Letters

by Saul Bellow

  Stay away from Dutch Harbor [in the Aleutians]. If you are inclined, and, if your location is no military secret, write. I don’t know what will happen to me. What information I have is all indefinite. But we may both want correspondents in the Army, or in remote places.

  Don’t worry about the mss., you’ve done far more than your share already. I’ll have a friend in New York pick it up and peddle it around as well as he can—perhaps turn it over to Macdonald.

  I don’t know, and I can’t continue to care intensely and still function. I have to take this attitude, you see.

  All best luck in Alaska and God be with you. Try to write, but unless you really are impelled to, don’t.

  Praschai [12],

  1943

  To Dwight Macdonald

  [n.d.] [Chicago]

  Dear Dwight:

  If you wrote stories, you would find that editors sowed criticisms with a liberal hand and very carelessly. My reply, if I were to bother to make one, would in most cases be simply “Bah!” But I find yours very just in the case of “The Car,” and I am only too delighted to be able to offer an editor a posy, for once. The “centreless facility which destroys the form by excess elaboration” is not quite right, but it is sufficiently close. The greatest difficulty, after one has conceived a story, is to keep the conception always in clear focus. It is not because I write too easily that I sometimes fail. I would be more successful, perhaps, if I did write with more careless dash. But what I find heartbreakingly difficult in these times is fathoming the reader’s imagination. If he and I were both of a piece, it would not be so hard. But as it is I am ringed around with uncertainties and I often fail to pull myself together properly, banishing distraction and anxiety. And so I find myself perpetually asking, “How far shall I take this character? Have I made such and such a point clear? Will the actions of X be understood? Shall I destroy a subtlety by hammering it?” Etc.

  Besides, being the local draft-board freak is not an unmixed boon. I do not know from day to day what to expect and, as a 1A, cannot go back to teaching. It’s impossible to make the best use of one’s capacities at such a time, and it is nearly as crippling to know that one’s talents are being kept hobbled. And there you are.

  I [ . . . ] am now nearing the end of Notes of a Dangling Man, a short, semi-autobiographical novel which rather pleases me. I am going to have to peddle this one on my own, too. Max Lieber, my agent, is a patriot, and the Notes is not exactly a sweet little bundle of V’s.

  Max expects me to become a moneymaker, someday. At present, however, he thinks me still a little wild and when I send him a mss. he doesn’t try very hard to market it.

  Last December I sent him a story called “Juif!” that I think you would like. If you phone him I am sure he will not object to sending it to you, although I suspect that he is a bit of a Stalinist.

  If you want to run it I will send a corrected copy from Chicago. There are a few slips and rough spots that I overlooked in the draft Lieber has.

  Yrs,

  Less than a “patriot” and more than “a bit of a Stalinist,” Maxim Lieber (1897- 1993) was in fact a covert agent of the Soviet Union. In 1951, realizing he would either have to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee against Alger Hiss, with whom he had spied in the 1930s, or else refuse to cooperate and go to prison, Lieber fled with his wife, Minna, to Cuernavaca, Mexico. Thereafter they made their way to Warsaw, where housing, along with a teaching post for Minna, were provided by the Polish government.

  1944

  To David Bazelon

  January 25, 1944 [Chicago]

  Dear David:

  I too am sorry we didn’t arrive at a more solid understanding. Whatever it is that thrusts itself between us is a very potent thing. I can’t pretend to understand it and, in fact, I have made the most negligible effort. I tell you this with no attempt to mitigate my slackness, but you must not interpret this as a lack of interest in you. Far from it. I am greatly interested; but I have given myself over wholly to those matters that you limit to inner dialogues and those are my politics, too. Can I be wrong in assuming that politics are one function of a person’s humanity? I think you would not say so. This is not egotism in me, nor, as you call it, tiredness, evidence of defeat. None of that. The principal difference between us, if I guess correctly, is that I hold that the forms outside do not assure the manhood of the man. We can ask of them that they should not impede it, as they now do, but we are not safe in assuming the assurance. The right political belief, in other words, in itself secures nothing.

