Letters

by Saul Bellow

  Maybe you’ll get this letter.

  Love,

  Prince Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky was at Villa Serbelloni working on The Byzantine Commonwealth, his history of eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.

  To Margaret Staats

  September 23, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Dear Maggie—

  [ . . . ] I think I’d better go and see Louis [Sidran], don’t you? What terrible things keep happening. And from here you have no idea how inconceivable the world is. From the peaceful mountains it’s all like the plague, down below. [Meanwhile, up here,] only old scholars, old scholars’ wives, high cuisine, choice wines, tennis, a peaceful library, Renaissance paintings. Then there are strange events. Last evening after dinner, by the fire, old John Marshall, Harvard ’21, told me that I had meant a great deal to him. My books, and myself. Then he began to weep. He’s such a decorous Wasp I hardly knew how to interpret this. He simply said that I was one of the people he loved. And he wept. I wept myself, partly at the oddity of human relations. That there should be so much to jump over—so much apparent difference or distance. And then, in people who are not old, whose flesh isn’t dead, whose hearts aren’t dead, one could live a life of Harvard or Chicago (dateless horror, Chicago) until love reclaims one for reality. Well, it all happens. He’s a good man.

  Mosby came today. To my horror, as I read along p. 5, six lines up from the bottom, “And her and her cowboy . . .” What nitwit let that pass? It’s awful! In a house like Viking, and in a short book. I’ve written to Denver [Lindley] abt it. I was angry, felt nasty, but held it in.

  Tell me, how is the new job? I’m afraid you can’t answer that. I’ll be gone when the answer arrives.

  Love,

  Bellow’s childhood friend Louis Sidran was dying of cancer in Chicago.

  To Margaret Staats

  September 27, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Dear Maggie:

  Louie is dead. He went back to the hospital, and there he seemed to give out, his wife says, and he died. I guess he had struggled so long and so hard with the thing that he was used up. I telephoned Winnetka yesterday, and talked to Shirley. I’m very sad and heavy but not grief-sickened. I went about my business, crying some, and thinking now and then of the funeral, yesterday. He was in the ground and the family had gone home. It was his first night there. Shirley kept saying that he was so happy to have come to East Hampton before [he got too ill], and talked of nothing else. He had come to say goodbye to me, and knew it. He got my card from Bellagio and hoped I’d get back before too long. I must have expected to see him again. He died quickly and didn’t have to waste away utterly. I feel especially for his mother, who’s a fine old woman, and for Ezra [Shirley and Louie’s youngest child].

  I was glad to get the red leaf. Thank you, honey. And you’re right, it’s worth a thousand Timeses. I keep it with the shells. I think my long celibacy has restored my contemplative eye. I spend more time sitting looking at objects. Much less coming and going at random, helter-skelter but as if I had some purpose. I do a lot of looking at Lake Como.

  I am most troubled, when I am troubled, by Daniel. I haven’t seen him in nearly three months and I miss him desperately. I may go directly back to see him, and then come to New York some days later to see you. The news from Chicago is not reassuring. I want to see for myself how matters are, and I shan’t feel easy until I do. I’ll give you plenty of notice. I’ve missed you. When the fat envelopes of clippings come, I am disappointed when there is no letter, but the term has just begun so you must be over your eyebrows with work.

  My German publisher Witsch (wouldn’t you know it) has died. Without him the company is floundering and I’m going down to Milan tomorrow to meet Herr Rowohlt of Rowohlt Co. and hear what he has to say. Obolensky, my tennis chum the Prince, has gone back to Oxford. None too soon, probably. I thought the other day that I would keel over on the court. Singles are much too rough for me, especially since I’m a duffer and have to run far more than a real tennis player.

  Much love,

  Y.D.

  To Mark Harris

  October 22, 1968 Chicago

  Dear Mark:

  Your letter about Mosby set me up for a while in the midst of a disorderly season. I see, looking back at the vanished years, that I wrote few stories and that I seem to have used them as “scale models” for bigger jobs. For that reason I was a bit worried about Mosby; I wondered what big job it would lead to. Even now I’m not altogether clear as to what is happening. I don’t think it’s all bad, however. And I hoped that I was not being choppy, only lucid. But all we worshippers of lucidity must be terribly confused to begin with.

