by Saul Bellow
[ . . . ] So far my fishing has been rewarded by only one nibble, from Harvard. I believe I could get a job there, but I’d have to teach English for one thing and live in Cambridge for another. Is it not better to stay in Paris, you ask? Well, perhaps it is; for some, for most, perhaps, it would be a fatuous question to put to oneself. Monroe Engel wants to know what the devil I want to return for. Well, the fact is that foreign residence becomes rather emptying after a while. You do your work and see your few friends, read French books, admire the Seine and the Tuileries, get to know hidden squares and unavailable (to the Many) restaurants and bistros. Presently you find yourself with fewer human contacts than you had in Minnesota. Next, “What human contacts will there be in Cambridge?” God spare us! Cambridge!! So, I’m stalling Cambridge for a while. Till I’ve felt around a little more, anyway. Do you think I could get the thin end of myself in Queens where they’re starting a “creative writing” program? There’s a man called—I think—Robertson who runs the English Dept. NYU is out, I guess—my friend Rosenfeld teaches there and I don’t want to horn in on him; he’s got troubles enough. Maybe I ought to start a nightclub, or become a press agent.
Do you ever see Alfred Kazin? He may have some ideas, he always does. And then, of course, I do have about ten untried stories in my kit, and parts of Augie and the novel I put by are quite publishable. What I need is time. And a pied-à-terre, which is where Mr. [Harold] Guinzburg [owner of The Viking Press] comes in. But for the time being I think it best to stall, stall everyone except Augie.
I’m sending about six chapters of the latter in to Mr. Moe at the Guggenheim Foundation, and I’ll ask him to send them on to you and Monroe Engel. They’re first-draft, but very full, and I think will enable you to answer my previous questions about one installment or two for Viking.
I don’t think Moe likes me well enough to come across with a second fellowship. Here, again, Alfred would know, and if you have an opportunity soon I’d take it very kindly if you’d ask him.
All the very best voeux for the New Year,
To Oscar, Edith, Miriam, and Nathan Tarcov
[Postmark illegible; postcard of Michelangelo’s Pietà]
Dearest Oscar, Edith, Miriam, Nathan—and may the list grow even longer:
I’m convinced from my experience that Rome is exactly what everyone in Chicago needs. Italy, anyhow, since Rome would overflow. One year’s fellowship for every Chicagoan would bring a bloodless and happy revolution. As it is, I’m a lone beneficiary. Anita is in Paris.
Love,
To Samuel Freifeld
[Postmark illegible; postcard of Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome]
Dear Sam’l—
The temple on the right was once the temple of the Vestals. Near the Tiber, a few yards away, was the Greek district in the days of Augustus. I’m telling you this because Rome reminded me that you were a historian. As for me, I’m no longer a professor, whatever else I may be, having resigned from Minn. Chances are I won’t come back to the U.S. in a hurry. Not because I don’t miss you, but a year’s exposure is incomplete.
Love to Rochelle and Judy,
To David Bazelon
January 25, 1949 [Rome]
Dear Dave:
Ecco Roma! I don’t think one should settle in the Village without first making the Grand Tour for perspective. For example, Eddie’s Aurora of W. 4th St. makes better spaghetti than any restaurant I’ve tried in Italy. Also, the San Remo is socially more stimulating than the original S.R.—and so on. I’ll be properly grateful when I come back.
Here is magnificent Rome—a much more kindly, open, accessible and humane place than Paris. I can’t however really say I’m homesick. Particularly not for Minneapolis. What I do miss is friendly intimacy. Imagine what it would be like in N.Y. with ten words of English and very few acquaintances. I’m here alone; Anita is in Paris. So what I get is a species of lonely-mute’s view of the great city. A condition not without its interest. And you? Qu’est-ce que tu fais? Tout est bon? [25]
Love,
You should see [Lionel] Abel in Paris!! C’est assez cocasse [26].
Dress coat, monocle. Works the restaurants.
Lionel Abel (1911-2001) was a playwright, critic and member of the Partisan Review circle who published numerous books including a memoir, The Intellectual Follies (1984).
