Love and Strife (1965-2005)
Page 104
23. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, p. 205.
24. Thomas Barber, email to the author, 31 May 2017.
25. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, p. 205.
26. SB to Martin Amis, 7 February 2000.
27. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, pp. 206, 207.
28. Ibid., pp. 206–9.
29. Ibid., p. 211.
30. Ibid., p. 212.
31. Before Martin Amis’s session, on Conrad’s The Shadow-Line, Janis took him aside and whispered about Bellow, “Can’t read anymore.”
32. Walter Pozen also emphasized SB’s hearing problems: “He couldn’t hear. ‘I hear everything,’ he told Janis….I could get his attention, but he didn’t really care.”
33. Rosie Bellow, emails to the author, 18 May 2014.
34. Daniel Bellow, email to the author, 4 June 2017.
35. Janis had moved from undergraduate teaching at BU to a teaching job at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts, where she still teaches.
36. Janis later described SB’s dying to Adam “as something he did rather than something that happened to him….It wasn’t a passive process. She felt that he had decided to die and that his body was still holding on. That he’d decided, just like in ‘A Silver Dish,’ to go out on his own terms at a moment of his choosing.”
37. Janis Bellow, email to the author, 8 July 2017, describes David Grene’s companion, Stephanie Nelson, as “a huge help, support and source of continuous kindness to Saul in the last couple of years—more than anyone except Will.”
In the summer of 2011, at age thirty-seven, Will moved from Boston to Montana to take up a job in the film department at Montana State University. Two weeks after his arrival, he was stricken by a bacterial infection so aggressive that it nearly killed him. All four of his limbs were amputated, and he spent ten months in hospitals before resettling in Brookline with his partner, Angel Gonzalez. In 2014, at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he underwent a double arm transplant, a nine-hour operation involving thirteen surgeons. He is making gains in independence and now speaks regularly to hospital groups, therapists, and others about disability, patient experiences, and organ donation and transplantation. An award-winning film about his ordeal, Stumped, was released in 2017.
38. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, p. 213.
39. Although Greg was on tenterhooks all through 5 April 2005, he was not easy to reach. “My noble daughter tried to spare me from the coldness she had already suffered, frantically calling every place I might be, without success” (ibid., p. 213).
40. This was Nathalie Botsford’s observation, also Ruth Wisse’s. I visited the gravesite in 2008, and the approach to the Jewish section of the cemetery was still as they had described it.
41. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, p. 211. Lesha Greengus, email to the author, 29 June 2017, says the following about where and whether Bellow wished to be buried in Chicago: “Over the years, Saul had repeatedly spoken about being buried next to his mother and father….He eventually asked me to contact Waldheim Cemetery to see if there were actually plots available…located adjacent to the burial plots where his mother and father were buried. He said that he very much wanted to be buried next to them. I looked into purchasing six plots for him and for his family’s future use….Saul was disappointed when he learned that the six plots next to his parents were already either occupied or held by other families. (Four of six original Abraham Bellow plots were used for Robert, Larry, and Charlie Kauffman and the last remaining plot was left for Jane.) So he reluctantly abandoned the idea of buying burial plots at Waldheim.”
42. Ruth Wisse, email to the author, 6 June 2017, quoted from notes she’d made after the funeral, explaining why she thought she was asked to speak: “Janis might have worried that Saul’s Jewish soul would otherwise never have been brought to rest.”
43. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, p. 213.
44. Ruth Wisse, email to the author, 6 June 2017.
45. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart, p. 214.
46. Ibid.
47. Every time they met, or so it seemed to Kaplan, Greg said to him: “You know, my father wasn’t a good man, and your father wasn’t a good man. You’re denying it.”
48. Joel Bellows remembers remarking that, though Jonathan Kleinbard “looked like shit,” Roth looked worse, not only “sad, remorseful,” but “like he just fucked the family dinner.” Roth overheard this remark, and turned round to ask Joel, “Do I look that bad?”
49. Philip Roth, Everyman (2006; New York: Vintage, 2007), pp. 14–15.
50. Ibid., p. 94.
51. Ibid., pp. 59–60, 61.
52. SB, “A Silver Dish,” in CS, p. 33.
PERMISSIONS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint the following previously published and unpublished material:
Rosie Alison: Excerpts of letters from Barley Alison to Saul Bellow, December 12, 1960, and February 5, 1967. Reprinted by permission of Rosie Alison.
Linda Asher: Excerpt of letter from Aaron Asher to Saul Bellow, December 23, 1964. Reprinted by permission of Linda Asher.
Owen A. Barfield, Trustee for Owen Barfield Literary Estate: Excerpt of letters from Owen Barfield to Saul Bellow, dated: March 17, 1976; September 18, 1976; and August 23, 1979. Copyright © Owen Barfield Literary Estate. Reprinted by permission of Owen A. Barfield, Trustee for Owen Barfield Literary Estate.
