Letters

by Saul Bellow

  To Marcello Mastroianni

  February 16, 1977 Chicago

  Dear Mr. Mastroianni,

  First of all, let me say that as one of your great admirers I’m delighted to have your letter. The film rights to Humboldt’s Gift have not been sold. I am sending your inquiry to my representative in New York who will, I am sure, reply promptly.

  It is really very good of you to say so many obliging things. It pleases me to think that we could go on saying obliging things to each other for some time.

  With perfect sincerity,

  Yours very truly,

  To Jacques Barzun

  March 21, 1977 Chicago

  Dear Mr. Barzun:

  I’m deeply grateful to you and to the members of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for this distinguished award. It is a great honor, and my distress at being unable to receive it in person is also great. I am leaving the States soon and on May 18th I will be somewhere in the Middle East. May I ask my publisher to receive the award for me? I shall provide him with a few words to say. Of course I will be glad to send some pages for the manuscript exhibition. You may be sure that I will keep the news under my hat.

  Yours with equal parts delight and disappointment,

  Sincerely yours,

  Barzun had written to inform Bellow that he’d won the Gold Medal for Fiction of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

  To Ralph Ross

  March 22, 1977 Chicago

  Dear Ralph:

  Years ago (God, what a long time it seems, and how far away Minneapolis is!) you told me something valuable, and it was so unexpected that I couldn’t react intelligently on the spot but carried the remark off and worked on it for a couple of decades. You said that Isaac [Rosenfeld] was the most unworldly person you had ever known, with one exception: Compared with me, Isaac was the complete sophisticate. I felt the truth of this immediately—being what I was, I couldn’t expect to understand. And I always made a special point of seeming to be intensely practical and competent because I had no grasp of real life. Isaac was what our French friends call “faux naïf,” and I saw that all along and understood that he wouldn’t have needed such an act if he hadn’t been so clever. He was trying to act his way out of (relative) worldliness. I was working in the opposite direction. Was I so innocent? Self-absorbed, rather. Only it was no ordinary form of self-absorption because I could understand what I was determined to understand. And if I hadn’t sensed so many frightful things I wouldn’t have been so intensely unworldly. Evidently I was determined not to understand whatever was deeply threatening—allowed myself to know what conformed to my objectives, and no more. A tall order, to bury so many powers of observation. That sounds immodest; I mean only to be objective. But all the orders have been tall. If you had followed up your shrewd remark you might have saved me some time, but I assume you thought that if I couldn’t work out the hint I couldn’t be expected to bear a full examination either. I had to go through the whole Sondra-Jack Ludwig business, for instance. I gave them, and others, terrific entertainment. Sondra sent me to the English Department to threaten to resign if they didn’t re-appoint Ludwig, whom they had good reason to loathe. It was a barrel of fun. I’m not so keen on this sort of Goldoni comedy as I once was (small wonder), but I can see the humor of it. It gives me great satisfaction to look back in detachment and to think of the wit the gods gave us when they had to reduce our scope. But why didn’t they reduce our ambitions correspondingly? Why were we fired up with glorious dreams of achievement leading to such appalling waste? No one could make a true success except a few private persons with limited aims. Some of us, trying hard, were wonderfully unstinting of themselves. I think of John [Berryman], so generous in self-destruction. Or Isaac, who put on every stitch of virtue he had, and got on his horse and jumped into the big hole in the Forum. No one who set out to make the big scene in a big way could, in the nature of the case, get very far.

  I don’t think the Prize is going to make much difference. It’s been very confusing and delusive, but the delusions aren’t hard to shake off. Some of the contemporary literary winners have made wonderful comments about Stockholm. Seferis said it allowed him, after long effort, to be nobody, to be unnoticed, as Homer said of Ulysses. The noise dies down, and then you find your scale. If you have any sense, you go back to your trade, and the humor is part of my trade.

  I’m grateful for what you told me way back when. I should have moved faster but reluctance (or was it torpor?) was part of the problem. You still keep a benevolent eye on me from afar. I feel it and send you my affectionate thanks.

  I’m going to be in California next October or November. Let’s arrange to meet.

  Blessings,

  To the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

  (Read in Bellow’s absence at the Annual Ceremonial, May 18, 1977)

  When the honorific rains come, there’s no stopping them, and as the honors pelt my humble roof, I sometimes awake in the night and hear a Scriptural warning: “Look unto you when all men shall speak well of you!” But as that can never happen, I whisper “Fat chance!” and I am temporarily comforted. Somerset Maugham says somewhere that becoming famous is like getting a string of pearls. People admire them, but from time to time the owner wonders whether they are real or cultured. Politicians may love a consensus, but writers don’t quite trust it, and I sometimes wonder, “Are they giving me all these diplomas, testimonials and medals in order to get rid of me? Am I headed for the waxworks?” The answer to this is: “The Bellow they know may be ready for Madame Tussaud’s but the real Bellow has already made his getaway and lighted out for the territory ahead.” But in that territory, if I am lucky enough to reach it, I will think of this Gold Medal with particular satisfaction. This one, awarded by my own colleagues, by those who know what it is in these times to write books in the USA, is the most valuable of all. By making the award, my colleagues are telling me, most tactfully and feelingly, that it’s okay—that all these honors do not mean that I’ve gone wrong anywhere, but that I’ve delivered some of the goods at least. There remain (with luck) about ten years of the threescore and ten to deliver the rest. I am most grateful for this vote of confidence, and I shall do everything possible to complete the shipment.

  To Adam Bellow

  Sept. 25, 1977 Cambridge

  Dear Adam:

  Your father, used to the decades zipping by, sure that there would always be more where they came from, is now beginning to understand that he is at the shorter end of time. This doesn’t bring a sad, bad feeling, but rather a sense that I’d better do the things I haven’t done. Not undo the things that I have done—there isn’t time for that. And when you write to me about your romances, I have a feeling of comfort (for your sake) seeing that you still have an endless perspective of decades. I shouldn’t have used the plural “romances”—excuse me. But if patterns persist, the singular hasn’t much of a chance.

  I’ve never lived in Cambridge before, and I’m inspecting rather than relishing the place. I like the joy it gives people to be associated with this town, the big cultural sense they have of themselves and their sublime luck. I watch the young men rowing in the river, and I exercise my muscular Jewish midwestern skepticism indoors.

  I agree with Sondra that you oughtn’t to travel too much up and down the seacoast but concentrate on your studies; I am, or should be, one of those studies, however, and it would please me greatly if you could find time to visit Boston once or twice this autumn. Three weekends in October are already planned away, out of reach. We’ll be in NYC on the weekend of the 14th, but November is fairly open (as yet). You might like to come up to New York on the 15th, and to Boston on a weekend in November or early December. Let me know whether you can manage this.

  Love,

  Pop

  To Margaret Staats

  September 24, 1977 Cambridge

  Dear Maggie:

  One of the penalties of growing
older is that my life has so many divisions of old and new, and divisions among the divisions, as my mind is changed and my affections spread (to say nothing of dislikes)—that in the end I can’t attend to anyone as I should. And when I get a letter from you, to whom I would have so much to say if we were sitting in the same room, I have to let it lie in my old black satchel until I can pull myself together. Then the whole effort is one of editing out the mountain of chaotic facts so as to get a reasonably coherent message. But the more coherent, the more inexact it becomes. Because I’m in the midst of multiple revisions I’m not really able to do more than express doubts about everything I used to consider stable in life, and transmit my affections, which haven’t changed. Not the main ones, and you are one of the permanent objects, or subjects. It upsets me to hear of your operations, comforts me to hear of your marriage, and when you ask me to help with the magazine [Quest, where she was then an editor] I won’t refuse. The condition I’ve described doesn’t make me a good subject for interviews. I’m all transitions, and this isn’t a comfortable age for it. Do you know Emerson’s poem “Terminus”? “As the bird trims herself to the gale / I trim myself to the storm of time,” the old boy said. But that’s only part of the matter. The rest—and the rest is worse than storming time—is that there are almost no people left to whom I speak my mind. And when I say “left” I don’t mean that those who might have understood what goes on are dead. No, I couldn’t communicate with those either, unless they’d learned something since they died. And when I say this to you, I make no claim to be special. I haven’t been at all special. I made all the plainest, most obvious mistakes. But all the large “cultural” trends, and especially the most prestigious ones, are so obviously wrong that I don’t have to act to isolate myself. I am passive, registering what’s wrong in what this civilization of ours thinks when it speaks of Nature, God, the soul, and it cuts me off from all organized views. It doesn’t cut me off at all from the deeper being of people—in fact that’s where my reaction against these organized views begins. But I can’t manage this new kind of consciousness. I don’t know what to do about it.

