Love and Strife (1965-2005)

by Zachary Leader

  SB and Will Lautzenheiser, Vermont, August 12, 2003 (courtesy of the Avedon Foundation)

  Acknowledgments

  My first debt is to Andrew Wylie, whose idea it was for me to write Bellow’s biography. I am indebted also to the executors of the Saul Bellow Literary Estate, the late Walter Pozen and Janis Freedman Bellow. Bellow’s sons, Greg, Adam, and Daniel, have been generous with their knowledge and time, granting lengthy interviews and enduring numerous queries. Bellow had five wives. His first and third wives, Anita Goshkin Bellow and Susan Glassman Bellow, died before I began work on the biography. His second wife, Sasha Tschacbasov Bellow, his fourth wife, Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow, and his fifth wife, Janis Freedman Bellow, generously granted me interviews, as well as helping in innumerable small ways, with queries and introductions. Bellow took a keen and loving interest in his larger family and I have been much helped by a number of his relatives, in particular by his nephew, Joel Bellows, and his niece, Lesha Bellows Greengus, together with her husband, Sam Greengus, who was especially generous in helping me to find family photographs. The children of Bellow’s nephews and nieces also granted interviews and answered queries. Other Bellow relatives were generous with their time as well. Soon after I began work on the biography I was put in touch with Benjamin Taylor, editor of Saul Bellow: Letters (2010) and There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction (2016). Ben has been a friend since my biography’s inception. A full list of those who agreed to formal interviews, subsequently helping with inquiries, is provided in the Note on Sources.

  For advice and assistance I am grateful to the administration and staff of the Special Collections Research Center at the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, in particular to Dan Meyer, Alice Schreyer, Eileen Eilmini, Ashley Locke Gosselar, David Pavlich, Barbara Gilbert, and Julia Gardner. I also owe thanks to Raymond Gadtke of the Regenstein. In Winter Quarter 2008 I was a Visiting Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where Bellow taught for more than thirty years. There I conducted a seminar on his novels and stories and learned a great deal from the responses of my students, both those from the Committee and those from other departments. I am especially grateful to Robert Pippin, Chair of the Committee, for arranging my visit; to Anne M. Gamboa, the Committee’s Administrative Assistant, for smoothing my way once I’d arrived; and to those Committee members who knew and worked with Bellow, offering me interviews, advice, and assistance, among them Nathan Tarcov, Paul Friedrich, Wendy Doniger, Ralph Lerner, James Redfield, and Leon Kass. David Nirenberg arrived at the Committee after Bellow but was a friendly and informative colleague throughout my stay. The late Richard Stern, Bellow’s great friend from the English Department, also welcomed me, as did W. J. T. Mitchell, another English Department member. Finally, I am grateful to Donna Sinopoli of the University of Chicago’s Housing Services, who found my wife and me an apartment on the twelfth floor of the Cloisters, the splendid 1920s apartment building where Saul Bellow lived for over a dozen years. Although I have doubts about a “footsteps” approach to biography, it was good to live in a building Bellow lived in, to share much the same view he had, and to walk each morning to an office at the Committee on Social Thought along the routes he would have taken.

  I am grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowship in 2009 to free me from teaching. I am also grateful to the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton for Research Leave in 2014. The first chapter of To Fame and Fortune was written outside Genoa at the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities, on a monthlong fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation. A similar monthlong fellowship in the summer of 2015 from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, as the Kirby Family Foundation Fellow in Writing, enabled me to write chapter 6 of this second volume. In 2018 I was awarded an Author’s Foundation grant from the Society of Authors. At the University of Roehampton I am grateful for the support of my colleagues, in particular Laura Peters, Jenny Watt, Patricia Tomlinson, and Sara Wake of the Department of English and Creative Writing. I also want to thank Lynn Dobbs, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, for her support. At the Wylie Agency I owe thanks to Jeffrey Posternak in New York and James Pullen in London. At Jonathan Cape I am indebted to the continued support of Dan Franklin and at Knopf to the continued support of Erroll McDonald, both of whom published my biography of Kingsley Amis. Nicholas Thomson of Knopf was especially helpful and efficient in the preparation of the manuscript and in helping with illustrations and permissions. At Jonathan Cape, I am grateful to Michal Shavit and Clare Bullock for help with permissions fees. For advice about permissions I owe special thanks to Karen Mayer, also to Michele Park, both of Knopf. Douglas Matthews prepared the index for this volume as he did for volume 1.

