Saul Bellow_ Letters Part 50

To Richard Stern March 12, 1996 Brookline Dear Richard- You are unchallengeably the most generous writer I've ever known. Your firefly friends can be certain when their tails light up with a new color that your innocent heart will respond with joy.

When I got out of the hospital (crawled out) last winter I ran a test or two-naturally-to see whether there was a charge still in the batteries. And of course repet.i.tions-deploying the old troops-wouldn't do.

And . . . I've got at least four or five readers. G.o.d has not abandoned me. Why the Lord of hosts has let the ranks become so thin, who can say? Continuons! Continuons! [ [124]

Much love from your well and grateful friend,

To Martin Amis March 13, 1996 Brookline My dear Martin: I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now."

"Then put it on hold hold."

This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death-because one can't can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses. die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.

I entered the hospital in '94, a man biologically in his forties. Coming out in '95, I was the Ancient Mariner, and the Mariner didn't write novels. He had only one story and delivered it orally. But [I told myself] you are are a writer still, and perhaps you'd better come to terms with the Ancient. a writer still, and perhaps you'd better come to terms with the Ancient.

I may be about to resolve all these difficulties, but for two years they have totally absorbed me.

I've become forgetful, too. Nothing like your father's nominal aphasia. I find I can't remember the names of people I don't care for-in some ways a pleasant disability. I further discover that I would remember people's names because it relieved me from any need to think about them. Their names were enough. Like telling heads.

I can guess how your father must have felt at his typewriter, with a book to finish. My solution is to turn to shorter, finishable things. I have managed to do a few of those. Like learning to walk again-but what if what one wants, really, is to run run?

I am sure you have thought these things in watching your father's torments.

Last Sat.u.r.day I attended a memorial service for Eleanor Clark, the widow of R. P. Warren. I found myself saying to her daughter Rosanna that losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-gla.s.s window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces-down to the last gla.s.sy splinter.

Of course you are are your father, and he is you. I have often felt this about my own father, whom I half expect to see when I die. But I believe I do know how your father must have felt, sitting at his typewriter with an unfinished novel. Just as I understand your saying that you are your dad. With a fair degree of accuracy I can see this in my own father. He and I never your father, and he is you. I have often felt this about my own father, whom I half expect to see when I die. But I believe I do know how your father must have felt, sitting at his typewriter with an unfinished novel. Just as I understand your saying that you are your dad. With a fair degree of accuracy I can see this in my own father. He and I never seemed seemed to be in rapport: Our basic a.s.sumptions were to be in rapport: Our basic a.s.sumptions were very very different. But that now looks superficial. I treat my sons much as he treated me: out of breath with impatience, and then a long inhalation of affection. different. But that now looks superficial. I treat my sons much as he treated me: out of breath with impatience, and then a long inhalation of affection.

I willingly take up the slack as a sort of adoptive father. I do have paternal feelings towards you. It's not only language that unites us, or "style." We share more remote but also more important premises.

And I'm not actually at the last gasp. I expect to be around for a while (not a prediction but an expectation). Whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet said.

Yours, with love,

Martin Amis's father, Kingsley Amis, renowned author of Lucky Jim Lucky Jim (1954) and many other works, had died in October of the previous year after a long decline, subsequently chronicled by Martin in his memoir (1954) and many other works, had died in October of the previous year after a long decline, subsequently chronicled by Martin in his memoir Experience Experience (2000). (2000).

To Reinhold Neven du Mont April 12, 1996 Brookline Dear Reinhold: Harriet Wa.s.serman and I have not been able to continue as agent and client. My new agent, as you may have heard, is Andrew Wylie. Harriet has cast me into outer darkness and no longer communicates with me though there is unfinished business to do.

In any case I write to inform you that Mr. Wylie will be representing me and that he has full authority to speak for me. You and I have always had excellent relations and there will be no change in our amicable customs.

I hope that you are well and happy. I have almost recovered from several illnesses and am writing again. I have just finished a novella-something entirely new, I hope.

Yours as ever, Neven du Mont was an editor at Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Bellow's German publisher.

