18. William Juneau, “Marlene Swimley to Begin Sentence,” Chicago Tribune, 4 November 1978.
19. See William Hunt, “Talk Given at Rudolf Steiner Library,” 18 September 2009, pp. 2–3 (in the possession of the author).
20. According, at least, to Lynda and Arthur Copeland in an interview.
21. “Variations on a Theme from Division Street,” the second of SB’s two Tanner Lectures, was delivered on 25 May 1981 at Brasenose College, Oxford, under the general title “A Writer from Chicago,” and printed in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ed. Sterling M. McMurrin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1982), p. 188 (henceforth cited within the text by page numbers).
22. D. J. R. Bruckner, “Interview with Saul Bellow on 13 June 1980,” a typescript of which begins by discussing SB’s hopes for Saul Bellow’s Chicago, the television documentary broadcast on Channel 5 in Chicago on 27 March 1981.
23. Morris Janowitz’s theories, as cited by SB in the second Tanner Lecture, come from The Last Half Century: Societal Change and Politics in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
24. Quotation from SB, “Notes on Visit to County Jail,” 17 May 1979, p. 2.
25. See The Dean’s December, p. 59, for the newspaper depiction of Ridpath; the Winston Moore quotes that follow come from p. 16 of the main biographical section of the “Chicago Book.”
26. See also Eugene Kennedy, “Bellow Awaits Heat,” in which SB says of “the black condition” that it “had every unavailing solution thrown at it. Programs, plans, money.”
27. According to Dominic A. Pacyga, Chicago: The Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 332, the Robert Taylor Homes were built in the early 1960s to replace the demolished Federal Street slum, “which some called the longest slum in the world.” The Homes consisted of twenty-eight identical sixteen-story buildings containing 4,415 apartments. Within these apartments lived twenty-one thousand children and seven thousand adults, almost exclusively black. Although the Homes were situated on ninety-five acres, only 7 percent of this land was occupied by the buildings themselves.
28. Hyde Park today, to the pride of its more high-minded residents, continues to offer a comparatively narrow range of shops and places to eat. It must be the only setting of a major American university without a Gap, a Banana Republic, a Foot Locker. What it has instead are excellent used-book shops, as well as the finest academic bookstore in America, the Seminary Co-op, which numbers Barack Obama among its members.
29. Jeff David and David Glockner, “Two Injured in Attacks,” Chicago Maroon, 25 July 1980.
30. Robin Kirk, “UC Security Let Mugger’s Father Convince Victim,” Chicago Maroon, 23 October 1981.
31. Robin Kirk, “Fear, Crime and Urban Living,” Chicago Maroon, 25 September 1981.
32. Alvin P. Sanoff, “A Conversation with Saul Bellow,” U.S. News & World Report, 28 June 1982.
33. Joseph Sjostrom and Jerry Thornton, “Student Killed in Robbery,” Chicago Tribune, 6 July 1977.
34. The dean was Catherine Ham, as quoted in Edward J. Rooney, “Two Terrorize Wife Before Fatal Struggle,” Chicago Daily News, 7 July 1977. See also William Sluis and Joseph Sjostrom, “Man Dies Fighting Invaders,” Chicago Tribune, 7 July 1977; Leon Pitt and Hugh Hough, “Grapples with Robber, Dies in Three-Floor Plunge,” Chicago Sun-Times, 7 July 1977.
35. Nathaniel Clay, “Offer $5,000 Reward in Slaying,” Chicago Defender, 7 July 1977.
36. Edmund J. Rooney, “Stolen Jewelry Found, Woman Linked to Student Death,” Chicago Daily News, 8 July 1977. See also Tom Page Seibel, “Woman Fugitive Seized in UC Student Murder,” Chicago Daily News, 19 July 1977.