  For careful reading of the entire manuscript I am again grateful to Lindsay Duguid, who improved the book at every stage of its composition. Andrew Gordon, Chris Walsh, and David Mikics also read and improved the whole manuscript. For comments on portions of the manuscript I am grateful to Nathan Tarcov, Miriam Tarcov, and Janis Freedman Bellow. Jonathan Roy Turner, a resourceful and efficient research student at Roehampton, helped in checking quotations.

  For help in archives, libraries, foundations, and institutions I am grateful to the following: Cheryl Schnirring, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois; Helene Tieger, Bard College Library; Anne Garner and Isaac Gewirtz, Berg Collection, New York Public Library; Robert Rothstein, Mark Lewis, and Francis Antonelli, Geddes Language Center, Boston University; Ellen Keith, Matt Krc, and Debbie Vaughan, Chicago History Museum; Susan Art, Sharon Hudak, Jeanine I. Alonso, Heatherlyn Mayer, Rita Vazquez, Office of the Registrar, University of Chicago; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University; Laurie Rizzo, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library; Andre Bernard and Edward Hirsch, Guggenheim Foundation; William Furry, Illinois State Historical Society; Shannon Hodge and Eva Raby, Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal; Barbara Cline and Tina Houston, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; Graham Ball, Harvard University Public Affairs and Communications; Erin George and Elizabeth Kaplan, University of Minnesota Archives, Elmer L. Anderson Library; Frank Blalark, Office of the Registrar, University of Minnesota; Liat Cohen, Elie Derman, Ofira Ratsab, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, The Jerusalem Foundation; Maria Molestina, The Morgan Library and Museum; Patrick Quinn and Janet C. Olson, Northwestern University Archives; Tamara Thatcher, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University; Kristen Turner, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University; Cheryl Van Emburg, Salzburg Seminars; Georgette Ballweg, Office of the Registrar, University of Wisconsin; Lori B. Bessler and Lee Grady, Wisconsin Historical Society; Leslie L. Leduc, Corporation of Yaddo.

  I am grateful to the following individuals for answering queries, advice, and hospitality: Victoria Aarons, Martin Amis, Janet Ariad, James Atlas, David Bell, Moshe Bellows, Julie Ann Benson, Judith and Lawrence Besserman, Dina Binstock, Alan Brownjohn, Emily Budick, Shirley Cohen, Jay Corcoran, Gloria L. Cronin, H. M. Daleski, Philip Davis, Carol Denbo, Morris Dickstein, Jane Dietrich, Richard and Christianne Dimitri, Peggy Eisenstein, Paul Ekman, Esther Elster, Anne Feibleman, Maxine Fields, Catherine J. Fitzpatrick, Judith Flanders, June Fox, Liz Frank, Rani Friedlander, Abraham Fuks, Asaf Galay, David Gooblar, Grey Gowrie, Selina Hastings, the Hellmuths (Mary, John, Alison, Spencer, and Molly), Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Hyde, Nicole Jackson, Eric Jacobson, Scott and Fredda Johnson, Leslie Kaplan, Shirley Kaufman, Edmund Keeley, Rhoda Koenig, Mark Lambert, Scott Latham, Will Lautzenheiser, Zoe Leader, Victoria Lidov, John Lloyd, Peter Manning, Bobby Markels, Anita Maximilian, Carolyn McGrath, Josine Meijer, Edward Mendelson, Michael Mewshaw, Elena Mortara, Janet Nippel, Richard O’Brien, Doris Palca, Thomas Passin, Matt Phillips, Arnold Rampersad, Michael Roberts, Mary Rynerson, Rosemarie Sanchez-Fraser, Dr. Rachel Schultz, Sasha Schwartz,
Tim Seldes, Adam Shils, Elaine and English Showalter, Margalit Steinberg, Erik Tarloff, Patricia Vidgerman, Chris Walsh, Annie Dubouillon Walter, Jacob Weisberg, Catherine Wells-Cole, Rose Wild, Hana Wirth-Nesher, Nancy Bass Wyden, and Steven J. Zipperstein.

  Finally, I thank my wife, Alice Leader, the dedicatee of both volumes of this biography; our sons, Nick and Max Leader; and our daughter-in-law, Nicole Jackson. Like my friends and colleagues, they have heard a great deal about Saul Bellow this past decade.

  A Note on Sources

  Unless specified, all unpublished or manuscript material by Saul Bellow, including letters, is to be found among the Saul Bellow Papers in the Special Collections Research Center of the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, cited within the text and notes as Regenstein. I have been given unrestricted access to the Bellow Papers and have looked through every item in every folder in every box.

