Letters

by Saul Bellow

  The story you heard when you were here last has been cut in half and in that form Partisan Review is going to publish it in the next issue. It’s very peculiar. I’m tickled, of course, but at the same time I don’t know what to make of it. [Dwight] Macdonald wrote me asking if he could print the first two monologues; the other two, he said, weakened the total effect and should be left out. Well, the ones he chose are the bulk of the manuscript, about three-fourths. He asked if I would care to revise “Lover” and “Politics” but I didn’t know what he meant and I specifically had no idea what he meant by a weakened total effect and so, rather dazed and not very sure that the two alone would do me any credit, I let it go. I’m flattered, happy and doubtful all at the same time. I hope he knows what he’s doing.

  I saw Passin just before leaving for Canada. We didn’t have a great deal to say. A confidential conversation was out of the question while there were others around and we made no definite appointments for the future. I have no objection to him as long as there is no falsefacing on either side. I refuse absolutely to be used as a vaunting post and I dislike very much playing an accommodating and fraudulent entre nous (nous standing for the putatively great). I don’t mind doing a friend the favor of giving therapeutic assistance but in Herb’s case it’s too difficult and costs too much in compromise. [ . . . ]

  Isaac came back refreshed, chipper and hopeful from Champaign. There have been a lot of changes in him recently—all of them good. Whether Vasiliki [Isaac’s wife] is responsible for them or not I don’t know. But he works very hard and apparently with benefits in sight. In the last two weeks—I suppose you know—he wrote a couple of sonnets which I think are the best things he ever did. Er vert a mensch, bislechvise [2].

  Yours,

  I hope the address is right. What the hell is the idea of two towns [Champaign and Urbana]?

  To Oscar Tarcov

  February 20, 1941 Chicago

  Dear Oscar:

  For a long time now I have been wondering how to answer your letter. To begin with it was, paradoxically, just the sort of letter I have been awaiting from you; one in which you would be a little more recognizable than the Oscar of “cons” and cold-owl trips to see a girl who fucks. Now you are as much Oscar in those situations as in the letter, but I prefer the variety of Oscar I find there. At least he is more congenial to me and more real, by which I mean once more attracted by the concerns through which I knew him. I lost track for a long time of this more desirable individual and, I may suppose, so did you and it is a natural satisfaction to have rediscovered him.

  In a way your enthusiasm reminds me that I have always been a sort of combination vanguard and experimental rabbit in the trio that includes both of us and Isaac. The function was not a too-pleasurable one and not an extremely beneficial one; it put a greater responsibility of performance on me than I wanted. But when Isaac became a philosopher and you a sociologist and my position went into decline I was not relieved, I was dissatisfied instead. I was especially dissatisfied with you, not because you had become a “sociologist,” you hadn’t; we discussed that last time you were here. It was not a matter of ceasing to write, either. Or that was only incidental. For lack of a better way to put it, you no longer showed either the sensibility or even the desire for a certain sort of sensibility which all of us had long ago agreed was a great value, perhaps the greatest of all values. Isaac hadn’t lost it and I was hammer-and-tongs after it but in you, for reasons which I could better understand than accept, it often seemed entirely absent. The things you did in Champaign could never successfully supplant it and you knew it but there were cogent and plausible reasons for postponement and reasons also for fatalism—you had had bad years, you would be in the army soon, etc. But I doubt whether those reasons were more important than the absence of a fundamental need for remembering or writing or perceiving.

  The letter proves you still capable and that alone gives me more pleasure in you than anything you have done in the last two years. But of course I cannot write merely saying “I am pleased.”

  Publication in Partisan Review flatters me greatly, but I cannot honestly say that I am too proud of what I have done. I got galley-proofs today and cannot look at them long enough to make the needed corrections. This is no exaggeration. I would much rather have published something else. Maybe I am too demanding and exacting; maybe I lack what is essential: the careless attitude of journalism which teaches you to throw into print anything you scribble off; maybe it is wrong to be too painstakingly careful and perhaps I might have been in print long ago but for that scrupulous observance of standards. But with the galleys on the table, now that it is too late I still feel that I was right.