  The thing at S.F. State was very bad. I’m not too easy to offend, at my age, and I don’t think I was personally affronted—that’s not my style. The thing was offensive though. Being denounced by [Floyd] Salas as an old shit to an assembly which seemed to find the whole thing deliciously thrilling. [ . . . ] So I left the platform in defeat. Undefended by the bullied elders of the faculty. While your suck-up-to-the-young colleagues swallowed their joyful saliva. No, it was very poor stuff, I assure you. You don’t found universities in order to destroy culture. For that you want a Nazi party.

  Enough said. Thanks again and all best,

  At San Francisco State University, after delivering a talk entitled “What Are Writers Doing in the Universities?” Bellow had been denounced in the style of the day by boxer-turned-writer Floyd Salas: “You’re a fucking square. You’re full of shit. You’re an old man, Bellow.” (Bellow was fifty-two.) The episode would furnish material for a similar scene in Mr. Sammler’s Planet, his novel in progress.

  To Willie Greenberg

  December 7, 1968 Chicago

  Dear Willie,

  It was such a pleasure to see you after so many years. I always remembered you as a very kind boy (to me, at eight, you were a young man, really) and you confirmed the accuracy of my memory by generously giving me those photographs. I was touched by that. Enough to make a middle-aged gent cry.

  Thank you, Willie.

  Remember me to Molly and Harry. I hope we will meet again before the doors shut.

  Love,

  Willie Greenberg’s family had lived next door to Bellow’s in Montreal.

  To Margaret Staats

  December 9, 1968 [Chicago]

  Dearest Maggie—

  I am really down now, and I must work for an Armistice, a moratorium, some pause. I can’t go on like this. I am simply worn out, and I no longer feel natural towards you or anyone else.

  I love you, I always will. You are one of the best—probably the best woman I will ever know. I respect you, I wish you every good, but I am trying to save my own sanity just now—probably my very life. I feel it threatened. We must stop. I can’t go on without a breather.

  To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

  December 10, 1968 Chicago, Ill.

  CONFIDENTIAL REPORT ON CANDIDATE FOR FELLOWSHIP

  Name of Candidate: Louise Glück

  Miss Glück has the combination of oddity and verbal power from which something unusually good may result. I am impressed by her poems. She plays no games that I can recognize, she seems entirely independent. I think she should be freed from her stenographic duties.

  1969

  To Margaret Staats

  January 2, 1969 London

  Dearest Maggie—

  It’s all right here. I had night-depressions but really nothing dreadful and I seem to be pulling myself together. I hope you are, too. I was encouraged by your clearer eyes and calmer ways. You’ll make it. It’s not easy, but you have what it takes—reform, imagination, courage. The courage moves me more than I can say.

  To Margaret Staats

  [n.d.] [London]

  Dear M—

  Good times. I am by myself. From you I have acquired a need for the soul. People without it now are terribly trying. Can’t even make them out. There was only one way to learn that. It was very ch
ancey. I probably had no choice. So there it is. By now I am probably out on points.

  Be back soon—

  To Margaret Staats

  [Postmark illegible; postcard of King’s College, Cambridge]

  My dear Maggie—

  This is where I am. Some peace, here. A sign on the sundial says, Sic fugit vita. Meaning: “Here the sun seldom shines, but we are prepared.” Ed [Shils] asks about you.

  Love,

  To Toby Cole

  February 3, 1969 London

  Dear Toby

  If Eli [Wallach] wants to try [The Last] Analysis on NET, I have no objection. I’d be willing even to make myself available for consultation (on carefully measured terms).

  At 3:55 P.M. I’ll be in Paris, and tomorrow I have lunch with my translator, making several additions and corrections in and to the O[range] Soufflé. I’ll keep the notes. Until I finish my novel (half-done; perhaps, at this moment half-baked as well) I’ll write no dramas. I do however have in my head two fabulous movie scenarios—one for De Sica, one for Fellini. I’d prefer De Sica for both.