  Before 2017 and the complete recataloguing of the Saul Bellow Papers, scholars and researchers faced numerous problems negotiating and referencing the collection. From 1960 onward, in a series of gifts and deposits, Bellow sent his papers (including notebooks, galley proofs, unpublished speeches and essays, hand-corrected manuscripts, typewritten drafts, letters, and miscellaneous items pertaining to his life and work, including interviews, profiles, photographs, tax returns, legal and financial documents, and reviews of his novels, stories, essays, and plays) to the Regenstein. Before 1968, writers were eligible to receive a tax deduction for such gifts; when the law involving cultural property changed, in reaction to enormous deductions obtained by visual artists, Bellow’s gifts became deposits, held but not owned by the library, an arrangement agreed in the hope that the new law would be reversed and deposits could then become donations. After Bellow’s death in 2005, at the age of eighty-nine, the executors of his literary estate decided that his papers should be kept together at the Regenstein. As a result of this decision, roughly 150 boxes of materials joined the two hundred boxes already housed in Special Collections.

  These boxes were organized by deposit or gift. In the case of correspondence, letters from longtime friends and associates were scattered in dozens of locations with separate inventories. In the case of manuscript material, there were related problems. Bellow was a demon reviser, he rarely dated manuscripts, and the old inventories made only a few shrewd attempts at ordering drafts. Daniel Fuchs, the author of Saul Bellow: Vision and Revision (1984), still the best study of Bellow’s composing process, gives reference names and numbers to the manuscripts he discusses but does so from what were already outdated inventories. Fuchs’s study is an invaluable resource for students of Bellow’s writing, but it was—still is—very difficult, at times impossible, to identify the draft versions he cites, not only for researchers but for the collection’s efficient and professional archivists.

  Given the partial nature of the inventories prior to the complete cataloguing and the high likelihood of the collection’s being rationalized and properly processed in the near future, in To Fame and Fortune I decided against providing folder, box, and deposit numbers and names for unpublished correspondence or draft material. The decision not to specify folder and box in the current volume partly derives from the fact that it was largely written and researched before the newly catalogued collection was made available to Bellow scholars. In both volumes I do, however, provide names, dates, and estimated dates for individual items, and readers who wish to consult originals will have very little difficulty locating them, thanks to the excellent new online “Guide to the Saul Bellow Papers 1926–2015,” the work of Ashley Locke Gosselar, lead archivist of the newly catalogued collection. It took Gosselar more than a year to catalogue the Saul Bellow Papers and to produce its “Guide,” a project largely financed by Robert and Carolyn Nelson, generous University of Chicago alumni.

  A selection of Bellow’s correspondence, Saul Bellow: Letters (New York: Viking and Penguin, 2010), ed. Benjamin Taylor, “includes about two-fifths of Saul Bellow’s known output of letters” (p. 533). On occasion, passages omitted by Taylor are restored from the original letter. Taylor lists the locations for all published Bellow letters not located in the Regenstein (pp. 553–56). The fullest annotated bibliography of works by and about Bellow remains Gloria L. Cronin and Blaine H. Hall, Saul Bellow: An Annotated Bibliography, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), available electronically on http://www.saulbellow.org/​bibliography [inactive]. The Saul Bellow Journal, edited by Gloria L. Cronin and Victoria Aarons, has been in publication since 1981 and currently appears twice annually. It publishes updated “Selected Annotated Bibliographies,” edited by Gloria L. Cronin and Robert Means, and is available electronically on EBSCO. Published Bellow texts cited in the notes refer to the editions used by the author. Full publication details for these editions, along with details of original publication, can be found in the notes. After an initial note, quotations from Bellow’s fiction are cited in the text by page numbers.