To Albert Glotzer April 19, 1996 Brookline Dear Al, I spoke with Yetta [Barshevsky Shachtman] and she told me that it was your habit to attend the Boston Marathon and wait at the finish line for your son the runner. I too encourage the oddities of my three sons and my sole grandson, Andrew, who grew up in California where oddities are never in short supply. So I was hoping to see you last Monday, but Yetta said that you were making a quick round trip and would not stay overnight. On last Tuesday I was expected at Queens College-booked for a reading-but the Nervous Nellies of the Queens English Department called on Monday to warn me of bad weather ahead. They urged me to get on the next shuttle. So I was actually in New York City on Monday night. I did my thing on Tuesday. By Wednesday afternoon I was back in Boston. This was my first solo journey and I regretted leaving Janis behind. I am like you in my boyish rejection of elderliness. Antiquity-why not come right out with it? You pack a s...o...b..ll on a winter day and imagine taking a belly flop on your sled as we all used to do back in the beautiful Twenties-I was ten years old in 1925. All that remains is the freshness of the impulse.

Last Sunday, here in Boston, I spoke at Harvard before Richard Pipes's society [the Shop Club]; its members are Polish intellectuals and Jewish intellectuals (from Poland). The members.h.i.+p was singular, to say the least. n.o.body has more intellectual style than these east Europeans. I thought this was a very odd lodge. My subject was anti-Semitism (otherwise known as Jew-hatred) in literature. I concentrated almost entirely on Dostoyevsky and on L.-F. Celine. Afterwards we attended a party at the Pipeses'. Among the guests were many who knew more about my subject than I did, and I wish I could remember their names. The only name that does come back to me is that of the brother of the late James Merrill, a boyish old man, ruddy and blue-eyed, with white curls, who looked as if he might have just left his fielder's mitt on the hall table. For all his billions he was so fresh and engaging that my heart went out to him. He turned out to be an amateur scholar deeply interested in Polish history and literature. But I was monopolized by a mathematician I had known in a former incarnation and by a Polish Celine expert who spoke to me in French about Celine's sick-joke pamphlets recommending the Final Solution.

A house in the country was a great idea, but completely utopian. I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available. At this very moment, the roads are swimming in mud in Vermont. How to deal with mud time? Perhaps I might start a new fas.h.i.+on with mud skis. I seem to be one of those natural revolutionists who comes up regularly with million-dollar ideas. [ . . . ]

I invite you to come and stay with Janis and me when you attend next year's Marathon. This will give both of us something to live for.

Yours,

To John Auerbach and Nola Chilton May 3, 1996 Brookline Dear John and Nola- If I don't write to you, I scarcely write at all. My correspondents have given up on me. Not to write means to be fundamentally out of order, and I suppose that that can be said of me. I am not "drunk" but I am "disorderly"-old before my preparations to be old are completed. I keep thinking what I shall shall be doing be doing when when-and when when overcomes me while I'm still considering what to do about it. overcomes me while I'm still considering what to do about it.

A month in intensive care, unconscious, was what did it. At last I was convinced.

It's necessary for me to be in Boston [on account of] its doctors. I have a five-foot shelf of pills. Janis makes sure I take them on schedule, and visit the cardiologist, the neurologist, the dermatologist, the G.U. man, the ophthalmologist, etc. A friendly physician has explained to me that four weeks in intensive care take six months to recover from. I must not expect to be normal again before the end of 1996.

But I have much to be grateful for. Without Janis I'd have joined my ancestors by now. I do think of them them quite a lot. I'm edging near. But I can't conceive of any sort of life, in any dimension, without her. And, after all, seeing my parents, brothers, friends is by no means a certainty. There's a large cloud of ambiguous promises over all our intimations-a dark atmosphere of hints. This side of death there's nothing definite, about the afterlife, to be found. quite a lot. I'm edging near. But I can't conceive of any sort of life, in any dimension, without her. And, after all, seeing my parents, brothers, friends is by no means a certainty. There's a large cloud of ambiguous promises over all our intimations-a dark atmosphere of hints. This side of death there's nothing definite, about the afterlife, to be found.

The best one can do (the best I I can do) is to write stories. I've written a novella-s.e.xy but the setting (by and large) is a cemetery. I'll send you a copy when it's fit to be read. can do) is to write stories. I've written a novella-s.e.xy but the setting (by and large) is a cemetery. I'll send you a copy when it's fit to be read.

You mustn't think I've forgotten you. I think about you both. But I very seldom send letters. And I can hardly bring myself to read the mail.

I hope you are well, thriving, happy.

Love, Janis adds her her love, as well. love, as well.

The s.e.xy novella would appear next spring as The Actual. The Actual.

