Letters

by Saul Bellow

  To Anne Doubillon Walter

  February 17, 1983 Chicago

  Dear Anny,

  Unfortunately, there was no time in Paris to look up old friends. Flammarion gave me not a single free hour. [ . . . ]

  When people ask me how I am, I am always inclined to answer like a Roman I once saw knocked down by a Vespa. When people ran toward him to ask how he was, he said, “I was better before.” Considering my advanced years, je me porte assez bien. [97] You, for your part, sound rather disgruntled and slightly insurrectionary—going to a religious pension and resenting it. Besides, you make me feel that you are watching me from behind a tree like a guerrilla. You won’t shoot, but you are armed.

  Can you do your next letter on a machine? You are very fond of the last century and its ways but even Tolstoy toward the end owned a typewriter and spoke on the telephone.

  Much affection from your old friend,

  Anne Doubillon Walter had met Bellow in 1953 at Bard, where she was studying. A writer and filmmaker who worked with Nicholas Ray and Robert Bresson, she lives today in Brittany.

  To Allan Bloom

  February 28, 1983 [Chicago]

  Dear Allan:

  They say it’s spring-like in Chicago. That means that somewhere beyond the stern gloom intervening, the sky is blue and probably mild and the temperature is moderate. Today I stopped work on my story, feeling neck-weary (my head is too heavy for the stem) and worn, and at about 2:00 P.M. I walked to Dominick’s to buy salad oil, as per instructions. On the way to the supermarket I thought of you in Paris, so civilized. [ . . . ]

  I noticed that west of Broadway on Thorndale a little bookshop had opened and stopped to have a look. A West Indian, small beard, outcurved teeth, tried to sell me a paperback Leviathan, and then a spiritual guide to rebirth (I am ready but don’t expect to do it out of a handbook). He asked me to identify myself. I said I was a professor. This brought him sharply to life, and he wanted to give me his business cards to distribute among friends. He seems to live in an upright crate at the back of the shop. Now I dragged myself over to the east side of Broadway, and a woman of ninety advanced toward me on a four-pronged cane—tiny, a construction worker’s yellow hard hat pulled over her forehead. This apparition passing, there came more: middle-class people, I suppose, but reduced to the status of derelicts, one holding a little boy by the hand while yelling at an acquaintance to get his goddam ass out of her face because she wouldn’t submit to suffocation, and then some people affably talking to themselves; and then a nice police dog chained to a parking meter, wearing a cast on his broken leg and barking. He may have been asking to see the humanity in relation to which he was supposed to be a dog. We were at one in this. My tired intelligence found no trace of the hierarchy.

  I came up to the iron frames that filter the customers [at the supermarket]. These are small openings, like weirs, just big enough to get through, and some of these openings are sometimes padlocked for reasons of security I haven’t yet figured out. I thought, good old Allan is on holiday, leaving me in charge. I was rather pleased than not; glad you were out of this. Taking turns is only fair. After bringing home the bottle of oil, and a box of tandoor spice which wasn’t on my list, an impulse purchase, I took off all my clothing and got into bed for an hour of angelic purity and meditation, browsing in [Josef] Pieper’s book on the Phaedrus. I saw how bad the Sophists were, and it comforted me to be on the right side, faithful to Eros and repudiating spurious sexuality. I am old enough at last to see things in a true light.

  To John Auerbach

  March 9, 1983 Chicago

  Dear John,

  I am dictating this on the run, as usual. Last fall I started to write a short story of which there are now about eighty pages with no end in sight, and I find that I haven’t the strength to sit down at the typewriter again in the afternoon. I have written only pressing business letters this winter and I plan to take a holiday after the damn story has been finished, and if I haven’t by then lost all my best friends I will write a dozen long letters. Adam brought the figurine of Astarte, and I took possession at once, but as is only right and proper since she is the goddess of fertility and sexual love, I surrendered her to my Missus. When the moon is shining I look for her among the math papers (Astarte, I mean). Now John, I was slightly discouraged by your last letter in which you argued that you couldn’t leave your dogs long enough to visit Vermont. I suppose it would be foolish for me to say that I would leave my dogs, if I had any, for your sake. I work from a different dog-ethic. If I led a settled life I’d acquire cats and dogs, but Alexandra and I knock about so much that I have to limit myself to houseplants. To which I am devoted. I’ll probably be taking them to Brattleboro this summer and I have been trying to argue Alexandra into adopting a cat. The alternative is to buy an ultrasonic machine advertised in the Wall Street Journal as guaranteed to keep away field mice and biting insects. Only, it occurred to me that it would also drive away fertilizing insects from the flowers. I don’t want to write you a rambling nonsensical letter. My fixed purpose is to persuade you to fly over in September. [ . . . ] The dogs are surely generous enough to release you for a few weeks. Let me send you the ticket.