  Always your devoted friend,

  To Owen Barfield

  September 29, 1977 Cambridge, Mass.

  Dear Mr. Barfield:

  If you hadn’t let me know that you were coming, I wouldn’t have thought it in the least churlish. I am old enough to begin to understand how difficult travel is for people of advanced years. Unfortunately, I shan’t be in the Midwest. My wife and I are teaching at Brandeis, in Waltham, Massachusetts, this autumn. But I would be most willing, even eager, to fly down to New York if you can spare the time from your schedule at Drew University.

  Wesleyan University Press did not send me your book, but I obtained a copy through channels and have read most of it, admiringly. “Read” is not the word for it; I am obliged to study your essays, and I have with a certain amount of difficulty come to understand some of them reasonably well. Writing novels does not prepare one for all this hard work in epistemology. In London I embarrassed myself by asking you several stupid questions. That, unfortunately, is how I learn. I humiliate myself, I grieve, and the point remains permanently with me. I think you will understand how hard this work must be for a man who has led the life that I have led. I count on you to forgive me (as well as you can). The other day I received a letter from a lady who had heard the talk I gave in Edinburgh and who reproached me in the name of what she called all the “anthropops” [disciples of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy] in the front row. They had come to hear a great and stirring message. Instead, I spoke merely of what it had been like to become a novelist in the city of Chicago. What? Waste everyone’s time with streets and slums and race and crimes and sex problems (I hadn’t mentioned sex, by the way). I must learn to do better, and she appealed to me to take more instruction and draw more inspiration from Owen Barfield. She is, in her way, bang right. But what am I to do? I can’t pass myself off for a sage, and it wasn’t as a sage that the Arts Council invited me to Edinburgh.

  I thought you might be mildly amused by this.

  In any case, I would welcome the opportunity to see you in New York, between planes.

  With best regards,

  To Richard Stern

  October 1, 1977 Cambridge

  Dear Richard:

  [ . . . ] I strive manfully with life’s problems. They will say in the next world, “You certainly went on in good faith, Kid, doing what you were brought up to do. Very responsible. You may have missed a thing or two (of importance) by sticking to these commitments.” But there’s nothing to be done now. I feel a little weaker than I did in the last decade. I don’t recover all my strength in sleep or other forms of rest. I get more and more restless, to less and less purpose. And I can’t keep up with all the difficulties. The reason I was slow to write to you was that the court proceedings were hotter and heavier than usual. Just now, for instance, I am in contempt. I am coming to Daniel’s bar mitzvah but I may be arrested in front of K[ehilath] A[nshe] M[a’ariv] next Saturday despite my truce agreement (for the weekend) with Susan. The court held me in contempt because—I will tell it in legal language—pursuant to advice of counsel I refused to comply with the alimony assessment of the court but appealed the decision. Until the appeal is formally filed, I am in comtempt (I can’t even spell the damn word, there’s so much emotional interference). My lawyers tell me that I won’t be hand-cuffed and dragged away to alimony row. Such a vile shock, or culmination, might actually reverse the emotional tides and bring me peace. Who knows?

