Letters

by Saul Bellow

  You ought to look up Red Warren. He’s an awfully good guy. [ . . . ]

  Don’t stop writing.

  Yrs,

  James Farl Powers (1917-1999), regarded by Bellow as one of the most gifted American writers, was the author of Prince of Darkness and Other Stories (1947). In 1962 he would win a National Book Award for his novel Morte d’Urban.

  To Henry Volkening

  [n.d.] Freiburger Hof, Freiburg

  Dear Henry:

  Please forgive me for having made you such a poor return for your fine letters. I haven’t been too busy to write, and I have had plenty of time for it. I have two very long, unfinished letters to you stuffed in among my junk. The reason I didn’t send them was that I couldn’t finish them—they would have each been ten million words long [ . . . ]. Your last letter came with a batch of mail from Paris last night; it contained the news of the New York Times item, etc. The only way I’ll ever be able to tell you about these last four months, Henry, is to talk to (not with) you—and I long to do this, although I do not know how long it will be before I have that happiness. You must prepare yourself for the ordeal in whatever far-off future: clasp a bottle of your bootlegger’s finest brew in your right hand and endure until the tidal wave shall have spent its force.

  I am at length in the Black Forest. I arrived here a few days ago by a kind of intuition—the inside of me was like a Black Forest and I think the name kept having its unconscious effect on me. It is a very beautiful place—a landscape of rich dark melancholy, a place with a Gothic soul, and I am glad that I have come here. These people with all that is bestial, savage, super-natural, and also all that is rich, profound, kindly and simple, move me more deeply than I can tell you: France at the present time has completely ceased to give me anything. That is no doubt my fault, but their books, their art, their cities, their people, their conversation—nothing but their food at the present time means anything to me. The Americans in Paris would probably sneer at this—I mean these Americans who know all about it and are perfectly sure what French literature and French civilization stand for, although they read no French books, speak little of the language, and are never alone with French people.

  I cannot tell you much at the present about these last four months. I will tell you that I have had some of the worst moments of my life during them, and also some of the best. All told, it has been a pretty hard time, but I am going to be all right now. I don’t know if you have ever stayed by yourself for so long a time (few people have and I do not recommend it) but if you are at all a thoughtful person, you are bound to come out of it with some of your basic ore—you’ll sweat it out of your brain and heart and spirit. The thing I have done is one of the cruelest forms of surgery in the world, but I knew that for me it was right. I can give you some idea of the way I have cut myself off from people I knew when I tell you that only once in the past six weeks have I seen anyone I knew—that was Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald the master of the human heart and I came upon him unavoidably in Geneva, a week or two ago. I can tell you briefly what my movements have been: I went to Paris from New York and, outside of a short trip to Rouen and a few places near Paris, stayed there for almost two months. I think this was the worst time of all. I was in a kind of stupor and unfit to see anyone, but I ran into people I knew from time to time and went to dinner or the theatre with them. My publisher came over from England and was very kind. He is a very fine fellow—he took me out and I met some of the celebrities—Mr. Michael Arlen, and some of the Left Bank People. This lasted little over a day, I was no good with people, and I did not go back to see them. I began to work out of desperation in that noisy, sultry, uncomfortable city of Paris and I got a good deal done. Finally I got out of it and went to Switzerland. I found a very quiet comfortable hotel in Montreux—I had a good room with a balcony overlooking the lake—and in the weeks that followed I got a great deal accomplished. I knew no one there at all—the place was filled with itinerant English and American spinsters buying post cards of the Lake of Geneva—but one night I ran into the aforesaid Mr. Fitzgerald, your old-time college pal and fellow Princetonian. I had written Mr. F. a note in Paris—because Perkins is very fond of him and told me for all his faults he’s a fine fellow—and Mr. F. had had me to his sumptuous ap’t. near the Bois for lunch and three or four gallons of wine, cognac, whiskey, etc. I finally departed from his company at ten that night in the Ritz Bar where he was entirely surrounded by Princeton boys, all nineteen years old, all drunk, and all half-raw. He was carrying on a spirited conversation with them about why Joe Zinzendorff did not get taken into the Triple-Gazzaza Club. I heard one of the lads say, “Joe’s a good boy, Scotty, but you know he’s a fellow that ain’t got much background.” [ . . . ]