To James Salter May 20, 1996 Brookline Dear Jim, I can't match your chatty insouciance, n.o.body can. Real insouciance takes character. It's one of the gifts that's been withheld from me. If I were able to take matters lightly I should have come along on this junket. I've had two trips this spring, one to Toronto that knocked me out and another to Queens College that laid me low. A trans-Atlantic trip is something I can't face. Perhaps if I had two or three months to recover in Paris I could do it, but a round trip is out of the question. Also I'm too unforgiving to write degage degage [ [125] anecdotes. To take an example of such skills from your own letter, I loved the Nabokov taxi-cab anecdote but the image of a rose on a hairy chest on which you finish it rubbed me the wrong way. Nabokov was like that-one of the great wrong-way rubbers of all times. Somewhere he said, and said very well, that Borges was a marvelous writer and then he went on to add that Borges's pieces are like beautiful verandas and that after the eighteenth or twentieth porch one says, "Great but where are the houses?" This is Nabokov at his best. At his gruesome worst he pins feminine roses to simian bosoms.

In the old days I used to stay in Gallimard's attic on the Rue Bottin-little bedrooms such as the bedrooms I was used to in Chicago in the Depression: three bucks a week. I'd like nothing better than to follow you around Paris from one thrilling party to another. What a gift you have for filling your days with good company. When your letters come to be collected, you'll be in a cla.s.s with Samuel Pepys.

All the best, To Julian Behrstock July 25, 1996 W. Brattleboro Dear Julian- I seem to have become a home-industry of ill news, surrounded by pharmaceuticals (medicaments). A text punctuated by pills. The heart turns out to be the problem-I had always suspected that it would end by getting its own back on me. The most sinister of the pills is Coumadin, an anti-coagulant that protects me from a stroke. Born normal enough, I am now a hemophiliac like the Tsarevitch and the other princes descended from Victoria and Albert. (So they tell me.) I thought of you (thought particularly particularly; I often think of you) last month, remembering that we had marched nine years ago in the Northwestern procession [honoring the Cla.s.s of 1937]. Our sixtieth anniversary comes up next year. It would be a good occasion for both of us, and memorable also for your wife and son.

I've taken two or three domestic flights. Haven't been abroad since the Caribbean holiday that nearly did me in. Janis is keen on going to Paris. We left a tidy sum there at CIC (the bank on Blvd. Raspail) and on three years of interest Janis says we could stay at the Crillon and give the Behrstocks dinner at a four-star joint. It's a brilliant ploy. Janis is not one for small ideas. And I'm on her side. We could spend up a storm at the Crillon and and march later with the Cla.s.s of '37. march later with the Cla.s.s of '37.

At this moment we are in Vermont, reading books, writing (on lucky days) and growing flowers.

I don't ask about your health because I don't want to put you to the trouble of replying. But you know I'm pulling for you full strength.

Your old friend,

To Hymen Slate July 25, 1996 W. Brattleboro Dear Hymen- My son Gregory with his Italian organ-grinder mustachios visited you a few months ago, and said you weren't well-reminding me that we've known each other, you and I, for more than sixty years, and that at this stage of life we experience both the present moment and antiquity. I write to say that I hope you've overcome your illness. Of course, the old expect their surviving friends to be ailing. I had a substantial foretaste of death recently ('94); it's the usual thing for all octogenarians.

Odd how past and present come together in the consciousness of aged men and women. My ninety-year-old sister in Miami Beach goes every day every day to the shopping mall to buy dresses; she exchanges or returns them, and her closets are full of skirts, blouses, shoes. She sees herself, with the help of her Frankenstein's lab of cosmetics, appearing before the world as the smas.h.i.+ng beauty she was sixty-five years back. to the shopping mall to buy dresses; she exchanges or returns them, and her closets are full of skirts, blouses, shoes. She sees herself, with the help of her Frankenstein's lab of cosmetics, appearing before the world as the smas.h.i.+ng beauty she was sixty-five years back.

As for me, you may ask why I write to you now, having dropped from sight about eleven years ago. As a mature observer, you may not see fit to ask at all, only shrug.

But picture the following: In one week my elder brothers had died; I attended both funerals. I turned sixty-nine on June 10th, '84. On that day Alexandra said she was divorcing me. She moved out of the apartment then and there. Not before she had applied circular stickers, big ones, green and white, to her possessions and mine. Even bathrobes and carpet slippers carried these gummed labels, a weird snowfall of large round green and white flakes.

Rather than explain this or discuss it with you, since we had never reached an appropriate stage of intimacy, I simply dropped out. I disappeared. You will certainly understand that there are absurdities or paradoxes that are not and should not be communicable. I found an opening into a new life (the five hundredth one). I left Sheridan Rd. and our friends.h.i.+p, alas, was shelved.