  You and Isaac and Sam [Freifeld] and Louie [Sidran] and one or two others were the only people who were honestly and legitimately unenvious and happy to hear that P.R. had accepted me. I got a shock from Kappy and especially from Celia [Kappy’s wife]. You see, Kappy had sent that story of his away at the same time and he got it back with an encouraging note of rejection which made just about the same criticism of the first part that we made. The next day I got a letter of acceptance and it was quite understandably hard for him to swallow. But what set me up a little was Kappy’s attitude that he is after all the more qualified littérateur and that I am a sort of skillful but not too serious operator or literary light cavalryman. Well no doubt he knows more about literature, but I am, well, myself and myself hates to see what I do called inconsequential or trivial. But he continues friendly and so do I. It is Celia who is so difficult and who when she does see us does not have the open and free manner without which intimacy falls flat on its face. It is pretty transparent that she is nettled.

  I drank beer with Herb [Passin] all last Wednesday afternoon and got exactly what I expected but in a much more polished and able performance. Since breaking down the act and getting him to let down his hair would have taken more beers than you suspect and since even if that had been my goal there would have been a great risk of being sick all the next day, I went home at five. But I had taken a lot of punishment for three hours and I didn’t feel any too good that evening. I think he was badly in need of someone more imaginative than his wife and less official than people like [Fay-Cooper] Cole or [Melville J.] Herskovits to talk to. But sometimes—often—the devices he uses with them come out and clasp you like a pair of ice tongs. God damn it, how I hate to feel that I am being used! I don’t mind giving myself but being taken is rotten and makes me feel literally, sexually, buggered. I hate like the devil to say it. If Herb is successful I am glad but (and I detest this in myself almost as much as in others) why does he carry a pocket-sized lithograph ready-inked to stamp the behinds of his friends with? It is bad behavior and bad esthetics, as all lies are bad esthetics.

  I send Isaac’s regards. He is very busy and hardly sees anyone. I don’t get to visit home more than once a week.

  Yours,

  “Kappy” is Harold Kaplan, a great friend and sparring partner of Bellow’s, particularly in these early days, who after the war went to Paris, where he continues to live. Fay-Cooper Cole and Melville J. Herskovits were influential anthropologists at the University of Chicago and Northwestern respectively.

  1942

  To Melvin Tumin

  [n.d.] [Chicago]

  Dearest Mel:

  I think this letter would be best begun with the news, so that you won’t have to scramble around for it over miles and miles of prose. It is now more than a week since I returned. I accomplished a great deal in New York, though I did not find any takers for the novel. Some publishers told me frankly that they were upholders of bourgeois morality; others that it was simply not commercial. Two offered me advances. Dial Press wanted me to do a book on the Army, any sort of book, even day-to-day autobiography, not fiction at all. The fate of the novel now rests with Dwight Macdonald. He has no great hopes for it and neither have I. Parts of it will probably appear in PR and then it will be forgotten until it crops up posthumousl
y, and thank God I won’t be there to see it. But wait, there is more. First, I have an agent. His name is Maxim Lieber, he operates in a cold, dim cell on Fifth Avenue near 44th St., he represents such talents as Erskine Caldwell and Albert Halper, etc. It is his opinion that I will be a success if only I learn to be suppler, more compromising, less adamantly set in my purposes. What more is there to say about Maxim Lieber? He is one of those people who is constantly characterizing himself. The least of his acts is a giveaway. “Balzac wrote for money,” he says. “Oh, don’t sneer. So did Shakespeare and so did Beethoven. And you’ll either come around or remain obscure. We’ll see whether you sneer when you’re forty.” I assured him it was an ineradicable trait and that I would sneer till eighty, if I lived that long. I did not add that contact with the likes of Lieber would undoubtedly shorten my span. Be that as it may, now that we have each other I may start appearing in print a little more often, providing, of course, that I have the leisure and power to write in the Army. It will have to be power, leisure or no leisure. I work better under stress anyhow.