  I had not seen Mr. F. since that evening until I ran into him at the Casino at Montreux. That was the beginning of the end of my stay at that beautiful spot. I must explain to you that Mr. F. had discovered the day I saw him in Paris that I knew a very notorious young lady, now resident in Paris getting her second divorce, and by her first marriage connected to one of those famous American families who cheated drunken Indians out of their furs seventy yrs. ago and are thus at the top of the estab. aristocracy now. Mr. F. immediately broke a sweat on finding I knew the lady and damned near broke his neck getting around there. He insisted that I come (“Every writer,” this gr’t philosopher said, “is a social climber”) and when I told him very positively I would not go to see the lady, this poet of the passions at once began to see all the elements of a romance—the cruel and dissolute society beauty playing with the tortured heart of the sensitive young writer, etc. He eagerly demanded my reasons for staying away. I told him the lady had cabled to America for my address, had written me a half dozen notes and sent her servants to my hotel when I first came to Paris, and that having been told of her kind heart I gratefully accepted her hospitality, went to her apt. for lunch, returned once or twice, and found that I was being paraded before a crowd of worthless people, palmed off as someone who was madly in love with her, and exhibited with a young French soda jerker with greased hair who was on her payroll and, she boasted to me, slept with her every night (“I like his bod-dy,” she hoarsely whispered, “I must have some bod-dy whose bod-dy I like to sleep with,” etc.). The end finally came when she began to call me at my hotel in the morning saying she’d had four pipes of opium the night before and was “all shot to pieces” and what in God’s name would she do, she had not seen Raymond or Roland or Louis or whatever his name was for four hrs., he had disappeared, she was sure something had happened to him, that I must do something at once, that I was such a comfort she was coming to the hotel at once, I must hold her hand, etc. It was too much. I didn’t care whether Louis had been absent three or thirty hrs. or whether she had smoked four or forty pipes, since nothing ever happens to these people anyhow—they make a show of recklessness, but they take excellent care that they don’t get hurt in the end—and for a man trying very hard to save his own life I did not think it wise to try to live for these other people and let them feed upon me.

  So I told Mr. F. the great analyst of the soul to tell the woman nothing about me, to give no information at all about me or what I was doing or where I was. I told him this in Paris; I told him again in Switzerland and on both occasions the man got shut of her as fast as he could—that ended Montreux for me. She immediately sent all the information back to America. Heartrending letters, cables, etc. with threats of coming to find me, going mad, dying. Then began to come directly to my hotel. I wanted to batter the walls down—the hotel people, who had been very kind to me, charged me three francs extra because I had brought a bottle of wine from outside into the hotel (they have a right in Switzerland to do this) but I took my rage out on them, told them I was leaving the next day, went on a spree, broke windows, plumbing fixtures, etc. in the town, and came back to the hotel at 2:00 AM, pounded on the door of the director and on the doors of two English spinsters, rushed howling with laughter up and d
own the halls, cursing and singing—and in short had to leave.

  I went to Geneva where I stayed a week or so. Meanwhile my book came out in England—I wrote beforehand and asked the publisher not to send reviews because I was working on the new one and did not want to be bothered. He wrote back a very jubilant letter and said the book was a big success and said, “Read these reviews—you have nothing to be afraid of.” I read them, they were very fine, I got in a state of great excitement. He sent me great batches of reviews then—most of them very good ones, some bad. I foolishly read them and got in a very excited condition about a book I should have left behind me months ago. On top of this, and the cables and the letters from New York, I got in Geneva two very bad reviews—cruel, unfair, bitterly personal. I was fed up with everything. I wrote Perkins a brief note telling him goodbye, please send my money, I would never write again, etc. I wrote the English publisher another, I cut off all mail by telegraph to Paris, I packed up, rushed to the aviation field and took the first airplane to Lyons.