37. This account was corroborated by other witnesses. The movements of Gromer and his wife on the night of 5–6 July were very different from those first reported. Apparently, they had decided to go out that night to escape the heat of the apartment. They arrived at a Hyde Park bar called Jimmy’s at midnight and stayed for about forty-five minutes. There, according to his wife, Gromer had a couple of bourbons. Then they returned home and, again according to the wife, she went to bed while Gromer stayed in the living room. But not for long, she was to learn. According to witnesses, at 1:30 a.m. on 6 July, Gromer was seen wandering around barefoot, smoking marijuana outside the Tiki, then bothering people inside the bar. The bartender asked him to leave. At 2:00 a.m. he was seen in his car with Deola Johnson. These and other details come from People v. McInnis no. 79–27, reporting the 9 October 1980 decision of Justice Mel Jiganti, of the Appellate Court of Illinois—First District (Fourth Division), not to rehear the appeal of Ellis McInnis (see http://www.leagle.com/decision/198064388IllApp3d555_1561/PEOPLE%20v.%20McINNI).
38. In People v. McInnis no. 79–27, McInnis’s lawyers are said to have contended that Lewis “was promised by the State that it would talk to the judge in the case [that is, in Lewis’s violation-of-probation case], in an effort to get his probation extended if he cooperated; that Lewis was housed in witness quarters while the case was pending; that he had sought and received help from the State in relocating from his former neighborhood; that the State was paying his rent in his new building; and that he hoped to collect a $5,000 reward.”
39. Philip Grew’s “indictment” and “flight” were reported in several papers: see Jay Branegan, “Witness Threat Cited, Hunt Student in Gromer Death Case,” Chicago Tribune, 31 August 1977; Thomas J. Dolan, “ ‘Call Off Your Dogs,’ Judge Warns Defendants’ Pals,” Chicago Sun-Times. (The only pal mentioned in the story, which gets the identity of the threatened witness wrong, is Philip Grew, whose neighbors are reported to have said he’d “fled” to Ann Arbor.) The dropping of the supposed indictment was reported in Charles Mount, “Gromer Case Figure Indictment Dropped,” Chicago Tribune, 8 December 1977.
40. As reported in People v. McInnis no. 79–27.
41. In my interview with Grew (July 2015) he described himself as “a Michael Harrington Democrat,” though never a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which Harrington helped to found in 1982. In his first year at the University of Chicago, Grew volunteered to write press releases for the Student Council president, Alex Spinrad, a close ally of another campus politician, David Axelrod (later to mastermind Barack Obama’s presidential campaign). Both Spinrad and Axelrod were members of the Democratic Organizing Committee or DSOC, the Harrington wing of the Democratic Party.
42. Grew recalls the lyrics of a song sung by undergraduates about their University of Chicago professors: “They’re scared to leave the campus for the streets at night / ’Cuz the targets of their theories put ’em too uptight.”
43. “I felt a little bit alone,” Grew told me, “in terms of feeling so comfortable with African Americans….As a group we could go to Teresa’s…owned by Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. They [white friends] would go as a group, but couldn’t individually—or wouldn’t individually—do so.” If you had what Grew and his friends referred to as a “WCB” or “Working Class Background” (“Saul Bellow had this”), it was “a card you could play to get to know blacks comfortably.” Grew remembers a talk given to residents of his dorm on his first day at the university, about “how we had to be aware of where we were, and how dangerous it was and we were living in the middle of a ghetto and you couldn’t walk to the Museum of Science and Industry.”