  All unattributed quotations in the biography come from the following interviews with Zachary Leader:

  Ada Aharoni, 23 May 2010 (Nesher, Israel); Gillon Aitken, 10 July 2014 (London); Rosie Alison, 1 December 2007 (London); Martin Amis, 5 December 2014 (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Aharon Appelfeld, 21 May 2010 (Jerusalem); Linda Asher, 9 January 2009 (New York); Thomas Barber, 18 March 2017 (telephone); John Barnardo, 2 August 2010 (Boston); Wolf Baronov, 23 July 2008 (Chicago); Daniel Bell, 11 May 2008 (Cambridge, Mass.); Adam Bellow, 23, 27 March, 20 May 2008 (New York); Alexandra Bellow, 5 February, 1, 3 April 2008 (Chicago); Daniel Bellow, 11, 15 May 2008, 31 May 2017 (Great Barrington, Mass., telephone); Gregory Bellow, 20 August, 30 December 2008 (Redwood City and San Francisco, Calif.); Juliet Bellow, 20 December 2008 (San Francisco); Lily Bellow, 27 March 2008 (New York); Rachel Bellow, 7 August 2010 (Cambridge, Mass.); Sasha (Sondra) Bellow, 30 July 2007, 22, 23 March 2008 (New York); Janis Freedman Bellow, 5, 6, 7 August 2010 (Brattleboro, Vt.), 25 February 2017 (Boston); Bambi Bellows, 19 January 2008 (Chicago); Joel Bellows, 19 April, 28 June 2008, 26 August 2015 (Chicago); Kyle Bellows, 24 April 2008 (Chicago); Keith Botsford, 13, 14, 15 March 2008 (Cahuita, Costa Rica); Nathalie Botsford, 12 May 2008 (Boston); Polly Botsford, 5 November 2009 (London); Leon Botstein, 26 July 2007 (Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.); Jack Cella, 8 April 2008 (Chicago); Arthur and Lynda Copeland, 6 August 2007 (Brattleboro, Vt.); Esther Corbin, 10 July 2007 (Homewood, Ill.); Paul Dolan, 18 May 2008 (New York); Wendy Doniger, 1 February 2008 (Chicago); Margaret Drabble, 1 July 2014 (London); Judith Dunford, 10 January 2009 (New York); Toby Eady, 7 July 2014 (telephone); Brenda and Monroe Engel, 3 August 2007 (Cambridge, Mass.); Joseph Epstein, 18 April 2008 (Chicago); Maxine Fields, 12 June 2015 (telephone); Eileen Finletter, 18 May 2008 (New York); Isabel Fonseca, 5 December 2014 (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Joseph and Marguerite Frank, 19 August 2008 (Stanford); Harvey and Sonya Freedman, 6 August 2010 (Vermont); Wendy Freedman, 7 August 2008 (Pasadena, Calif.); Judy Freifeld, 13 August 2007, 19 February 2008 (Chicago); Paul Friedrich, 11 February 2008; David and Simon Gameroff, Leonard and Shelley Lewkowict, 18 September 2009 (Montreal); Frances Gendlin, 17 May 2008 (New York); Herbert Gold, 18 August 2008 (San Francisco); Sydney Goldstein, 29 December 2008 (San Francisco); Eugene Goodheart, 2 August 2007 (Cambridge and Watertown, Mass.); Mikhail Gordin, 30 May 2010 (Holon, Israel); Naum and Jana Gordin, 4 August 2010 (Brookline, Mass.); Jana Gordin, 30 May 2008 (telephone); Aviva Green, 12 October 2015 (telephone); Lesha and Sam Greengus, 28 August 2010 (Cincinnati, Ohio); Ethel Grene, 4 September 2010 (Wilmette, Ill.); Philip Grew, 23–24 July 2015 (Civitella Ranieri, Italy); John Gross, 26 October 2007 (London); Miriam Gross, 18 June 2015 (London); Christopher Hitchens, 19 February 2008 (Washington, D.C.); Doris and Marshall Holleb, 3 March 2008 (Chicago), Bette Howland, 2 July 2008 (Logansport, Ind.); Chantal and John Hunt, 18 September 2008 (Lyons, France); William Hunt, 3 August 2010 (Westport, Mass.); Gabriel Josipovici, 15 June 2014 (London); Beena Kamlani, 6 January 2009 (New York); Max Kampelma
