Letters (72 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
A word about Jewish Life: I do my best, but I seldom write anything about Jewish Life that pleases Jewish Opinion. First thing I know there’s a brawl, and I come out of it with a shiner.
All the best to you,
To Owen Barfield
August 21, 1982 W. Halifax, Vermont
Dear Owen:
Clifford Monks sent me your review of the
Dean
with the suggestion that I write a reply—take issue with you, perhaps? It would be inappropriate to do such a thing. I wouldn’t dream of trying to overturn your opinion. Perhaps your understanding of the book is better than my own. After all, one can never answer fully for what one has written. Besides, the
Dean
is not a “fiction” in the conventional or formal sense. It is, as some people have told me, people whose judgment I value, a very strange piece of work.
Dean
with the suggestion that I write a reply—take issue with you, perhaps? It would be inappropriate to do such a thing. I wouldn’t dream of trying to overturn your opinion. Perhaps your understanding of the book is better than my own. After all, one can never answer fully for what one has written. Besides, the
Dean
is not a “fiction” in the conventional or formal sense. It is, as some people have told me, people whose judgment I value, a very strange piece of work.
I was touched by your close reading of the book and by your interest in (affection for?) its oddball author. It’s natural, however, that I should read my reader, criticize the critic, even the friendly and affectionate critic, or try to make out the shape of his thoughts. Besides, I am an apprentice Steiner-reader whereas you are a respected veteran, so I am bound to take an immense interest in your views. Here is a man who has been studying Anthroposophy for fifty years. What effects has this had? What is his vision of the modern world? Etc. And I felt as I read your review that you found me very strange indeed. I was aware from our first meeting that I was far more alien to you than you were to me. American, Jew, novelist, modernist—well of course I am all of those things. And I wouldn’t have the shadow of a claim on anybody’s attention if I weren’t the last, for a novelist who is not contemporary can be nothing at all. Rimbaud’s
Il faut être absolument moderne
[
94
] is self-evidently true, for me. Perhaps for you, too, but you would qualify
moderne
in so many ways that it would no longer be the same thing. In any case, the fact that you find me so alien proves that it is not the same. And why do I say that you are less alien to me than I to you? Well, because you have qualities familiar to me: English, of an earlier generation, educated in classics, saturated in English literature. Your history is clearer to me than mine can ever be to you. I have led an “undescribed life,” as it were. Few Europeans really know anything about America. [Denis] Brogan knew a bit, and so does [Luigi] Barzini, but there is something really very different (not in every respect a
good
difference) on this side of the Atlantic. And I hope you won’t take offense at this, but in my opinion you failed to find the key, the musical signature without which books like mine can’t be read. You won’t find anything like it in any of the old manuals. There is nothing arbitrary in this newness. It originates in one’s experience of the total human situation. But there is no point in lecturing on the self-consciousness of Americans and how it is to be represented, or why the reflections in the
Dean
are “crowded” into the small corners of sentences. Without the signature the
Dean
is impossible to play. Reading becomes a labor, and then of course one needs frequent rest, and the book has to be put down. And what is this mysterious signature? It is Corde’s intense passion. If the reader misses that he has missed everything.
Il faut être absolument moderne
[
94
] is self-evidently true, for me. Perhaps for you, too, but you would qualify
moderne
in so many ways that it would no longer be the same thing. In any case, the fact that you find me so alien proves that it is not the same. And why do I say that you are less alien to me than I to you? Well, because you have qualities familiar to me: English, of an earlier generation, educated in classics, saturated in English literature. Your history is clearer to me than mine can ever be to you. I have led an “undescribed life,” as it were. Few Europeans really know anything about America. [Denis] Brogan knew a bit, and so does [Luigi] Barzini, but there is something really very different (not in every respect a
good
difference) on this side of the Atlantic. And I hope you won’t take offense at this, but in my opinion you failed to find the key, the musical signature without which books like mine can’t be read. You won’t find anything like it in any of the old manuals. There is nothing arbitrary in this newness. It originates in one’s experience of the total human situation. But there is no point in lecturing on the self-consciousness of Americans and how it is to be represented, or why the reflections in the
Dean
are “crowded” into the small corners of sentences. Without the signature the
Dean
is impossible to play. Reading becomes a labor, and then of course one needs frequent rest, and the book has to be put down. And what is this mysterious signature? It is Corde’s intense passion. If the reader misses that he has missed everything.