Adam Bellow: Excerpts of letters from Saul Bellow. Reprinted by permission of Adam Bellow.
Daniel Bellow: Excerpts of letters from Saul Bellow. Reprinted by permission of Daniel Bellow.
Joseph Epstein: Excerpts of letters from Edward Shils to Saul Bellow. Reprinted by permission of Joseph Epstein.
Frances Gendlin: Excerpts from “Away for the Summer Again” by Frances Gendlin and other quotes. Reprinted by permission of Frances Gendlin.
Georges Borchardt, Inc. on behalf of Harriet Wasserman: Excerpt of Handsome Is by Harriet Wasserman. Copyright © 1997 by Harriet Wasserman. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of Harriet Wasserman.
Tom Gidwitz: Excerpt of letter from Tom Gidwitz to Saul Bellow, December 23, 1983. Reprinted by permission of Tom Gidwitz.
Philip Grew: Excerpts of emails from Philip Grew to Zachary Leader. Reprinted by permission of Philip Grew.
Gertrude Himmelfarb: Excerpt of an unpublished letter from Irving Kristol to Saul Bellow. Reprinted by permission of Gertrude Himmelfarb.
Lynn Hoffman: Excerpt of letter from Ted Hoffman to Saul Bellow, January 5, 1950. Reprinted by permission of Lynn Hoffman.
Jacob Howland: Excerpts of letters from Bette Howland to Saul Bellow, September 24, 1968, and January 21, 1970. Reprinted by permission of Jacob Howland.
Arlette Jassel: Excerpts of letters and interview answers from Arlette Jassel. Reprinted by permission of Arlette Jassel.
Russell & Volkening, Inc.: Excerpts of correspondence from Henry Volkening to Saul Bellow. Reprinted by permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc.
Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC: Excerpts from The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale by James Atlas, copyright © 2017 by James Atlas. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC: Excerpts from Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas, copyright © 2000 by James Atlas. Reprinted by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Katherine Peltz Rivera: Excerpt of letter from David Peltz to Saul Bellow. Reprinted by permission of Katherine Peltz Rivera.
Philip Roth: Excerpt o
f letter from Philip Roth to Saul Bellow, December 5, 1981. Reprinted by permission of Philip Roth.
The Wylie Agency LLC: Excerpts of unpublished letters by Lionel Trilling. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ZACHARY LEADER is professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton in London. Although born and raised in the United States, he has lived in Britain for more than forty years and has dual British and American citizenship. In addition to teaching at Roehampton, he has held visiting professorships at Caltech and the University of Chicago. He was educated at Northwestern University; Trinity College, Cambridge; and Harvard University; and is the author of Reading Blake’s Songs, Writer’s Block, Revision and Romantic Authorship, The Life of Kingsley Amis, a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune 1915–1964. He has edited Romantic Period Writings, 1798–1832: An Anthology (with Ian Haywood); The Letters of Kingsley Amis; On Modern British Fiction; Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works (with Michael O’Neill); The Movement Reconsidered: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie, and Their Contemporaries; and On Life-Writing. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a seven-volume series.
SB outside the Belasco Theater, New York, 1964 (courtesy of Howard Gotfryd; photo by Bernard Gotfryd)
Sam Levene on Broadway as Philip Bummidge, the lead in SB’s play The Last Analysis, Belasco Theater, 1964 (courtesy of Friedman-Abeles/Museum of the City of New York, F2013-41@The New York Public Library)
Pat Covici and SB, early 1960s (courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)
Hirschfield caricature of Shelley Winters as Hilda “the Polack whore” and Henry Towb as Pennington, a seventy-eight-year-old industrialist, in “Orange Soufflé,” one of the three one-act plays in Under the Weather, which opened at the Cort Theater in October 1966 (courtesy of Playbill Enterprises, Inc.)