  I’ll arrive in NY perhaps together with this letter. I’ll telephone this time.

  Love,

  To Barley Alison

  February 18, 1969 [Chicago]

  My dear Barley,

  Greetings.

  Here’s Chicago, once again. The Lake, seen from this window, is frozen solid and so are a good many other things. Until I got to New York my tour was uneventful enough. Paris was as I thought it would be, largely a waste of time. I did see some old friends. But I did not enjoy my meeting with [Louis] Guilloux and probably I was not highly enjoyable to meet myself. Then on to the US. I was grounded by a blizzard in the East. Fifteen inches of snow. Landing at Idlewild. I telephoned my friend Arlette [Landes] in Chicago. She said she believed we should not see each other anymore. Evidently she couldn’t wait until I returned to say this. I assume that she has taken up with someone else. Women generally get the strength for these decisions from other relationships. I don’t know that relationship is the word for it either. Lord knows that sort of conduct. What kinds of events that poor noun has to subsume! At any rate, I haven’t seen my companion, from whom I was inseparable for a month. This is what intimacies seem made of. Of course I’m hurt. I would be. But it’ll wear off. It generally does.

  When I spoke to Pillet, he asked for a thousand dollars in rent. I don’t think I will want to pay so much. I’ve already made plans to take Adam to England on June 23rd. I thought I would, after two weeks, hand him over to his mother in Madrid and then go on to the South to visit you near Almería. If you can put up with me for a week or so from about July 8th or 9th. Adam’s mother will continue with him to Italy. I shall probably go back to the US to spend more of the summer with Daniel on or near Martha’s Vineyard.

  I seem now to be writing still another book. I was thrown from the first by Arlette and had lost the power to concentrate on what I was doing while we were together. Since I loathe and fear idleness I have opened a new project. I can complete this in about two months. It’s the métier that keeps me sane, bless it.

  Love,

  To Sylvia Tumin

  February 21, 1969 Chicago

  Dear Sylvia,

  I was in London and didn’t get your note in time to wire my congratulations. I know that Mel is sensible enough to be fifty. But I do keep remembering, with enjoyment, his frivolous salad days. Enjoy the following: I telephoned Kappy from London to say that I was coming to Paris to see him. He said that he was just leaving for Switzerland, to ski. I told him that I was flying over primarily to see him. Then he said, “I am desolated.” I enjoyed that tremendously. It was worth all the shillings I had dropped into the box.

  Blessings on you all.

  Love,

  To Whit Burnett

  April 30, 1969 Chicago

  Dear Mr. Burnett:

  [ . . . ] I wrote “Mosby’s Memoirs” on six successive mornings in the Mexican town of Oaxaca without the aid of tequila. I seemed to need no stimulants. I was in a state of all but intolerable excitement, or was, as the young now say, “turned on.” A young and charming friend [Maggie Staats] typed the manuscript for me. Reading it I found little to change. The words had come readily. I felt as they went into the story that I was striking them with a mallet. I seldom question what I have written in such a state. I simply feel gratitude and let it go at that.

  Sincerely,

  Whit Burnett (1899-1973), who as editor of Story had rejected Bellow’s early work, was including “Mosby’s Memoirs” in his anthology America’s 85 Greatest Living Authors Present (1970) and had inquired about the circumstances under which the story was composed.

  To Margaret Staats

  June 5, 1969 [Bellagio]

  Dear Maggie—

  Never before on the fifth of June have I seen snow falling. I see it now on the mountaintops, and it is frosty down here in the valley. Not two days has the sun shone in Europe. Have we killed the atmosphere with automobiles? I begin to think the planet is going to hell.

  I don’t sleep well, I am haggard, I miss you, I miss Daniel, I get no mail from the States, but I manage somehow to look after the main thing. In my chill chalet under the cypress trees. Drinking beer and waiting to creep out into the sun—when it shines again.

  It is beautiful here—if you have a nineteenth-century eye. Mine must be of the twenty-first.