And this is where I think your reading goes wrong, for you see “extremity of self-consciousness” rather than passion, Henry James in shorthand. Not at all. Nothing like it. The
Dean
is a hard, militant and angry book and Corde, far from being a brooding introvert, attacks Chicago (American society) with a boldness that puts him in considerable danger. But he is far more concerned to purge his understanding of false thought than to protect himself. Indeed, what is there to protect when the imagination has succumbed to trivialization and distortion?
Dean
is a hard, militant and angry book and Corde, far from being a brooding introvert, attacks Chicago (American society) with a boldness that puts him in considerable danger. But he is far more concerned to purge his understanding of false thought than to protect himself. Indeed, what is there to protect when the imagination has succumbed to trivialization and distortion?
Autobiography? Only in the vaguest sense. If I had been writing about myself I would have recorded that the Dean was reading [Rudolf Steiner’s]
Leading Thoughts
and
The Michael Mystery
, and that he saw himself between Lucifer in the East and Ahriman in the West. It’s not so much “unwillingness to essay the leap beyond” extremity of self-consciousness as it is dependable and certain knowledge of what the leap will carry you into that is the problem.
Leading Thoughts
and
The Michael Mystery
, and that he saw himself between Lucifer in the East and Ahriman in the West. It’s not so much “unwillingness to essay the leap beyond” extremity of self-consciousness as it is dependable and certain knowledge of what the leap will carry you into that is the problem.
I’m quite sure that I haven’t changed your mind about anything. I wasn’t really trying. I esteem you just as you are.
Yours with best wishes,
About the “leap beyond”: “certain knowledge” isn’t it either, but it would have to be a leap into a world of which one has had some experience. I have had foreshadowings, very moving adumbrations, but the whole vision of reality must change in every particular and the idols [must be] dismissed. Then one can take flight. It can’t be done by fiat, however much one may long for it.
“East, West, and Saul Bellow,” Barfield’s review of
The Dean’s December
, had appeared in
Towards
.
The Dean’s December
, had appeared in
Towards
.
To Saul Steinberg
December 26, 1982 [Chicago]
Dear Saul:
It’s an act of special generosity to send us these Steinbergs. I
need
them in cold Chicago as an aid to survival. As I used to hear them say in Parisian music halls, “
Ça réchauffe un peu
.” [
95
] I take a particular interest in the Strada Palas because of its vision of childhood—a man-sized boy striding the streets of Bucharest in primordial Romania. The absence of the world-as-represented-by-anybody-else is what I most appreciate. On occasions when I set myself to ponder the “problem of art” I always end up with this. I have my own version of the boy going down the street. If I were to rummage about for technical terms I would say that I had “unmediated percepts” in those days. Life was furnished with objects which hadn’t yet been tampered with. These objects were a product of the collaboration of God and Man, with Man contributing the shabbiness. I had words of my own for such things when I was a kid, syllables that came to me unsolicited. To this day I have never spoken them aloud. The faces you put in the windows of Strada Palas, the sunflowers, the rain-barrel, the dinosaur-hackled cats on the roof may have come from the same psychic source. I lived on St. Dominique St. in Montreal where orthodox Jews mixed with French Canadians, soldiers from the barracks on Pine Ave., and also cats, many cats, and quite a few nuns. The year was 1920.