  It is necessary to be a revolutionist. But I would deny that I was less one because I do not participate in a political movement. Perhaps your criticism would be juster if I saw, but refused to enter, the right one.

  I think I could have shown you a great deal about my kind of politics; I would have been glad to do so, regarding it as a privilege.

  Sorry about the delay, I had proofs to read. Write to me.

  Yrs,

  David Bazelon (1923-96) was a contributor to leading literary and political journals and the author of, among other works, Power in America: The Politics of the New Class (1967).

  To David Bazelon

  March 20, 1944 [Chicago]

  Dear Dave:

  Oscar told me last week that politics was going to print your story. I’m glad of it. I shall be sure to send you an opinion as soon as I’ve read it. I don’t think it makes much difference where a story appears just so it reaches the people you want it to reach, and politics is read by pretty much the same public as PR. Besides, I think you’re a writer and that you should write and publish and make yourself known. It’s best to get an early start. You’ll be writing much more maturely at twenty-eight than I am because of it. You get used to declaring yourself publicly and you save a lot of time and effort and spare yourself a long fight for confidence. Macdonald [editor in chief of politics ], though on the whole I don’t care for his literary opinions, knows what writing is, and his endorsement verifies Isaac’s opinion of you, and Oscar’s and mine. It’s all to the good. I’d like to advise you, by the way, to avoid making a mistake of mine, the mistake of taking criticisms of a single story too seriously. One doesn’t stand or fall by a single story or a single book of stories.

  I’d like to say this about your last remarks: I don’t advise others to follow the Dangling Man into regimentation. That was not advice. When you read Dangling Man you will see that I was only making an ironic statement about the plight of the Josephs. I don’t encourage surrender. I’m speaking of wretchedness and saying that no man by his own effort finds his way out of it. To some extent the artist does. But the moral man, the citizen, doesn’t. He can’t. As to what I would advise Johnny to do, concretely I can’t say. In general I would say, “Be a revolutionist. Nothing we have politically deserves to be saved.”

  And I would include the U[niversity] of C[hicago] and the Great Books Project in nothing. Did you see that Education for Freedom article in PM? I think Dwight ought to run a piece about it. The information in PM is mostly wrong, but it’s right in spirit. [Robert Maynard] Hutchins’ anti-mammalianism deserves some grand, public derision. Some reliable man in Teacher’s College ought to be invited to try. [ . . . ]

  I have an idea Dwight’s not fond of me anymore because I didn’t agree with him about the war. However, I’d be happy to be found wrong.

  Write.

  Yours,

  To Alfred Kazin

  March 25, 1944 [Chicago]

  Dear Alfred:

  Splendid! You’re a lucky Jew-boy. I congratulate and envy you. I’d like to come down to New York to see you off in style, with a great celebration. After all, you’re something like a personal emissary for Isaac and me and dozens of our sort, going to see what our prospects are and whether homo sap. offers more hope in England than here. It’s about time we heard not from newspapermen and politicos but from people we can trust. And of course it’s a wonderful thing for you, person
ally. Immenso jubilo!

  My book, as you suspect, gives me veytig [13]. I wish you would tell me what you think; I can have only misgivings at this stage. Clearly, the book is not what it should be, not what I can write. A more resolute character would have refused to have it published. But, alas! I fancy that even now I can give a pretty fair estimate of it. The writing is sound, the idea—of the impossibility of working out one’s own destiny freely in such a world—is a genuine one. The rest is a hash, a mishmash for which I deserve to be mercilessly handled. But it’s so hard now to find a way to use one’s best powers. What can be done? Isaac labors with the same difficulty. He has not reached the level where he can thunder. Like myself he is still somewhere in the trees. In the trees one rustles. You know whence thunder comes. I venture to say it’s not as bad as that for a critic. He finds his drama ready for him; the novelist has to assemble it from the materials he bumps blindly, fish-like, with his nose. And he has to change it, arrange it, set it in motion. And he has to be prepared to face inspection at his nakedest. I wouldn’t say that the critic doesn’t. Before I go too far, in my present wild state, let me end with this: that the critic, say [Edmund] Wilson (you painted this art yourself), has choicer, richer, subtler characters at his disposal. It’s a great advantage and a safer game.