Maggie Staats, SB, and Samuel Goldberg, SB’s lawyer-friend, at the French Consulate in New York, where SB was awarded the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, January 15, 1968 (courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)
Arlette Landes and daughter Bonnie, Chicago, 1967 (courtesy of Arlette Landes)
Bette Howland, 1985 (courtesy of Jacob Howland)
Frances Gendlin, mid-1970s (courtesy of Frances Gendlin)
SB and sons Adam and Daniel on Martha’s Vineyard, 1965 (private collection)
“My father, the famous writer, was the king. Surely one day he would summon me to court, knight me, and acknowledge me as his heir.” SB and Adam in England, 1969. (private collection)
SB and Daniel on Nantucket, “dealing with little boys, ex-wives, lawyers, fishhooks in the fingers, sunburn, car rentals,” August 1969 (private collection)
Greg Bellow, 1969 (courtesy of Greg Bellow)
Saul Steinberg drawing, Paraa Lodge Murchison Falls Uganda Jan. 1970, a 1985 present to SB commemorating their 1970 trip to Murchison Falls (courtesy of The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society, New York)
SB and Dave Peltz, the model for Woody Selbst in “A Silver Dish,” with “his broad build, frank face, high color. He didn’t look like a wrongdoer, a bad guy; he looked like a good guy. But he liked taking chances. Risk was a wonderful stimulant.” (private collection)
Edward Shils lecturing (courtesy of The Chicago Maroon; photo by Jackie Hardy)
David Grene, classicist (courtesy of University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)
Floyd Salas in Berkeley in the 1960s; to him SB was “the epitome of what was wrong with the university.” (courtesy of Floyd Salas)
Student protester David Shapiro sitting at the desk of Columbia University president Grayson Kirk, whose office protesters had occupied (he is smoking one of Kirk’s cigars). A senior, later a poet and critic, he went on to study at Cambridge, returned to Columbia for a Ph.D., and has taught at Columbia and Princeton. (photo by Blake Fleetwood)
SB at the International House in Tokyo, surrounded by its executive director and board members, among them professors of literature and history at Tokyo University and Shigeharu Matsumoto, standing third from right, cofounder of the International House (with J. D. Rockefeller III). The scroll above them translates roughly: “Respect and care, at the end, as in the beginning.” (courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)
Honorary degree recipients, Harvard University, June 1972. Back row, left to right: James Shannon, S.D; SB, Litt.D; Roy Jenkins; LL.D., Paul Samuelson, LL.D.; Northrop Frye, Litt.D. Front row, left to right: Anne Pusey, L.H.D.; Nathan Pusey, LL.D.; Derek Bok (president); Elma Lewis, Art.D. (courtesy of Harvard University News Office)
SB and Herman Wouk hiking in Aspen, 1970s (courtesy of Ferenc Berko Photo Archive)
James Salter in Aspen, 1970s (courtesy of Kay Eldredge)
Walter Pozen, SB’s lawyer-friend and eventual executor, 1967 (courtesy of University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)
SB in Aspen, 1974 (courtesy of Ferenc Berko Photo Archive)
SB, Alexandra, and Florica Bagdasar (Alexandra’s mother), sightseeing in Greece; SB doing the “Sirtaki” step, mid-1970s (private collection)
The Bellow party in Stockholm, “Nobel Savages,” December 12, 1976. Back row, left to right: Ileana Costea (cousin to Alexandra), Nicholas Costea (her husband, behind her), Alexandra, Greg, SB, Daniel (just peeping out), Adam, Sam Greengus. Front row, left to right: Sam Bellows, Ana Paonescu (Alexandra’s aunt), Florica Bagdasar (Alexandra’s mother), Nina Bellows (Sam Bellows’s wife), Lesha Greengus, Judith, Deana, and Rachel Greengus (daughters of Lesha and Sam), Jane Bellow Kauffman (SB’s sister). (private collection)
SB receiving the Nobel Prize from King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden, Stockholm, December 12, 1976 (courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)
SB and Alexandra surprised in bed by the Saint Lucia ceremony, Stockholm, December 13, 1976 (courtesy of Getty Images, Bettmann)
SB’s publishers at the country home of his Swedish publisher Bonnier, December 13, 1976. Front row, left to right: Tom Rosenthal (Secker and Warburg), Thomas Guinzberg (Viking), SB, Barley Alison (Secker and Warburg), Gerald Bonnier, Karl Otto Bonnier. Back row, left to right: George Svensson (also of Bonnier), Jarl Helleman (Finnish publisher), Reinhold Neven du Mont (German publisher) (courtesy of Rosie Alison)
Greg, Daniel, and Adam Bellow, Stockholm, December 1976 (private collection)
Alexandra, SB, Leon Wieseltier, and Daniel, Vermont, 1977 (private collection)
SB’s house in Vermont: “He wanted it to be brown and he wanted it to have a slate floor and he went to Europe and it was done.” (photo by Alice Leader)
The Cloisters, 5805 Dorchester Avenue, Hyde Park (photo by John Hellmuth)
The Cloisters, ground floor corridor, Hyde Park (photo by John Hellmuth)
5490 South Shore Drive, “The Vatican,” Hyde Park (photo by John Hellmuth)
5825 Dorchester Avenue, Hyde Park (photo by John Hellmuth)
Rudolf Steiner, father of anthroposophy, to whom SB was drawn “because he confirms that a perspective, the rudiments of which I always had, contained the truth” (Wikipedia)
Owen Barfield, at Orchard View, South Darent, Kent, c. 1975 (courtesy of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois)
Peter Demay, convener of SB’s Steiner re
ading group and a leading figure in the Chicago branch of the Anthroposophical Society (courtesy of William Hunt)