need
them in cold Chicago as an aid to survival. As I used to hear them say in Parisian music halls, “
Ça réchauffe un peu
.” [
95
] I take a particular interest in the Strada Palas because of its vision of childhood—a man-sized boy striding the streets of Bucharest in primordial Romania. The absence of the world-as-represented-by-anybody-else is what I most appreciate. On occasions when I set myself to ponder the “problem of art” I always end up with this. I have my own version of the boy going down the street. If I were to rummage about for technical terms I would say that I had “unmediated percepts” in those days. Life was furnished with objects which hadn’t yet been tampered with. These objects were a product of the collaboration of God and Man, with Man contributing the shabbiness. I had words of my own for such things when I was a kid, syllables that came to me unsolicited. To this day I have never spoken them aloud. The faces you put in the windows of Strada Palas, the sunflowers, the rain-barrel, the dinosaur-hackled cats on the roof may have come from the same psychic source. I lived on St. Dominique St. in Montreal where orthodox Jews mixed with French Canadians, soldiers from the barracks on Pine Ave., and also cats, many cats, and quite a few nuns. The year was 1920.
I hope we can meet this summer. Alexandra and I have been putting up a house in Vermont. An act of
chutzpah
, at my age (Jewish hubris?).
chutzpah
, at my age (Jewish hubris?).
Many thanks, and blessings,
PART FIVE
1983-1989
W
hat were we here for, of all strange beings and creatures the strangest? Clear colloid eyes to see with, for a while, and see so finely, and a palpitating universe to see, and so many human messages to give and to receive. And the bony box for thinking and for storage of thoughts, and a cloudy heart for feelings. Ephemerids, grinding up other creatures, flavoring and heating their flesh, devouring this flesh. A kind of being filled with death-knowledge, and also filled with infinite longings.
hat were we here for, of all strange beings and creatures the strangest? Clear colloid eyes to see with, for a while, and see so finely, and a palpitating universe to see, and so many human messages to give and to receive. And the bony box for thinking and for storage of thoughts, and a cloudy heart for feelings. Ephemerids, grinding up other creatures, flavoring and heating their flesh, devouring this flesh. A kind of being filled with death-knowledge, and also filled with infinite longings.
—“
Zetland: By a Character Witness”
Zetland: By a Character Witness”
1983
To Alfred Kazin
January 24, 1983 Chicago
Dear Alfred:
Sorry you fell down. I am confident though that Martinique will heal your hip and you can leave the walker down there for some old party who really needs it. You say that sleep is tough but sitting up at the desk is possible, which proves that you haven’t yet realized how many writers do their sleeping at the desk. I’m glad you enjoyed my story. I don’t see that further comment is required. The first criterion is enjoyment, and so are the second and third criteria. The fact that you found it in part puzzling only signifies that you have fallen (temporarily, I hope) into the bad habit of puzzling over such matters. What? You didn’t notice how innovative “Him [with His Foot in His Mouth]” was in execution, and failed to notice how different it was from 99.9999 percent of stories recently published (say, past ten years or so)? Well, I forgive you these omissions.
As to your lengthy postscript, I don’t like the activists of the Free World Committee (except Midge [Decter] whom I do like for old times’ sake), but I belong because the other side smells so bad. Unbearable! And when I read of Gromyko’s visit to Bonn and see how effectively the Russians are working to disarm Western Europe unilaterally, then I think frantically of a
No
-blank big enough to accommodate my name. However, I never attend the meetings of such organizations because it interferes with the writing of stories. Enjoy the Plaza.
No
-blank big enough to accommodate my name. However, I never attend the meetings of such organizations because it interferes with the writing of stories. Enjoy the Plaza.
Yrs. ever,
Kazin attended the neoconservative Committee for the Free World’s meeting and would write critically about the organization in “Saving My Soul at the Plaza,” in
The New York Review of Books
. In February of the following year, Bellow resigned from the Committee for the Free World.
The New York Review of Books
. In February of the following year, Bellow resigned from the Committee for the Free World.