  So, I go on lecturing on Joseph Conrad, and writing odds and ends, taking absurd telephone messages. For example, this morning: Fortune wants to print an article on the earnings of authors. The Franklin Mint Co. wants to put out Humboldt’s Gift in limp leather, an inscribed edition of fifteen thousand. They will pay me two bucks per signature. If I consent to sign my name fifteen thousand times I will be thirty thousand richer. I mean fifteen, for the govt. would take half. Shall I sign my name fifteen thousand times? My idea is to hire a forger, and pay him two bits per.

  If I’m not in County Jail next weekend, I shall give you a ring.

  Yours affectionately,

  To Richard Stern

  [Postmarked Cambridge, Mass., 4 October 1977]

  Dear Dick,

  Congratulations! Another son. Wordsworth said, “Stern daughter” (“Ode to Duty”) but Gay came through with a boy. Well, a son is what the old folks used to call “a Gan-Eden-schlepper,” a puller-into Paradise. [ . . . ] I’m very glad for you, and the kid is fortunate in his parents and siblings. The children must be terribly excited—Chris gets a bigger crew, but poor Andrew, he’ll find it hard to swallow at first.

  I’m glad to get your kind words about Herzog. What am I saying?—I swallow them with joy. That Herzog is all right. I hope his luck will last. Though I father interesting characters, it’s in the upbringing that they lose out.

  I’m a very imperfect and accidental sort of person, a poor over-interrogated witness; you should outstrip me soon. Perhaps even will in any case. I know better than to take any writer’s word about his own book. Already in the first pages there was a good deal of strong feeling [in yours].

  As for Leeds, I’m sorry for your sake but pleased you’ll be in Chicago next winter—and Shils. As Edward would say, it’s going to be capital.

  Try to come out in Sept. Blessings on Gay, and young Nick.

  Yours affectionately,

  To Edward Shils

  November 14, 1977 Cambridge

  Dear Edward,

  Your call the other morning came when I needed support and I was hoping for just such a sign of affection and solidarity. You told me once that one didn’t need many friends; that is perfectly true and it’s also just as well since one need not expect to have too many. I am very lucky in having the few that are essential. And you have a friend in me, I assure you. [. . . ]

  I’m able to fend off my troubles most of th
e time and get some work done. My anxieties have a way of attacking me at about 3:00 A.M. when my defenses are down and then I think all kinds of nonsensical things and feel agitated. I don’t need eight hours of rest, I’m in good health. My mind, though, does require a longer nightly absence from consciousness than it is getting and sometimes feels sere at the edges. Cambridge does not fascinate me. I can take these masses of ivy or leave them. Alexandra, among her mathematicians, is very cheerful but I am beginning to long for vulgar Chicago where facts are facts.

  Yours most affectionately,

  1978

  To Leon Wieseltier

  January 18, 1978 Chicago

  Dear Leon:

  I intended to write at once about your essays but life insists on teaching me a few more lessons. I thought I knew corrupt Chicago, the money world, the legal and accounting professions and all their psychological types and all the political parallels—I did, of course, but it was an intelligent person’s closet knowledge and fate decided that I should get a finishing course, that I should feel all the fingers on my skin and have my internal organs well squeezed. In its way this is fair enough. I said I wanted to know; I claimed that I already knew; and I held positions in the Higher Life, was its representative in the Midwest. All that has got to be paid for, and I’m in the process of doing that. There is no other way. It’s time-consuming, sordid—one is abused, dragged through the schmutz [85], publicized. That’s one’s country, as it is, and that’s one’s own high-minded self, dedicated to art and wisdom. But then convenience and comfort make us dimwitted, and celebrity threatens to complete one’s imbecility. I’ve seen more than one big figure turn into a cork dummy. It might be nice to have a garden of one’s own to cultivate at a time like this and let the preposterous world do its preposterous things. I love rose bushes, but I love objectivity even more, and self-objectivity more than any other type. This makes all the noise, troubling, cheating, vengefulness and money-grabbing tolerable and at times even welcome. When I come home, though, or go to my office, I find the books, journals and letters flooding in. I haven’t the time to read, much less comment or answer. No sorcerer arrives to bail the apprentice out. When insomnia permits it, I dream of monasteries or hermit’s caves. But I’m a Jew, and married—uxorious.