  There are other advantages. Most good writing in this century is of the cognitive type. Necessarily. Instead of a typical drama of man you have millions of disparate tendencies much easier to discuss than to represent or dramatize. But that’s a long geshikhte [14].

  I suppose I shall have to take my pannings mercifully.

  I’m terribly pleased, by the way, at your leaving Fortune. Not for you. You’re not a high-pressure boy. You belong in our camp.

  This has been on my conscience, too. I should have liked to speak frankly about certain matters on our last meeting in Rockefeller Center, but I couldn’t without playing hob with the private affairs of other people. Mine I wouldn’t have cared about, I’d have spilled. After it’s blown over I shan’t keep anything back.

  Let’s both write oftener.

  Yours,

  To Jean Stafford

  [n.d.] [Chicago]

  Dear Miss Stafford:

  You remember me, I think. Bellow, the man who never called you back because he was desperately busy elsewhere. My purpose in coming forward now is to tell you how very happy I am to find you a fine writer. I haven’t read the book, just the chapter in PR. It is heartening to read such writing. I reserve the right to criticize on some heads, but the writing, the writing I acknowledge with all my heart. I say it who should know by virtue of having slaved at it, if by no other.

  I’ve had no occasion to use Pepto-Bismol again, but I own a large bottle. It was all I had to remind me of you until the last PR arrived.

  Best wishes,

  Stafford’s formidable debut novel, Boston Adventure, had been excerpted in Partisan Review.

  To David Bazelon

  November 20, 1944 Chicago

  Dear David:

  I’m glad you decided to pick up the fallen correspondence, though how satisfactory you will find me as a correspondent is hard to say. I don’t write letters often. My correspondence with Isaac, for instance, has quite died, but that, perhaps, is owing to our bearishness. He in his cave and I in mine. I think, however, that we are not of the same species. I am a black not a grizzly, and in my mature years not characteristically unsocial.

  Oscar has told me about your troubles. Those are serious things and you might have guessed that I would not neglect this opportunity to tie them to politics. Fail with yourself and you fail everywhere. That lesson I have learned at such cost. You must win in yourself: with the psychiatrist’s help, with love’s help, with reason’s help, with the help of social action. But the revolutionary moment cannot help because it is no seat of sanity, there is no ethic in it to respect, it is baneful to reason because it is wholly deterministic. I could go on. This will make you mad. But I beg you to consider without giving in to anger what it can do for you as a mensch. For a writer it is poison.

  I am writing away, for better or worse. I tried to finish a novelette in time for the PR contest but I’ll never be through throwing out twenty-page chunks.

  I know you will write soon. I am braced and waiting.

  Best,

  1945

  To Samuel Freifeld

  [n.d.]

  Dear Sam:

  I was still in boot-camp when I heard of your father’s death. It was bitter news. I thought how you would receive it, alone in some dingy English city. I lay on my sack in the barracks and thought about it. I couldn’t write you. Any letter I wrote while at Sheepshead would not have lightened your burden. I simply took it for granted that you would know how I felt. We are so linked that neither of us ever faces a crisis without thinking of the other. I did at Sheepshead as you did at Blanding. Whenever some new horror rose I invariably told myself that you had faced the very same one and doubtless many far worse.

  I didn’t ship in the regular service. After three weeks on a foul training ship based at Baltimore I was transferred to administrative duty in Atlantic Headquarters. So I was stationed in New York until I secured a release last week.

  I’m going to Chicago, but not to stay. Will probably move East. My job with Britannica ends on January 1st. I’m going to make my way Rosenfeld-style, as a free lance.

  Love,

  In early spring, after a third deferment from the Army, Bellow had enlisted in the Merchant Marine and been posted to Atlantic headquarters at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Following the Japanese surrender in August, he had been released to inactive status.