To Henry Volkening
February 27, 1949 Paris
Dear Henry:
I wrote to you about a month ago and you haven’t answered so I reckon the letter must be lost. That occasionally happens. I haven’t heard from Rahv either; I imagine he must be licking some of the wounds from that unjust story of Mary McCarthy’s that won Mr. Connolly’s Horizon prize. [ . . . ] I read the story last night; there’ll be an awful wailing in the Village when it gets to the States; it’s an utterly cold wind of a story. I think that Mary McCarthy, amazingly enough, doesn’t know how cold.
I’ve rented a room on Rue des Saints-Pères—Hôtel de l’Académie—and am scribbling away at a book. I don’t know how good it is—will be—but it’s a book, and it’s my vocation to write books and I follow it with the restlessness of true egomania. I’m preparing the full outline of another, one that I have confidence in but don’t feel quite prepared to begin, since it has to do with Americans abroad. So I’m occupied for the time being with the aforementioned. It will be not of the best but, in these dreadful times of low standards, good enough. I hope.
The communications of Guy Henle apropos of the Italian translation are terser and terser. If it pleases God, I’ve seen the last. As for Smith College, I’ve said neither yes nor no and I’m waiting to see what’s offered. [ . . . ]
All the best,
Mary McCarthy’s brief novel The Oasis, in which Philip Rahv and others are satirized, had been published in Horizon.
To Henry Volkening
[n.d.] [Paris]
Dear Henry:
No, I have no sardonic comments for Mr. [John Crowe] Ransom for whom my fiery spirit usually makes an allowance of respect. I don’t expect him to stop being an editor for my sake and I think he behaves far more honorably than Rahv, that Commissar of Grumps, since I’ve never heard him represent himself as a snorting radical straight in the line of Prometheus, whereas Mr. Rahv is supposed to handle the Promethean fire as though it were no hotter than liniment, and is a charter-rebel from way back. I’m sending to ask why he didn’t tell me his reasons for rejecting the story. He’s owed me a letter for about two months and I think I now see why. He’ll say, of course, that it is a good story. (He’s printed only good stories these many, many years and mine falls below the niveau général [27].) But I’m going to make things as hard as possible for him because he’s too long believed that the avant-garde (what a damning idea avant-garde is anyhow) has made its home with him. Like an aunt who once knew Lenin. When a story comes that tears out the nice old borders of sleepy sweet-williams the aunt snaps that of course she wants something wilder, tiger lilies, lilies of Mr. Joyce’s breed, such as you see in the conservatory, and prefers the real thing in sweet-williams to impostures in tigers.
I’m telling him also that I observed with dissatisfaction in somebody else’s PR—my sub. has been cut off—that “Dr. Pep” is announced as a story. “Dr. Pep” is not a story. It’s something else, sui generis; I don’t know what.
Since I want to see “Mr. Green” published and would like to see it published in Kenyon Review, I’d consent to have dashes in place of that terrible word in most common use all over the English speaking world and the great coagulate verb-noun-adjective of school, bar, factory and army which dominates most conversations.Even Truman allows his use of “son of abitch” to be quoted. What circumspect dogs we are, compared to the chief executive. He knows times have changed. So since my ambition to be President is fruitless anyhow, because I’m Canadian-born, let there be dashes. And then, if Ransom doesn’t want it, I think you might give over torturing editors with their limitations and s
end “Mr. Green” to the showers. I’d like if possible to have Lionel Trilling see it, with the note attached that I’d hoped he’d be able to read it in PR.
I hope by summer to be done with a mss. of about two hundred pages which Viking might be willing to bring out, not as the contract novel, which I’ll begin as soon as this first thing is out of the way. Again, in this present book, the subject is not cheery but the matter, page to page, is very comic and perhaps Kenyon would like the first chapter of thirty pages since it is—je le dis moi-même [28]—rather funny. The subsequent book will be, according to my lights (and you may think them dark lights), altogether a comedy. [ . . . ]
Please remember me to Mr. Russell and Mrs. Volkening.