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  June 8, 1969 [Bellagio]

  Dear Maggie-o—

  “Writing up a storm,” as you call it, thousands of words daily, and not stopping to type because I don’t sleep, and if I were to spend the P.M.s at the machine I’d wreck myself and lose the good mornings. What I may do is airmail Xerox copies of the mss. pages to you, just for safekeeping. I’m very cold on [Aaron] Asher. He wants to “hold his own” with me. Sometimes he seems to be pushing himself into the cockpit, but this is a solo flight.

  Now: We have a house in London. Three bedrooms not far from the center of things [ . . . ] Be good. Bless you. See you soon.

  Love,

  Upon Denver Lindley’s retirement from Viking, Aaron Asher had become Bellow’s editor.

  To Richard Stern

  August 1, 1969

  Dear Dick—

  So I’m in Nantucket, ever benevolent, watching pheasants cramming blackberries in the backyard. All is backyard from the window. Good to see American weeds again.

  I finished this Sammler off properly in Spain, on the Mediterranean coast, Carboneras, very good moon visibility. Maggie caused me grandes dificultades [82] in England and in the south but I finished just the same. I am obstinate. I make my own obstacles but jump ’em meself.

  I’m delighted to hear that you dare so much. It’s excellent—just great, too, that you’re rid of Candida [Donadio]. She is to Candor what bangs are to Bangor. She deserves to be whacked about the head by our dear Edward one long evening, that’s what she deserves, and may God fall asleep when she reads her apologia before His throne.

  [ . . . ]

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  August 4, 1969 [Nantucket]

  Dear Maggie—

  I’m troubled about your visit—it seems too soon. Europe has left me with still raw hurts, not likely to heal in a short time. I don’t want them reopened, nor do I want you to be hurt again, and my heart tells me to let things ride, to recover first and not to force anything. For the sake of continuing friendship, we ought to keep away from each other.

  Love,

  To Harvey Swados

  August 30, 1969 Nantucket

  Dear Harvey:

  The novel I have as you say “committed” has kept me busy, and galleys, etc. will continue to keep me busy until October. If it’s only advice, mine would be no better than other people’s and probably inferior to Candida’s. But if you want me to read your book, I can do that in October. I’ll be back in Chicago as the nights lengthen. If th
at does you any good, I am your obedient servant.

  As I read your letter I see that we don’t share very many basic assumptions. No other two college Trotskyites can have gotten so very far apart. I doubt that I have more use for Nixon and Johnson than you have. My going to the White House [in June 1965] was nonsense, probably. It pleased no one, myself least of all. I wouldn’t have gone at all if I had been obliged by my own obstinacy to mark my disagreement with all parties. First I made my views on Vietnam and Santo Domingo as clear as possible in the Times, and then declared that I would go to show my respect for the President’s office—the office of Lincoln. I know about Harding, too, and Chester A. Arthur, but I am not at all prepared to secede. I am not a revolutionary. I have little respect for American revolutionaries as I know them, and I have known them quite well. I don’t like the Susan Sontag bit about a doomed America. I had my fill of the funnyhouse in Coney Island.

  A reliable source tells me that Johnson’s view of the White House culture gala was as follows: “They insult me by comin’, they insult me by stayin’ away.” Could Dwight Macdonald have been more succinct? In fact they have a lot in common.

  My best to Bette.

  Yrs,

  To Philip Roth

  December 12, 1969 Chicago

  Dear Philip:

  Your note did me a lot of good, though I haven’t known what or how to answer. Of course the so-called fabricators will be grinding their knives. They have none of that ingenuous, possibly childish love of literature you and I have. They take a sort of Roman engineering view of things: grind everything in rubble and build cultural monuments on this foundation from which to fly the Bullshit flag.

  Anyway, it pleases me greatly that you liked Sammler. There aren’t many people in the trade for whom I have any use. But I knew when I hit Chicago (was it twelve years ago?) and read your stories that you were the real thing. When I was a little kid, there were still blacksmiths around, and I’ve never forgotten the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil.