lead and carbon are transposed. You get the spring look for lead and sulphuric derivatives. Yesterday we had gorgeous weather, with of course an Ozone Watch and over-heated automobiles with their hoods up blocking express-ways. I sat in a stalled car and kept calm by thinking about Rudolf Steiner, and I was perfectly sure that I was taking in deadly carcinogens and would get lung cancer. Today spring is low and gray. No harm in this, I suppose. What you feel is that the world has no elasticity. It’s probably un-Jewish of me to yield to external conditions in this way. In Lodz, once, I asked Dr. Marek Edelman, who’d been an adolescent fighting in the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto and was now a “cardiolog,” whether the ugliness of his urban surroundings didn’t bother him, and he looked at me with outright contempt. What difference can the
outside
of things make? It’s a kind of idolatry or graven-image susceptibility. You can catch an esthetic clap, whoring after these Ruskins, and serve you damn right. Have you heard of Edelman? A remarkable fellow, author of a stirring account of the Ghetto and the Umschlagplatz [deportation point from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka].
outside
of things make? It’s a kind of idolatry or graven-image susceptibility. You can catch an esthetic clap, whoring after these Ruskins, and serve you damn right. Have you heard of Edelman? A remarkable fellow, author of a stirring account of the Ghetto and the Umschlagplatz [deportation point from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka].
I’ve been on the road to make money to pay taxes and also legal fees, as well as accountants and wives, and children’s tuitions and medical expenses. The patriarchal list should go on to include menservants and maidservants and camels and cattle. I’d be lucky to get into the end of the procession, among the asses. When I came back I had to finish writing a short essay on Goethe’s
Italian Journey
—a wonderful book—for a German magazine, and so I had no time to go through the letters I’d gotten about our letter [of public protest to the Begin government], but now I’ve seen most of them, ranging from bouquets to notices of excommunication. You put your name to a document and you get a free bathysphere ride through the oceans of Jewish opinion and emotion. One lady blowfish informed me that the Israelis and the American Jews had problems enough without my acting as any kind of spokesman for them. She could find nothing in my biography or writings that showed any capacity for rational political thinking. Or any other sort. Some of the Israeli papers, I hear from my friend John Auerbach, called me a Russian agent and a Carter stooge. There’s nothing I long for less than politics, and I’d be glad to leave political rationality to the Begins and the Weizmanns, if I thought they had it, but Begin was awful on his last trip here, mismanaged everything, demanded the test of strength in the Congress everyone’s been dreading and which everything possible should have been done to avoid. He overstates everything, is all emphasis, is pertinacious, hollering—a real Jabotinskyite, and he’s going to bring us to a dangerous pitch of fanaticism. It isn’t so much that he’s wrong on all the issues, he’s not; but he doesn’t know how to lead the discussion. He’s a convulsive sort of man. And imagine the Jews outdone by a Carter. What can explain that but disorder and hysteria in the Jewish ranks. Is there no one in Israel to tell Begin what public relations in the US are all about?
Italian Journey
—a wonderful book—for a German magazine, and so I had no time to go through the letters I’d gotten about our letter [of public protest to the Begin government], but now I’ve seen most of them, ranging from bouquets to notices of excommunication. You put your name to a document and you get a free bathysphere ride through the oceans of Jewish opinion and emotion. One lady blowfish informed me that the Israelis and the American Jews had problems enough without my acting as any kind of spokesman for them. She could find nothing in my biography or writings that showed any capacity for rational political thinking. Or any other sort. Some of the Israeli papers, I hear from my friend John Auerbach, called me a Russian agent and a Carter stooge. There’s nothing I long for less than politics, and I’d be glad to leave political rationality to the Begins and the Weizmanns, if I thought they had it, but Begin was awful on his last trip here, mismanaged everything, demanded the test of strength in the Congress everyone’s been dreading and which everything possible should have been done to avoid. He overstates everything, is all emphasis, is pertinacious, hollering—a real Jabotinskyite, and he’s going to bring us to a dangerous pitch of fanaticism. It isn’t so much that he’s wrong on all the issues, he’s not; but he doesn’t know how to lead the discussion. He’s a convulsive sort of man. And imagine the Jews outdone by a Carter. What can explain that but disorder and hysteria in the Jewish ranks. Is there no one in Israel to tell Begin what public relations in the US are all about?
But then there’s no one in the US, seemingly, who can tell the Administration what the Saudis, etc. are about. A Bernard Lewis might do it, if anyone would let him get near enough to Jimmy, and if Jimmy were not himself a problem child. And all we private persons can do is think about these matters. They give us
thought
materials. Nor will anyone pay attention to our wisdom, if we should achieve it, what with the Moros and the Cambodias—the crisis-maddened consciousness of intelligent people is what I mean, I suppose. It’s because I have a letter from Jean-Paul Sartre asking me to contribute an article to a Big Discussion of the Jewish Question in
Les Temps Modernes
next autumn that this comes up.
thought
materials. Nor will anyone pay attention to our wisdom, if we should achieve it, what with the Moros and the Cambodias—the crisis-maddened consciousness of intelligent people is what I mean, I suppose. It’s because I have a letter from Jean-Paul Sartre asking me to contribute an article to a Big Discussion of the Jewish Question in
Les Temps Modernes
next autumn that this comes up.
Yours ever,
Wieseltier had organized an open letter to protest the Begin government’s slowness in answering the peace initiatives of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat. Signed by prominent American Jews including Bellow, Irving Howe, Jacob Neusner, Seymour Martin Lipset and Lucy Davidowicz, the letter received front-page coverage in
The New York Times.
The New York Times.
To Ladislas Farago
May 24, 1978 Chicago
Dear Mr. Farago:
I can return your compliments. I read your Patton book with admiration, so it pains me to contradict you. The letter [to
The New York Times
] I signed was probably too vague because it was too cautiously written but it did not support Carter’s Middle East policy and it was only mildly critical of Begin. I can’t understand why it should be sinful of American Jews to take positions which are taken also in Israel and expressed in the Knesset. The signers of our letter did not presume to tell the Israelis what they should do. No one expects Israel to commit suicide for the sake of “peace.” Why does it undermine Begin to enter a caveat against the dangers of annexation and the dangers of a large Arab population within a Greater Israel? But the last thing I want is to get into political controversies. In the Israeli press I have been called a sellout, a fink, a Carter-stooge and a Moscow agent. I don’t think any of these tags does me justice—do you? Well, the right tag is hard to find.
The New York Times
] I signed was probably too vague because it was too cautiously written but it did not support Carter’s Middle East policy and it was only mildly critical of Begin. I can’t understand why it should be sinful of American Jews to take positions which are taken also in Israel and expressed in the Knesset. The signers of our letter did not presume to tell the Israelis what they should do. No one expects Israel to commit suicide for the sake of “peace.” Why does it undermine Begin to enter a caveat against the dangers of annexation and the dangers of a large Arab population within a Greater Israel? But the last thing I want is to get into political controversies. In the Israeli press I have been called a sellout, a fink, a Carter-stooge and a Moscow agent. I don’t think any of these tags does me justice—do you? Well, the right tag is hard to find.
Sincerely yours,
Ladislas Farago (1906-1980) was the author of many World War II histories including
Patton: Ordeal and Triumph
(1964) and
Aftermath: The Search for Martin Bormann
(1974).
Patton: Ordeal and Triumph
(1964) and
Aftermath: The Search for Martin Bormann
(1974).
To Edward Shils
September 3, 1978 Chicago
My dear Edward:
Vicissitudes, yes, or perhaps the increasing contrariness of elderly friends—but it is a friendship and we both know it, and it sustains me in times of trouble. I can bear my difficulties pretty well; I am certainly equal to them mentally. I am not quite in control of them emotionally. I am and for a long time have been ready to do without the money. If the brutal order holds in the Appeals Court, I shall have to borrow to pay my persecutors, and I have no reason to be confident in the judgment of the Court of Appeals. My experience with courts and lawyers leaves no room for optimism. I’ve been up to the chin in sewage for nearly ten years now. It’s time I did whatever I must do to extricate myself.
The whole thing is monstrous—simply monstrous. It has taught me a great deal, though. I don’t say this menacingly, or with excessive bitterness. I plan no vengeance. I mean only to say that it has expanded my understanding of human beings very considerably.
However, I did not become a writer in order to make money, nor shall I stop being one because everything is confiscated. I am not quite certain how to go forward. The more I publish, the more vulnerable I am to predators. Perhaps some sort of American
samizdat
is the answer. (My one joke, this sad day.)
samizdat
is the answer. (My one joke, this sad day.)