Best,
To J. F. Powers
March 30, 1949 Paris
Dear Jim:
About two months ago I came back from the magnificence of Rome to the impressiveness of Paris, felt myself all over, found I was just about the same, except perhaps a little more spoiled and lazy, and have been on a strict regime ever since, writing daily. I’m about half done with a book; the subject’s a gloomy one but the book is funny, a combination I can trust you to understand. The title I’ve chosen for it is The Crab and the Butterfly, which I think does the tendency justice, and if I don’t go anywhere—it isn’t likely; the slack has just about been run out of Mr. Guggenheim’s bounty—I ought to be done with it in the summer. A bad time, as everyone knows, to finish a book. A book ought to be finished in the spring. [ . . . ]
I read Mr. Waugh’s review of your book [Prince of Darkness and Other Stories], and seeing a statement he made to Time (which runs after him with basins) I was able to understand it. He told the interviewer that his favorite American writer was Earl Biggers, or something like that. What I most disliked in his review was his failure to make it implicit (I didn’t expect him to put it in so many words) that you were a better writer than he. As for [John] Lehmann, he’s the best of publishers but he is a publisher and is bound to give the wrong reason; and what sort of review is it that starts out with the publisher’s claims? I loathe that. I loathe snobs and Waugh is one of the worst sort. I’ve met a good number of snobs here; the best of them redeem themselves with profligacy. It shows they have a rather generous, helpless side. But snobbery and piousness? I have an Old Testament eye for abominations, a little reddened by this one.
[ . . . ]
You ought to do the piece for Partisan. Partisan has been kind of lean since it became a monthly. That’s partly Partisan’s fault. I’m sure that PR, Kenyon and some of the branch publications of the Journal of Philology like the Hudson or Sewanee turn down enough good material every month to make one fine number. But it is partly our fault, too. There ought to be more doing, more kinds of things written. A little guild life. [Leslie] Fiedler has the right idea, don’t you think so? He does all kinds of writing. Well, perhaps it’s because he’s in Montana. Substitute for social life. [ . . . ]
Let’s hear from you,
To David Bazelon
April 10, 1949 Paris
Dear Dave:
Yah, I’ll write to Huntington Brown [of the Minnesota English Department] for you. I hope it does good, for Huntington and I had difficult times with each other. He’s the archetype of the learned idiot. He’s a Harvard Ph.D., conservative to the flap of his long underwear, collects pornographic poetry, has a pistol range in his basement, knows how to mend a dog sled in driving snow and is an Admiral Peary manqué, is president of the burial society of Minneapolis, and takes vitamin B1 all summer long on the belief that mosquitoes will not bite a man whose perspiration is saturated with it. And that’s not all. But the man I’m going to send the hottest plug to is Sam’l Monk himself, a very sweet and intelligent guy who is head of the department and one of the dozen or so people in Minneapolis that I miss. [ . . . ]
Of course, one sees a number of collapsed Americans here, but their inflation could not have been very high at home. There’s Jimmy Baldwin, for instance, who seems to be down and out and is sponging mercilessly. He hasn’t applied his sponge to me yet. He doesn’t do a great deal. Whenever I pass the Flore and the Deux Magots he’s in company, drinking beer. Then there’s [Milton] Klonsky, who is verschwunden, spurlos, versenkt [29]. He hated Paris, like every good American—that’s practically the litmus test; said he was driving off to Nice with some creep. He may be in Nice, he may be in Italy. Who knows? He was very low in spirits. I was a little low myself when he arrived, but in the Empyrean by comparison; hence no company for him. Besides, I was working. Do I say “besides”? That was the ray that blights, for Milton. Anyway, he’s gone and I haven’t heard from him. As for [Lionel] Abel, he’s in the Vaterland and thinks of Eighth St. as the verfluchte Kameroons. [30] [ . . . ]
What news? What are you really going to do next year? How is my friend Rosenfeld? Since starting with the [Wilhelm] Reich he has nothing to say to me. Coldness of the happy cured to their sinful and sickly old friends.
Love,
Milton Klonsky (1921-1981) was an essayist, historian and William Blake scholar best known for The Fabulous Ego (1974).