n, 23 May 2008 (Washington, D.C.); Harold Kaplan, 6 May 2008, 28 March 2009 (Paris); Roger Kaplan, 23 May 2008 (Washington, D.C.); Leon Kass, 25 April 2008 (Chicago); Stanley Katz, 26 March 2008 (Princeton, N.J.); Eugene Kennedy, 16 April 2008 (Chicago); Jascha Kessler, 20 July 2007 (Los Angeles); Bettyann and Dan Kevles, 4 August 2010 (Centerville, Cape Cod, Mass.); Joan and Jonathan Kleinbard, 20 February 2008 (Philadelphia, Pa.); George Kliger, 26 June 2008 (Minneapolis, Minn.); Amos Kollek, 29 May 2010 (Jerusalem); Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, 19 February 2008 (Washington, D.C.); Arlette Landes, 22 May 2008 (Bethesda, Md.); Will Lautzenheiser, 12 May 2008, 25 February 2017 (Brookline, Mass.); Alan Lelchuk, 8 October 2015 (telephone); Ralph Lerner, 25 February 2008 (Chicago); Paul Levy, 30 April 2010 (Oxford); Frank Maltese, 7 August 2007 (Brattleboro, Vt.); Norman Manea, 9 January 2009 (New York); Sabina Mazursky, 25 May 2010 (Tel Aviv); T. J. McCarthy, 26 August 2015 (Chicago); Mitzi McClosky, 17 August 2008 (Berkeley, Calif.); Susan Missner, 29 July 2009 (Chicago); Vivien Missner, 11 July 2009 (Skokie, Ill.); John Nathan, 16 September 2014 (telephone); Evelyn Nef, 5 August 2007 (Great Barrington, Mass.); Amos Oz, 27 May 2010 (Tel Aviv); Cynthia Ozick, 6 December 2014 (New Rochelle, N.Y.); Jean Passin and Miriam Tarcov, 8 December 2009 (Phoenix, Ariz.); Sid Passin, 25 March 2008 (New York); David Peltz, 9, 15 February 2008 (Chicago); Antonia Phillips, 7 May 2016 (London); Robert Pippin, 31 January 2008 (Chicago); Norman Podhoretz, 23 March 2008 (New York); Walter Pozen, 22 January 2008, 25, 30 January and 12 May 2014 (Brattleboro, Vt., New York, and telephone); Antoinette Ralian, 29 October 2012 (telephone); Piers Paul Read, 19 June 2014 (telephone); James Redfield, 14, 21 January 2008 (Chicago); Laure Reichek, 15 August 2008 (Petaluma, Calif.); Christopher Ricks, 11 July 2010 (London); Tom Rosenthal, 3 November 2009 (London); Mark Rotblatt, 14 February 2008 (Chicago); Philip Roth, 20 March 2008 (New York); Floyd Salas, 28 November 2008 (Berkeley, Calif.); James Salter, 10 August 2010 (Bridgehampton, N.Y.); “Doris Scheldt,” 12 June 2015 (London) [this is my anonymous interviewee]; Rachel Greengus Schultz, 1 April 2016 (telephone); Joan Schwartz, 25 March 2008 (New York); Graeme Segal, 20 September 2015 (London); Tim Seldes, 24 July 2010 (telephone); Ellen and Philip Siegelman, 16 August 2008 (Berkeley, Calif.); John Silber, 13 May 2008 (Boston); Diane Silverman, 29 January 2008 (Chicago); Eleanor Fox Simmons, 9 July 2007; Maggie Staats Simmons, 20, 21 May 2008, 31 March 2014 (New York and telephone); Herbert Sinaiko, 6 February 2008 (Chicago); Barbara Probst Solomon, 30 July 2007 (New York); Carol and Jay Stern, 8 September 2010 (Wilmette, Ill.); Richard Stern, 8 January, 29 May 2008 (Chicago); Shlomo Sternberg, 12 October 2015 (telephone); Miriam Tarcov, 7, 8 December 2009 (Tucson, Ariz.); Nathan Tarcov, 24, 31 January, 28 February 2008 (Chicago); Sylvia Tumin, 25 July 2007 (Princeton, N.J.); Bella and Mischa Ullman, 30 May 2010 (Hod Hasharon, Israel); Patty Unterman, 18 August 2008 (Berkeley, Calif.); George and Sarah Walden, 21 November 2009 (London); Chris Walsh, 12 May 2008, 24 February 2017 (Boston); Rosanna Warren, 14 September 2010 (New York) and 4 January 2017 (telephone); Lord Weidenfeld, 14 December 2007 (London); Renee Weiss, 25 July 2007 (Stonebridge, N.J.); Leon Wieseltier, 19 February 2008 (Washington, D.C.); Barbara Wiesenfeld, 7 August 2008 (Santa Monica, Calif.); George Wislocki, 10 June 2008 (telephone); Ruth Wisse, 1 August 2007 (Cambridge, Mass.); James Wood, 13 May 2008 (Cambridge, Mass.); Michael Wu, 5 June 2008 (Chicago); Andrew Wylie, 15 September 2010 (New York); A. B. Yehoshua, 24 May 2010 (Haifa, Israel).