  It was my first flight, it was magnificent, there is nothing like flying to ease a distressed spirit. The beautiful little farms of the Rhone valley appeared below me, I saw a little dot shoveling manure in a field and recognized a critic, I got to Lyons, ate some good food (there are good restaurants there) and immediately got to work again. A week later I flew to Marseilles. Then I went up to Arles in Provence (God it was hot) then back to Marseilles. Then I flew back over the southern Alps to Geneva where I had left most of my baggage.

  It was a grand trip, lasted three weeks and did me an infinite amount of good. All the time I scrawled, wrote, scribbled. I have written a great deal—my book is one immense long book made up of four average-sized ones, each complete in itself, but each part of the whole. I stayed in Geneva one day and of course Mr. F. was on the job, although he had been at Vevey and then at Caux—his wife he says has been very near madness in a sanatorium at Geneva, but is now getting better. (It turned out that she was a good half hour by fast train from Geneva. When I told him I was leaving Geneva and coming to the Black Forest he immediately decided to return to Caux. I was with him the night before I left Geneva, he got very drunk and bitter, he wanted me to go and stay with his friends Dorothy Parker and some people named Murphy in Switzerland nearby. When I made no answer to this invitation he was quite annoyed, said that I got away from people because I was afraid of them, etc. (which is quite true, and which I think, in view of my experiences with Mr. F. et al., shows damned good sense). I wonder how long Mr. F. could last by himself, with no more Ritz Bar, no more Princeton boys, no more Mrs. F. At any rate I came to Basel and F. rode part way with me on his way back to Caux. A final word about him: I am sorry I ever met him, he has caused me trouble and cost me time; but he has good stuff in him yet. His conduct to me was mixed with malice and generosity—he read my book and was very fine about it; then his bitterness began to qualify him. He is sterile and impotent and alcoholic now, and unable to finish his book, and I think he wanted to injure my own work—this is base but the man has been up against it, he really loves his wife and I suppose helped get her into this terrible fix. I hold nothing against him now. Of course he can’t hurt me in the end, but I trusted him and I think he played a shabby trick by telling lies on me.

  At any rate, I got over my dumps very quickly, sweated it out in Provence, and here I am, trying to finish up one section of the book before I leave here. I may get to England where Reeves my publisher assures me I can be quiet and work in peace. I like him intensely and there are also two or three other people there I can talk to. I have never been so full of writing in my life—if I can do the thing, I want to believe it will be good.

  I found a great batch of letters and telegrams when I got back from exile. Reeves was very upset by my letter, and was wiring everywhere—he sent me a wonderful letter, he said the book had had a magnificent reception and not to be a damned fool about a few reviews. And Perkins wrote me two wonderful letters—he is a grand man, and I believe in him with all my heart. All the others at Scribner’s have written me, and I am ashamed of my foolish letters and have resolved not to let them down.

  I know it’s going to be all right now. I believe I’m out of the woods at last. Nobody is going to die on account of me, nobody is going to suffer any more than I have suffered—the force of these dire threats gets a little weaker after a while, and I know now, no matter what anyone may ever say, that in one situation I have acted fairly and kept my head up. I am a little bitter at rich people at present, I am a little bitter at people who live in comfort and luxury surrounded by friends and amusement, and yet are not willing to give an even chance to a young man living alone in a foreign country and trying to get work done. I did all that was asked of me, I came away here when I did not want to come, I have fought it out alone, and now I am done with it. I do not think it will be possible for me to live in New York for a year or two, and when I come back I may go elsewhere to live. As for the incredible passion that possessed me when I was twenty-five years old and that brought me to madness and, I think, almost to destruction—that is over, that fire can never be kindled again.

  A pure fantasy, of course. Fitzgerald had been dead for nearly a decade.