44. After our interview, Grew sent me an email, 25 July 2015, detailing his understanding of the Gromer case. Here are portions of the email: “I witnessed the construction of a court case designed to rewrite the record so the graduate student, Marc Gromer, would go down in history—and later in fiction—as the victim of black-on-white crime. The entire case rested on hearsay. Administrators, staff, and consiglieri from the University of Chicago, largely through the South East Chicago Commission, in close cooperation with police and prosecutors, in a climate of support from
the student and faculty communities, were able first to choreograph a plausible scenario for the events of 5–6 July and then to script a series of statements that were staged during a sham trial to convict a local black man, Ellis McInnis. Had crime been involved, it would have consisted of an attempted armed robbery whose side effects caused the death, i.e., felony murder. This implies several material elements, including a dead person, a cause of death attributable to the felony of armed robbery, a weapon, and an item to be robbed. Of these four elements, only the first existed when I returned to Hyde Park from a Fourth-of-July visit to Ann Arbor. That is, Marc [sic] Gromer was dead.” Over the course of the next five weeks, “the three missing elements—crime, weapon, and loot—got added to the narrative.” Of the witnesses who helped to add these elements, “I cannot recall a single one whose primary motivation appeared to be civic duty. In many cases there were obvious stimuli in the form of positive or negative sanctions. Often, an incentive consisted quite simply of the hope of a share in the reward money. The other main positive sanction was a reduced sentence or other lighter treatment at the hands of the ‘legal’ system. The negative sanctions whose avoidance motivated people to recount their stories ran across a broader range, a continuum that stretched from mild hassles with authorities through a variety of threats to fear of outright torture….These negative sanctions were in no way unique to the Gromer case. They were business as usual, part of the climate. If the prosecutor told the press that someone was a fugitive from justice, for example, the person in essence became an outlaw, even when no arrest warrant existed. That was what happened to me….In late July and early August, the missing three elements—connection to a crime, desired loot, and a weapon—were added into the plot through bought and coerced testimony. A late night hitting the books turned into a late night hitting the bars. The bedsheet hung as an improvised curtain over the window became a gag in the mouth of the white guy. Various items such as suitcases and stereos failed to materialize as the potential loot. At the final curtain, the only booty was a ring from Gromer….The ring was a rather weak tie, since it might have been transferred from Gromer earlier that night or after his fall, thus failing to place even Deola, let alone Ellis McInnis, in the apartment. The weapon, however, was real physical evidence. Although the final account apparently placed the knife in Gromer’s kitchen in the hand of an investigating policeman who had approached a paramedic kneeling alongside the fallen student, during dress rehearsal the knife had also put in an appearance upstairs with the watermelon, or was it cantaloupe.” (It was cantaloupe, according to People v. McInnis no. 79–27; according to McInnis’s testimony, “They started to smoke some reefer in the living room. Johnson asked for something to eat and the victim brought out a cantaloupe and three plates. The victim kept telling Johnson he wanted to go to bed with her so the defendant told them he was going to leave and he did so. He got home about 2:30 or 3:00.”)
45. Here is how the Chicago Tribune describes the South East Chicago Commission’s aims and activities, in an obituary of Julian Levi on 18 October 1987: “The issue for the city, community and the university was stability, as neighboring areas such as Kenwood and Woodlawn saw whites flee as the first African-Americans moved in. Edgy university administrators were considering plans to move the campus to Lake Geneva, Wis. Led by Chancellor Lawrence Kimpton, the university committed itself instead to stay. It offered to contribute $14 million to the city, to be matched by $42 million from Washington, to buy slum property around the university and improve it to encourage stability and integration. This required new legislation, and Mr. Levi helped lead lobbying efforts for an amendment to the Housing Act of 1949 that became the key to rebuilding Hyde Park and, later, other communities through urban renewal. It was a controversial process that angered many who saw it as a land grab by the university.” Philip Grew was certainly angered, accusing the commission of “actively paying to burn down buildings so that the territory that belonged to the university could expand southwards towards South Shore.” In the Gromer case, “There was no doubt about them paying for a conviction….I can’t believe this is a university doing this stuff. This is not what academics [such as Julian Levi] do. That’s not what universities are for.” The university set up the commission, he believes, to deal with “anything that would be embarrassing to espouse a public position on.”
46. Both Kleinbard and McCarthy were moved by the suffering of the Gromer family. For the duration of the trial, McCarthy remembers—some three weeks—the university put the Gromer family and Gromer’s wife up at the Drake Hotel, at considerable expense. After the trial, the wife, in a fragile state, lived with Kleinbard and his wife, Joan, for several months.
47. Julian Levi, “The Neighborhood Program of the University of Chicago,” Office of Public Information, University of Chicago, August 1961, quoted in Fish, Black Power/White Control, p. 14.
48. In life, SB was, finally, on Levi’s side. See SB to Mayor Richard M. Daley, 15 November 1996: “Dear Mr. Mayor: This note concerns our friend Jonathan Kleinbard: Jonathan, as I am sure you know, has held the title of vice president of the University of Chicago in four administrations. He served under Edward Levi, under John Wilson and Hanna Gray and is at present on Mr. [Hugo] Sonnenschein’s staff. All of Mr. Sonnenschein’s predecessors were pleased with him and valued his assistance….Mr. Sonnenschein, however, seems to have come under the influence of Jonathan’s opponents and enemies, the PC contingent who were critical of Julian Levi and have apparently never understood that without the Levi plan Hyde Park/Kenwood would have gone the way of other blighted areas. Mr. Sonnenschein has been reducing Jonathan’s functions to the vanishing point….He seems to have convinced himself that Jonathan represents all that was wrong with the policies of the University—fifty years of errors.”