To Robert Penn Warren
February 4, 1983 Chicago
Dear Red—
Your letter made me so happy that I couldn’t think how to answer it. (“The problems of pleasure,” a philosopher would say.) Well, thank you for liking the story. When I say that I seem to have found a congenial way to get off a story, I feel like an old prospector with a new hunch. Then it comes to me with amusement and affection that we belong to a small band of old guys mad about writing, wandering in the desert.
I congratulate you on becoming grandparents. One can become a parent simply by fooling around. There’s something fortuitous about it: Comedy of Errors, not necessarily a serious thing. But to be a grandparent fits you into the species. You have your place now in the endless list of “begats.”
The [new] house [in W. Brattleboro] is almost ready—seven rooms without a chair, a teaspoon or a pillowcase. I’m coming out towards the end of May to buy second-hand furniture from Bolster’s Warehouse in Brattleboro. So we’ll be seeing you very soon—no small part of the happiness of being in Vermont.
My affectionate greetings to you both.
Yours as ever,
To Jeff Wheelwright
February 4, 1983 Chicago
Dear Mr. Wheelwright:
Many thanks for your letter. Was I really attacking journalism in the
Dean
? It might be nearer the truth to say that I was contemplating a great modern mystery—why, in this age of communication, are we so near the border of total incoherency? The literate masses desire information. A crowd of technicians informs them. Why the information should be haunted by unreality is the great mystery. Some people insist that mass society must kill true meaning. Others (like me) suspect that the confusion may have an epistemological root (of “me,” I should add that I occasionally have the metaphysical falling-sickness). The language of science is clear enough, within its limits, but all other important questions are up for grabs. Maybe because for science they have no true meaning. They have been surrendered to an incoherency which assumes various guises, or disguises, of meaning. An interesting variation on “ye have eyes and see not”: “ye have words and mean not.” Since we desire nevertheless to be informed we turn on the tube and read the papers but it’s all like a strip-tease in which the lights never fail to go out before we can get to the Main Thing. Today, for instance, I tried to read Flora Lewis in the
Times
on the Bulgarian connections of the man who tried to kill the Pope. Flora said that perhaps [Yuri] Andropov was aware that the attempt would be made. We can’t afford to know this fact, if it is a fact, because that would bring to us a new, deadlier Sarajevo. If the Russians were provoked by our knowledge of the truth they might be driven to destroy us all (themselves as well) with nuclear weapons. So we had better refrain. I’ve been reading such items since—oh—1930. The epistemological fits are much more fun. Better than the illusion of communication.
Dean
? It might be nearer the truth to say that I was contemplating a great modern mystery—why, in this age of communication, are we so near the border of total incoherency? The literate masses desire information. A crowd of technicians informs them. Why the information should be haunted by unreality is the great mystery. Some people insist that mass society must kill true meaning. Others (like me) suspect that the confusion may have an epistemological root (of “me,” I should add that I occasionally have the metaphysical falling-sickness). The language of science is clear enough, within its limits, but all other important questions are up for grabs. Maybe because for science they have no true meaning. They have been surrendered to an incoherency which assumes various guises, or disguises, of meaning. An interesting variation on “ye have eyes and see not”: “ye have words and mean not.” Since we desire nevertheless to be informed we turn on the tube and read the papers but it’s all like a strip-tease in which the lights never fail to go out before we can get to the Main Thing. Today, for instance, I tried to read Flora Lewis in the
Times
on the Bulgarian connections of the man who tried to kill the Pope. Flora said that perhaps [Yuri] Andropov was aware that the attempt would be made. We can’t afford to know this fact, if it is a fact, because that would bring to us a new, deadlier Sarajevo. If the Russians were provoked by our knowledge of the truth they might be driven to destroy us all (themselves as well) with nuclear weapons. So we had better refrain. I’ve been reading such items since—oh—1930. The epistemological fits are much more fun. Better than the illusion of communication.
Yrs. sincerely,
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