All my best wishes to you and to Evelyn.

Your affectionate pal,

To Martin Amis August 8, 1996 W. Brattleboro Dear Martin- A flying friend picked up The American Way The American Way, the in-house mag of American Airlines and I read your interview with a special pleasure, because your answers were so short: Q: What literary landmarks are important in the city? What literary landmarks are important in the city?A: Karl Marx's grave. A lot of people go and visit that in Highgate Cemetery.

President Coolidge's wife questioned him one Sunday morning when he returned from Church: Q: What was today's sermon about? What was today's sermon about?A: Sin.Q: What did the minister say about sin? What did the minister say about sin?A: He was against it.

Funnily enough (my Irish friend David Grene says "funnily enough," and I've picked up the habit) you were garrulous about ethnic foods. You wouldn't dream of going into the West End for dinner. Neither would I. I've had good meals at Turkish restaurants. Odd that you should answer a food question so fully; I've seldom seen you eat a complete dinner, so I took a considerable interest in your opinions.

These days I am eating less, sleeping less. The infirmities of age are coming fast upon me. It's bad form to complain of ill-health. I didn't use to do it-there was no problem; I had vital energy enough to waste on fooleries of every sort. But now I have no strength for the essentials. An hour at the writing table does me in. It troubles me now to write a letter about [your new novel] The Information The Information. Page by page the writing gave me pleasure. Your books always do. The words bowl me over. But I find myself resisting your novel and in the end I back away from it.

Very long ago, reading Celine, I recognized the importance of the discovery he had made. He seemed to be saying, in his Journey to the End of the Night Journey to the End of the Night, that there is always some residue of principle in his nihilists. Thus when Robinson's girlfriend demands that he declare his love for her, he refuses. Outraged, hardly believing her ears, she says, "Tu ne bandes pas? "-"Don't you get a hard-on, like everybody else? That's love, ain't it?" But he cannot lie to her. This is his one principle, and she shoots him. He dies for his one belief. "-"Don't you get a hard-on, like everybody else? That's love, ain't it?" But he cannot lie to her. This is his one principle, and she shoots him. He dies for his one belief.

It seems to me that in the "advanced" countries, the Robinsons have become Celines-they think for themselves and they seem to be independently philosophical. This is part of your "bad news" and "terrible information." Writers and characters alike are on "thought trips," squaring themselves one way or another with the prevailing nihilism. When the people one meets and/or writes about seek (and find) ideas it is more or less necessary for writers to cut their connections to the abstractions and to hang on to the phenomena, embrace them for dear life. We have no obligation to justify ourselves intellectually to the ruling philosophy, to be accepted as "authentic."

Of course the mental misery is very great. We don't want to abandon the sufferers. But one does them little good by joining them in their thought-idolatry.

So I come out on Janis's side, more or less. She puts it that "we are invited to stare into the void. But instead of emptiness we find information." My suggestion is that we come to agree-we are pleased to agree-with the leaders of thought, a.k.a. the nihilists. Celine's Robinson still had one one idea of his own. That was the limit of his independence. We are losing even that. idea of his own. That was the limit of his independence. We are losing even that.

A cheerless letter. But you did appoint me your spiritual father, and the foregoing is what this s.f. thinks you need.

And of course he sends you his best love,

To Hymen Slate September 9, 1996 W. Brattleboro Dear Hymen, For the life of me I can't remember being unpleasant about your "character." We've known each other for about sixty years (the very idea of such a figure breaks me up). And if anyone had asked me to compare my character to yours, yours would have won hands down. I must confess however that on North Sheridan Road in those years I was having a very bad time. And it may be that what my remark, if I made it, really meant was that one had to have a less than admirable character to be a fiction writer.

Anyway at our age these close encounters with death should make us indulgent with each other. I am glad you explained the Anemia of Chronic Disease. I wouldn't otherwise have known how serious it was. For myself, I am utterly fed up with sickness. This very day I have been waiting for a visiting technician to give me an intravenous antibiotic. Normally (that is to say, formerly) it wouldn't have mattered so much. But after two years of much sickness and much recovery one does become impatient. I suppose the dead would say it is ungrateful of us to complain. But health is either complete or nothing at all. It's not the absence of this f.u.c.king technician who has kept me indoors all day, it's the tenacity of my symptoms, that finally drives me around the bend. I can't get rid of them.