To Henry Volkening
April 13, 1949 Paris
Dear Henry:
I’ve just about touched the halfway mark in this book (called The Crab and the Butterfly, tentatively). It’s writing itself very quickly and it’s certainly full of astonishing things—I mean things that astonish me. I’m hunting for point of view with a long gun and shoot at anything that moves, especially Henry James. The first draft ought to be finished in June, the final one early in the fall. I won’t have done so badly, then, my first year out of the professoriate. The six months it took me to get started perhaps make me step all the livelier.
Smith College was a bubble. It’s just as well because Anita has got a very fine job as medical social worker with an American agency for DPs and there’s no special hurry about my becoming employed. With a book to show, I can apply in 1950 for a Guggenheim renewal; my chances will be better. Jim Powers was turned down on his application for a second ride. Too many meritorious applications. But if he had had a large amount of work to show I think Moe wouldn’t have refused him. Poor Jim is au pied du mur [31] with two kids to support.
Monroe Engel sent me a huffy-sounding note saying that he was going to Florence and I could conduct future business with Covici. Did he mean that I could go to hell? I’m sorry I haven’t written more to him but if he thinks I’m going to tell him over my shoulder every so often what I’m going to do in the next chapter, he’s crazy.
Comment ça va? How is beautiful South Bend?
Best,
Monroe Engel (born 1921) was Bellow’s editor at Viking, with which he’ d signed after breaking ties with James Henle at Vanguard.
To Henry Volkening
[n.d.] [Paris]
Dear Henry:
Note the new address. Another. We had to leave Marbeuf about a week ago; the old auto-racer and his wife came back from the Côte d’Azur and we had to go into a small hotel. Now we have the Rue de V [erneuil] until the first of October when we will have to find other landlords who want their long holiday in the Riviera paid for. The people from the Rue de V. are going to Biarritz for the season. But sufficient unto the day. Meanwhile the two concierges have done their best to lose our mail for us. I know of three letters that have been sent back to the States, and one of them may have been yours. If one was, I hope no good news of the sort that can’t wait was in it.
The first writing of The Crab should end in June, as I predicted. It has been a little slow these last two weeks for various reasons, one of them being that I have been unable to hold back from The Life of Augie March, a very good thing indeed. I’ve done a considerable piece of it, a piece good enough to be published as it is. I’m very enthusiastic about it, and though I will finish The Crab because I hate to have unfinished novels on the table, it might not be a wrong plan to publish Augie first. It will be quite long, but worth the delay. In a
ny case, I’ll be returning with two books, ce qui me plaît beaucoup [32].
I did a short piece for my friend Lionel Abel who has (had, rather) a little periodical called Instead. Do you recall? Well, Instead has had its back broken by the times and I sent the thing to John Lehmann who had been asking me for something. Lehmann’s going to print it in New Writing #35. What he aims to do about the money—it will be insignificant—I know not. If he sends it to me, I’ll tell you the amount. But since he knows you represent me, he’ll probably know what to do.
As for the Viking installments, I have a feeling that I ought to take them while the taking’s good. True, Anita has a job now, but living in Paris abolishes every cent of it and we’ll be coming back to New York pauperized as well as homeless. [ . . . ] What do you think? Shouldn’t we ask Viking to turn on the cornucopia? [ . . . ]
We hear nothing but bad news from the States. You’d be doing me a great favor by sending some good.
All the best,
Nothing from Ransom? If he still wants “Mr. Green,” I’d like to re-write the last three pages before he sets it up.
To Henry Volkening
June 10, 1949 Paris
Dear Henry:
The explanation of the John Lehmann mix-up is as follows: I wrote you last winter that my friend Lionel Abel had asked me for a piece; he was editing a magazine called Instead, and his pay was all that was supporting him in Paris. Since he’s a good sort of guy and the cause worthy, I re-wrote a speech, something on the order of “Dr. Pep” and gave it to him. Then I sent a copy of same to Lehmann, who accepted it. But Instead, by a caprice of the lady who was paying for its publication, folded and Lionel is now out of a job and the last state is worse than the first. So “The Thoughts of Sgt. George Flavin,” as this thing is called, won’t be published in America. Unless Phil Rahv, who liked “Dr. Pep” à outrance [33], doesn’t mind publishing it from New Writing #38. I don’t think—the old song—any other magazine would care for something not-a-story, not-an-essay or anything recognizable.