  To James T. Farrell

  September 15, 1945 [Chicago]

  Dear Jim:

  I’m putting in for a Guggenheim (Jim Henle [Bellow’s editor at Vanguard Press, who had published Dangling Man the previous year] says my chances are better this time) and I’d appreciate it greatly if you would once more consent to sponsor me. I’m putting on one of my annual drives to get out of Chicago. It grows more like Siberia all the time. I come in, petition the Czar to free me from banishment, he refuses and I get into the Pacemaker with the other condemned and return. Seriously, Chicago oppresses me in a way only another Chicagoan can understand. It terrifies outsiders—[Edmund] Wilson, for instance, in his piece on Jane Addams in “Travels in Two Democracies”—but it haunts the natives.

  I don’t know what you thought of my first book. I hesitated to ask you to back my Guggenheim application if you thought I was a ham. I asked Jim Henle about it and he said you thought I was a good writer. I didn’t expect you to like Dangling Man but I would have been disturbed to learn that I was in your opinion a bum and ought to take up finger painting.

  Sincerely,

  1946

  To Edmund Wilson

  April 22, 1946 [Chicago]

  Dear Mr. Wilson:

  I want to thank you for supporting my Guggenheim application. I didn’t get a fellowship, as you perhaps know if you have seen the announcements. It occurs to me that one aspect or another of [my prospectus for] The Victim offended, antagonized or even frightened some of the people on the committee. In the nakedness of outline some of its ironies were disagreeable, I suspect. I’m inclined to think that they aroused someone’s dislike.

  But who can guess anything about the motives and ways of institutions? You woo them like Ixion and clasp a cloud.

  The Victim is nearly finished and is scheduled by Vanguard for spring, 1947. I like it better than my first book, myself. In spite of its theme it doesn’t—I think—have the tone of souffre-douleur. [15]

  I very much appreciate your having gone to the trouble of recommending me.

  Sincerely yours,

  To Henry Volkening

  February 4, 1946 Minneapolis

  Dear Henry:

  A man named George Auerbach who heads a group called the American Creative Theatre at 12 Minetta St. wrote this week to ask whether I wou
ld be interested in dramatizing The Victim. I asked Eric Bentley about Auerbach and he reported very favorably, not on Auerbach, whom he doesn’t know personally, but on the groups (the Actor’s Lab, Hollywood, etc.) with which he is connected. So I wrote Auerbach that I was interested. I made the whole thing rather noncommittal, however. Meanwhile it occurred to Bentley that since one theatre-man had found the book dramatically promising others might also and he suggested getting in touch with someone like Elia Kazan. Which I pass on to you. Did “Dora” arrive? The more I ponder its saleability, the less saleable it seems.

  Best,

  Henry Volkening (1902-72) was co-founder of Russell & Volkening, the leading literary agency of its time. Volkening would remain Bellow’s agent from 1944 until his death in 1972.

  To David Bazelon

  [n.d.] [Minneapolis]

  Dear Dave:

  You should have come. We were disappointed when you wrote that you couldn’t. Though we learn to do without a great number of friends, up in the prairies, still we don’t become ascetic on principle. I did want to see you. Besides, you could have inspected the town (both towns) and the university. It would have helped you in your decision.

  I agree that you could profit by a few years at school. Living on serious work is impossible now. Something has to be thrown to the wolves: to the New Leader or New Republic if not to the University. I teach two hours a day, or less. The rest of the time is mine—three weeks or so between quarters and all of the summer quarter. There are many irritants, of course, but they are not—[Seymour] Krim and Isaac to the contrary notwithstanding—crippling. I don’t think a writer could permanently stay at a university unless, like Warren, he was also a scholar or critic. Teaching often gravels me, but I’m confident that I can liberate myself from it in two or three years. Sooner, if The Victim goes as well as I expect it to. Moreover, in your case, you’ve had an invaluable immunization against universititis. [ . . . ]