So Abe Kaufman has died. Thirty years without a word from him-more like forty, come to think of it-and we still know no more about him than that he has departed. I frequently offered Kaufman friends.h.i.+p in as many ways as I could think of. But he was comically high and mighty with me. When I was at the Britannica Britannica under Mortimer Adler just before WWII Abe requested or demanded or commanded that I should get him on the payroll. I managed somehow to do just that. Abe then made an illuminating speech: "It is quite natural that you should have done this and it shows that you understand the difference between superior and inferior beings. You are aware that I stand higher in the hierarchy than you and that you therefore have an obligation to me." under Mortimer Adler just before WWII Abe requested or demanded or commanded that I should get him on the payroll. I managed somehow to do just that. Abe then made an illuminating speech: "It is quite natural that you should have done this and it shows that you understand the difference between superior and inferior beings. You are aware that I stand higher in the hierarchy than you and that you therefore have an obligation to me."

It was easier to insult me than to say thanks. Anyway, he didn't want to have to thank me for anything. When last heard from he had just gotten his Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard. Well, let's hope he will be happier in his next incarnation. It is diverting to think that we may be popping up again and again throughout eternity.

Keeping in touch is a good idea. I have a feeling that your odds on recovery are better than you think.

Affectionately,

To James Wood September 9, 1996 W. Brattleboro Dear Mr. Wood, This is a pro tem pro tem note, to use congressional slang. note, to use congressional slang.

I have meant to write a long and serious letter to thank you for various kindnesses and to express my admiration for any number of reviews in The New Republic The New Republic. Janis and I are especially grateful for the collection of Polish poems in translation.

I had, as a fanatical or enrage enrage reader, studied over many decades gallery after gallery of old men in novels and plays and I thought I knew all about them. But to reader, studied over many decades gallery after gallery of old men in novels and plays and I thought I knew all about them. But to be be one is full of surprises. Let me see: There is one is full of surprises. Let me see: There is Oedipus at Colonus Oedipus at Colonus , there is the old sculptor of Ibsen's , there is the old sculptor of Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken When We Dead Awaken, there is of course King Lear, and also Duncan in Macbeth Macbeth and Polonius in and Polonius in Hamlet Hamlet, and there are Jonathan Swift's Struldbruggs-the repulsive and unkillable old, there is old Prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace War and Peace, there is Father Zossima in The Brothers K The Brothers K, there is Gerontion, and Yeats in his final years. But all of this business about crabbed age and youth tells you absolutely nothing about your own self. I shall leave the subject there. I can't even begin to say what it's really like.

I see now what a procrastinator I have always been. I kept my projects in a warehouse (the good-intentions warehouse which I mention all too often) confident that there would be an endless future in which to take care of all business, but a few years ago I began to see at last that I had grown far too old to have so many obligations in the storage bins-on the calendar. When I read your T. S. Eliot piece I began to compose a reply and at odd moments I have mentally worked at it, but you will have forgotten about your essay long before I get my letter on paper. Words shouted into a fierce gale which is anyway blowing in the wrong direction.

I thought I would send you a few lines to explain simply how matters stand. You may expect one of these months to receive a long and serious letter from me.

With best wishes,

To Herbert Mitgang September 21, 1996 W. Brattleboro, Vermont Dear Herb, I'm dictating a few remarks in answer to your letter of September 2nd.

I've always liked Studs [Terkel]. We grew up in the same Chicago neighborhood, the Humboldt Park District. Originally German, this part of the city was by turns Scandinavian, Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish-it is now mainly Puerto Rican. Studs was ambitious to be an actor and could be identified by the copy of Variety Variety always sticking out of his back pocket. always sticking out of his back pocket.

Studs's Chicago certainly was not mine. His Chicago was mythical. His myth was common. A convenient way to describe it is to refer you to Carl Sandburg. Sandburg had his gifts as a poet, but he was also a gifted advertising man. I don't think it's too much to say that the image of Chicago they held up to the world was stylized. It was The People, Yes! Populism was the source of their mythology. It was not necessary for them to wonder how to describe any phenomenon because they had ideological ready-mades, cutouts, stereotypes, etc. Poets and street-corner orators can make use of slogans, but slogans will not do for writers. I can readily identify the sources used by Studs Terkel because when I was very young I made use of them too. In the early years of the Depression we were all left-wingers. What I mean to say, as you will quickly recognize, is that as I grew older my left-wing sympathies waned. During the conservative administrations (Eisenhower, etc.)-during the Cold War too-Studs remained steadfast and he faithfully marked time until [in the Sixties] the junior middle-cla.s.s ma.s.ses were ready again to line up behind him.