  1949

  To David Bazelon

  [n.d.] [Paris]

  Dear Dave:

  Without a prod I had sent you, I swear, a note before your letter came. It’s true that I hadn’t written to anyone. Last summer, there were so many knives drawn round me that it’s taken several months to get the dazzle of them out of my eyes. I’ve been silent to knifers and non-knifers alike. The only exception was for Isaac; to an old friend—it’s nearly twenty years that we’ve known each other—one goes on writing. Seven times seven. Apparently I’ll never get it through my stupid head that it’s no use.

  The man to address at Minn.—if you really mean to go there—is Samuel Monk, Falwell Hall, the new head of the Dep’t., replacing Beach, and a very decent, generous and intelligent guy. Say that you’re writing at my suggestion, explain what you’ve been doing the last five years and why you think you’d be happy in a university. The less bull the better. How? That’s your tsores [23]. Myself, I recently mailed in my resignation. I will probably—it’s not settled—stay in Europe another year.

  So Oscar has a car! I’ll be damned! Everybody is becoming so serious.

  Paris is savage. Wonderfully beautiful but savage in an unexpected quarter; in its calculating heart. The secret of the whole affair—it’s revealed in Balzac, but no one seems to read him seriously—is a certain grotesque arithmetic. The wit of the city is a branch of addition and subtraction. Every American boy brought up in a good bourgeois atmosphere breathes the air of home in Paris. And in addition, it is Paris. Terribly important. It is now blameless to be a bourgeois. So what can be more delightful for an American? No, I must confess that’s excessively hard on Americans. It’s often said that Americans are less materialistic than Europeans. My feeling is that Americans are attached in principle to things. They seem to own them for symbolic reasons. With the French, on the other hand, there is no metaphysical universe about it—it’s the things they want, the more hereditary the lovelier for snobbish rather than sentimental or innate reasons. And that is a kind of symbolism, I admit, but it’s limited. More briefly, and with all that it spiritually implies, the Frenchman is always turned homeward, to his cozy, shutter-drawn nest, and the American is always running away from home. But each home, after its kind, is perfect. Italy’s a much healthier country than either, relatively free of budget-fever, pride and American chase.

  I’ve done some work, but I haven’t been killing myself. It takes time, you know, to accustom oneself to, etc. I have a mild case of copper-curse. Isaac and Trilling warned me against it. Neither did a lick of work last year. [ . . . ]

  Love,

  To Henry Volkening

  January 2, 1949 Paris

  Dear Henry:

  The letter from Mrs. [Katharine]
White is very gratifying to an old ego-maniac like me. Also to an old mold-shatterer. Sooner or later people are bound to reach an adult state with respect to writing and permit the common use of words already in most common use in family magazines. And it’s salutary now and then to admit that one does not print the things one thinks well of, freely and always. Mais passons [24].

  Rahv always pays when the piece is set up, at the rate of two-and-one-half-cents-a-word. That, as an old stoic of my tribe says, is better than nothing. To which you will reply, but still not much. However, I am very pleased and thankful to you for sending “Dr. Pep” out. I will write to Phil in a day or so—you must forgive his laconic manner; that, from him, was high praise; usually he says, “I have accepted yr. piece for near pub.”—and ask him to send the proofs to me and the check to you. I may even begin to bargain for a special rate. After all, I hear he gives one to Gide.

  We’ve had a very pleasant holiday on the Riviera, at Nice and San Remo, and I am beginning to think of getting back to the mill and pile together my grist for a novel. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to putter with stories. The mss. of one on which I had counted has disappeared and I may try to do it again from memory.

  Happy New Year to you and your family and to Mr. Russell.

  Best,

  Maybe you ought to try “Mr. Green” in the Kenyon or PR?

  Katharine Sergeant Angell White (1892-1972), a founder of The New Yorker in 1925, was for many years its chief fiction editor.

  To Henry Volkening

  January 5, 1949 Paris

  Dear Henry,