  Both Isaac and myself have recently done reviews for the New Republic where Vasiliki is now employed [ . . . ]. Strategically her position is invaluable for us and we—Isaac especially—have been getting all kinds of leads from our contact with various editors. For instance, through one of his leads Isaac has become a radio writer for the Jewish People’s Committee and I was to have begun working for Time when I was recalled by my draft board. I am again 1-A; last week I took a second blood test and if my virtue is vindicated I shall be inducted within the next two weeks.

  Freifeld is rising ever higher in the bureaucratic realm; there seems to be no limit to that boy’s enterprise. But he works; as a rule doesn’t get home until eight in the evening. Often he is up half the night on some investigation or other. Saturdays until six and seven, Sundays and holidays he spends at the office. So don’t be piqued because he hasn’t written. It is difficult for him. He adopts, as you will learn, a very special tone in his letters and is at great pains to write them. It takes a long time and the process is inconceivably punctilious—the epigrams have to be thoroughly thought out and before any step is taken the proper mode has to be established. As a matter of fact he has written a letter designed for you but hasn’t had time to get it typed, or so he said when I registered your complaint with him.

  Kap begins working for the OWI [Office for War Information] in a few days. For a while he had an extraordinary streak of extraordinarily bad luck. He was supposed to go to work for the Department of Justice. He had been accepted, approved by the FBI, and so on. And then he found, when all the tests were over, that the post had been abolished some time before. He immediately left for New York and after a ten-day wait got the other appointment.

  There are two births to report. The Grosses have had a girl, the Passins a boy—Thomas Britt (I think there are two tees; I wouldn’t like to be caught in error). And oh yes, the Ithiel Pools have produced a Jonathan Pool, middle name of Robert. That’s all the parturition for the present. Other announcements as they become necessary will be made, and much more fittingly, by the womenfolk.

  Herbert came back after a month in Dallas which he spent with Susie. She came down from the hills to meet him. What happened will forever remain in the files of Eros. [ . . . ] I hate to make fun of anyone’s passions. The struggles from which they proceed are always real even when their manifestations are ridiculous. Perhaps I shall have to become accustomed to the idea that there is always what my austere-critical mind will designate as ridiculous. Perhaps what I deplore in Passin is the succession [of loves]. Perhaps if he had one or two only to show for his entire life I would feel more charitable towards him. I mean this only with regard to Susie. Almost everything else about Passin I respect. I say almost because I make several important reservations. While I am entirely in sympathy with his attitude towards Cora [Passin’s then wife] and the child, I am out of sympathy with that trait of stubbornness which makes it impossible for him to be wrong up to the moment when the fissure opens underfoot and drags him in. To the last instant he will deny there is a fissure. He will deny it with such assurance that you will look again in perplexity. Sure enough, there it is, yawning. You throw a couple of rocks into it to show him. See? But he still denies it. Only when he is hurtling down do you hear him cry, “It’s true.” Then also there is something I distrust in Passin’s view of the world. It has intelligence, it has practical shrewdness, but it is deplorably narrow too, I am afraid. Give Passin a problem and he will solve it; give him a fortress he will reduce it; give him a clue and he will elaborate it. But he has failed to discover in the world any principles but the ones that serve him. His outlook, to reduce it to a phrase, is technical, not poetic. He loves one object with such great fervor simply because his fund of love is not more generally expended. Nevertheless, I do respect Passin, I do honor him. If I see in him the miscarriage of great capacities I see also their success. Passin is admirable.