I had always thought myself quite sturdy and resistant to knocks, but it often seems that I am not quite so strong as I had believed. I wake in the night, and do not feel very strong. I sometimes find myself praying. Not for favors of any sort, not even for help, but simply for clarification. I am not especially apprehensive about dying. What does distress me is the thought that I may have made a mess where others (never myself ) see praiseworthy achievements.
I knew that you would write to me. I told Alexandra before your letter came that I would soon hear from you. Because I do, after all, know what is what (in my own quite limited fashion). And I thank you from a full heart.
And you will forgive my silliness, as you always have.
Affectionately,
An Illinois Court of Appeals would uphold the lower-court ruling that had ordered Bellow to pay Susan half a million dollars in settlement of their long-standing property dispute.
To Owen Barfield
September 19, 1978 Chicago
Dear Owen:
I think I better stop waiting for a tranquil moment. There is no tranquil moment.
What I wished to tell you at some length I will tell you briefly. We read
Saving the Appearances
and
Worlds Apart
in a seminar last April and May. It’s too soon to say how well I succeeded as your interpreter. The participants were Wayne Booth of the English Department, Professor Wick, a philosopher who specializes in Kant, and a young mathematician named Zable, one of my wife’s colleagues who had seen a copy of
Saving the Appearances
on my table and was keen to discuss it with me. There were also two graduate students, one of them interested in Anthroposophy. Booth and the Kantian found the book “interesting but tough,” as Huck Finn said of
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Booth was extremely sympathetic, keenly interested, Wick was laconic and pulled at his pipe and told us that we didn’t really know Kant; we would be hopelessly muddled until we had put in a year or two at the Critiques of This or That. But even he found you an attractive writer. I thought I would get this brief interim report to you while my recollection of the seminar is still fresh. For the rest, the usual difficulties—no, worse than usual. I am being deprived by the courts of all my possessions. This morning I suddenly remembered a touching photograph, taken after his assassination, of Gandhi’s possessions: sandals, rice bowl, eyeglasses and dhoti. Can anyone with more property than that resist the powers of darkness? I make light of it, but the threat is serious. Today I was asked for an inventory of my personal belongings, and I wonder whether the court would hesitate to put them on auction. One never knows. I manage nevertheless to concentrate daily on the distinctions between the essential and inessential.
Saving the Appearances
and
Worlds Apart
in a seminar last April and May. It’s too soon to say how well I succeeded as your interpreter. The participants were Wayne Booth of the English Department, Professor Wick, a philosopher who specializes in Kant, and a young mathematician named Zable, one of my wife’s colleagues who had seen a copy of
Saving the Appearances
on my table and was keen to discuss it with me. There were also two graduate students, one of them interested in Anthroposophy. Booth and the Kantian found the book “interesting but tough,” as Huck Finn said of
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Booth was extremely sympathetic, keenly interested, Wick was laconic and pulled at his pipe and told us that we didn’t really know Kant; we would be hopelessly muddled until we had put in a year or two at the Critiques of This or That. But even he found you an attractive writer. I thought I would get this brief interim report to you while my recollection of the seminar is still fresh. For the rest, the usual difficulties—no, worse than usual. I am being deprived by the courts of all my possessions. This morning I suddenly remembered a touching photograph, taken after his assassination, of Gandhi’s possessions: sandals, rice bowl, eyeglasses and dhoti. Can anyone with more property than that resist the powers of darkness? I make light of it, but the threat is serious. Today I was asked for an inventory of my personal belongings, and I wonder whether the court would hesitate to put them on auction. One never knows. I manage nevertheless to concentrate daily on the distinctions between the essential and inessential.
I asked you in London whether you might be willing to look at the manuscript of a novel, or a portion thereof. Are you still of the same mind, or would you rather be spared? As a friend I would advise you to take the easier option. As one of those “writing fellows” (the term used by the indignant old lady in
The Aspern Papers
), you may, I hope, find it in your charitable heart to let me send you a hundred pages or so.
The Aspern Papers
), you may, I hope, find it in your charitable heart to let me send you a hundred pages or so.
Very best wishes,
To Isaac Bashevis Singer
October 5, 1978 Chicago
Dear Singer:
Rachel [MacKenzie] just called with the news.
Zol es aykh voyl bakumen
[
88
].
Zol es aykh voyl bakumen
[
88
].
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