49. “Mat [sic] Wright,” in the “Chicago Book.”
50. These are terms SB uses to distinguish facts plain and simple from facts charged with imagination: “The fact is a wire through which one sends a current. The voltage of the current is determined by the writer’s own belief as to what matters, by his own caring or not-caring, by passionate choice. It is not in news that it matters whether a man lives or dies. The mattering is not a product of facts, but of judgment, of caring” (quoted in the introduction to To Fame and Fortune, p. 11). SB might have mentioned the presence of a third black man in the novel, the American ambassador to Romania. The ambassador is an attractive figure: calm, concerned, handsome, “with something about him—breeding, delicacy.” He listens sympathetically to Corde’s difficulties and offers practical advice. Bellow describes him as “quite black, very slender, had style, class, cultivation. He wore a light gray well-cut suit, and an Hermes necktie (Corde recognized the stirrup motif), and narrow black shoes” (p. 64). Corde has met black men like the ambassador before. “They had summer homes in Edgartown [on Martha’s Vineyard]” (p. 66).
51. Atlas, Biography, p. 512.
52. Ibid., p. 495. David Mikics, Bellow’s People: How Saul Bellow Made Life into Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), p. 201, inaccurately follows Atlas’s lead about Grew threatening a witness.
53. A cricketing term which in this context means something like avoiding answering a question, or deflecting a question, though the term can also mean behaving honestly or decently. Here both meanings fit, since by keeping his views to himself SB might have been seeking to avoid upset, thus behaving decently.
54. See SB to Alan Lelchuk, 22 March 1976: “Where does one live, in Cambridge, in Brookline, in Newton? I was rather attracted to the Jewish ambience of Brookline. It felt something like the Montreal I knew when I was a kid. But is that enough?”
55. Artur Sammler condemns Marcuse, whom he groups with Norman O. Brown. Lelchuk thinks Marcuse and SB may have had lunch together during SB’s time at Brandeis, “or maybe they just shook hands.”
56. The only other member of the Brandeis English Department wh
om Alexandra remembers she and Bellow socialized with was Milton Hindus, a scholar of wide and eccentric interests, perhaps best known for having visited Céline in 1948, from which he came away convinced that Céline was not an anti-Semite. This view he argues in Céline: The Crippled Giant (1950), perhaps his best-known book. Lelchuk, who befriended Hindus, describes him as “a strange kind of fellow and right-wing.” “We learned things of such an arcane nature from him,” Alexandra remembers.
57. Email to the author, 11 October 2015.
58. There were also money worries at this time. As Bellow complained to Julian Behrstock in a letter of May 24, 1978, “The IRS presented its bill and cleaned me out so I had to dig out some old sermons and fly to Texas and to Indianapolis and to Montreal….Anyway I had a sudden and unhappy need for dollars and so I went on the road, and every time I gave a talk Washington took away 50% of the fee.”
59. The recollection comes from Bettyann Kevles, “The Dean Remembered,” Engineering and Science, no. 3 (2005) (Engineering and Science was the name of the Caltech magazine).
60. SB, foreword to Clean Hands, Dirty Hands: Clair Patterson’s Crusade Against Environmental Lead Contamination, ed. Cliff L. Davidson (Commack, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 1999).
61. Also in the Engineering and Science article, Bettyann Kevles remembers SB’s telling another questioner that he reread all of Shakespeare “every year or two.”
62. This quotation is from a three-page single-spaced letter to the Norsk Nobel-Komité, 20 January 1981, in which SB makes the case for awarding Patterson the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize. The letter was accompanied by materials documenting Patterson’s “persistent efforts to make the world aware of the danger it faces.”
7. NADIR
1. See Lionel Adey, C. S. Lewis’ “Great War” with Owen Barfield (2000). When SB and Alexandra were in Victoria, Patrick Grant was finishing a book entitled Literature of Mysticism in Western Tradition (1983).
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