  Right now he is treed. He doesn’t know what to do about Cora. He is no good with her. You know how rapidly his organs submit to his psyche. He can’t succeed with her though he wants to, and badly. Meanwhile he doesn’t know what to do about Susie. And Sammy . . . You ought to do something about him, you really ought. He doesn’t have a chance and he’s giving himself a hell of a deal. Besides he torments Passin, still treating him as his confidant. Herb can’t stand it. And I believe for once Herb is jealous when Sammy talks to him. He doesn’t mind her having slept with him but it’s merely that other kinds of intimacy which he describes, which are simple not carnal, hurt him far more. Why don’t you try to do something? Do whatever you can.

  Now for you, divine and goat-eared boy, as Kappy calls you, I give you advice as an elder statesman in love and in the knowledge that you must have winced when I poked fun at Passin and his inamorata. You know I have been led to take rather a light attitude towards your affairs by the very way in which you conducted them. And I am not the only one. I have not met your Shirley yet. If the Army doesn’t rush me I will, though. I don’t know what to expect in advance. I have hunches. But I do know that at a distance of several thousand miles she is apt to be magnificently appetizing, whereas if you slept with her on Irving Park Road tomorrow you might not give a damn for her on Saturday. I’ll stretch it to two bangs, three as an extra concession to your constancy; but no more. I haven’t forgotten the Russian and one or two other items of your love life. So before you make any move to import her across leagues of desert, snow, mountain, etc. be sure you know what you’re up to. You must admit that your record gives me no choice but to say this to you. Certainly you cannot have failed to think of it yourself. You have. But in the unreality of bananas, dysentery, bad whiskey, waddly muchachas, hills, lizards and the rest of the bizarre, over-colored, hellish, romantic cauchemar [3], you may not be capable of sensible resolutions. If I were you I wouldn’t undertake any commitments at such a distance. I am afraid, however, that you are marked for fatality by your testicles as surely as the cat by its curiosity. Far be it from me to stand in the way of Destiny. I’ll visit Her some time next week. [ . . . ]

  The East was a good thing for me. I went around receiving my accolades. It was such a relief to come out of the Chicago basin where two or three friends had me subsist on their estimates and to find in the larger world of New York that I was regarded as an up-and-comer. Bertram D. Wolfe said my story was one of the finest he had ever seen an American writer do on Mexico. Clement Greenberg said . . . I don’t want to quote all these testimonials myself, it would seem like so much self-gilding. I will simply name the names: Mary McCarthy, Nigel Dennis, Alfred Kazin, ad regurgitam. And don’t think your letter, which Anita forwarded, was not important to me.

  I have worn myself out batting it around with you this morning. I will close now with all my love. My next will be a theoretical letter treating of some of the points you have raised and which I am too tired to try my intellectual muscles on just now.
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  Hasta luego,

  You’re lucky the censor is not somebody from the Hays Office. My, what swearing. Let’s hope it isn’t a lady-censor.

  Melvin Marvin Tumin (1919-94), later a professor of sociology at Princeton well known for his work on race relations, was at this time doing doctoral field research in Guatemala.

  To Melvin Tumin

  [n.d.] [Chicago]

  Dearest Moish:

  It’s very unfair of me, I know, not to have written so long. You must think that someone who is constantly with a typewriter must be reminded daily of the letters he owes. That is true. I am reminded of them, but sometimes I simply cannot write them. Should I begin in detail to tell you how things have until lately been with me you would quickly understand why. But since I would be engaged night and day for two months in so doing and you are quick at inference, we’ll jump over that. I was greatly affected by your last letter and if I had answered it at once, as I originally planned to do, our correspondence would be one letter ahead. But only one. In the last six weeks I have sent Isaac a single letter and Kappy a single apologetic note, and that has been the total extent of my epistling. So you need not feel neglected. You have not been neglected, really. I mention you so often that Anita with her psychoanalytic smile says, “Ah? Your boyfriend again.” The joke has become one of her staples. She knows how desperately I miss you and says it wistfully because no woman likes to feel she is not her husband’s or lover’s all-in-all. Women as a rule cannot make adequate qualitative distinctions when it comes to love.