  I see that Begin is entertaining Jimmy Carter, who called him psycho when they were quarrelling at Camp David. One would think that he would be far happier to entertain me. He has decided, evidently, not to give me an interview. I can’t say that I’m unhappy about it. I would have accepted an invitation from him because it would have given me an excuse to see you.

  Love,

  To John Auerbach

  April 8, 1983 Chicago

  Dear John,

  Alexandra and I were absolutely delighted with your decision. I would have preferred a June visit, but Alexandra is not able to leave Chicago before the middle of the month. Her childlike conscientiousness—she must give exams, check the grading of papers by her assistants (she really has no use for assistants because she does it all by herself from scratch), record the marks, agonize over the flunks—keeps her in Chicago till the fifteenth, and then she flies to Germany on the twentieth and returns just before Independence Day. [ . . . ] September is the best month anyway, the trees are turning and the insects have perished. Bear hunters begin operations in mid-September, but two experienced old guys have been given an exclusive franchise and they do their shooting about half a mile away. I think you should come just after Labor Day. [ . . . ] They tell me that El Al is back in business, unless orthodox rabbis lie down on the runways of Ben Gurion to protect Shabbat.

  Invitations have been coming from Israel. Not a single one have I been able to accept. The most recent was from Teddy Kollek, who asked me to attend the Jerusalem Book Fair, and the awarding of a literary prize to Naipaul. Since Naipaul dislikes me I saw no reason to be present. I can’t think how I offended him, but there doesn’t have to be a reason, does there? Anyhow, I declined and told Teddy why it would be awkward. I thought it was idiotic the year before to give medals and money to Graham Greene, that anti-Semite. They criticize Jews in the Diaspora for clinging to their goyim and they give prizes to one of the worst, proving that they have more esteem for anti-Semites than for Jews who won’t capitulate. There was a charming exchange between Gershom Scholem and Allen Ginsberg some time back. When Scholem asked Ginsberg why he didn’t move to Israel, Ginsberg said, “All my life I’ve been escaping from the Bronx. How can you ask me to live in Tel Aviv?” An answer which pleased Scholem as much as it does me.

  I have finished my story—ninety-nine pages of it—and in June I can go to work on it in earnest. For the moment I am diverting myself with some reminiscences of Chicago in the Thirties—my recollections of Roosevelt’s first term. I am not doing it of my own free will, but to raise money for furniture in Vermont. Just the other day Harriet [Wasserman] told me that she had received two stories from you. I am fretfully waiting for Xerox copies. She said she hadn’t yet had time to read them. She’s in a state of fretfulness and distraction
, depressed by her father’s death and the slump in publishing and who knows what female miseries besides.

  I am dictating this letter to Janis [Freedman] because I wear myself out over the typewriter and abuse myself as if I were my own Ayatollah.

  Please answer promptly so that I can get the tickets off.

  Much love from your friend,

  “In the Days of Mr. Roosevelt” would appear in Esquire. Janis Freedman, a student in the Committee on Social Thought, was at this time Bellow’s graduate assistant.

  To Alfred Kazin

  [Postmarked Brattleboro, Vt., 17 June 1983]

  Dear Alfred:

  Once more, a happy birthday, no pangs, no groans. And other congratulations as well.

  That I’ve become an unforthcoming correspondent is perfectly true; I take no pleasure in these silences of mine; rather, I’m trying to discover the reasons why I so seldom reply. It may be that I’m always out with a butterfly net trying to capture my mature and perfected form, which is just about to settle (once and for all) on a flower. It never does settle, it hasn’t yet found its flower. That may be the full explanation.

  The other day I received in the mail the U. of Chicago Maroon containing an article on our late friend I. Rosenfeld by a bright undergraduate who fell in love with his essays and his reputation. I was touched by this and all went well until I reached the end. At the end it was Isaac who was true to the high imperative, whereas his corrupt and unworthy friend S.B., by appearing with Dick Cavett, had betrayed the good, the true, the beautiful, Judaism, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Marx, and the legion of sainted Russians from Gogol to Babel who were our spiritual uncles.

  The Vermont address is good until mid-September. Will your new book be appearing soon? I am longing to read it.

  Yrs. ever,

  S.B., Class of ’15

  To David Shahar

  July 15, 1983 West Brattleboro, Vermont

  Dear David,

  I’m not at all cross. I’m what the French call ahuri (bewildered, flurried, confused, giddy-headed), and I had to choose between a letter-block and a writer’s block. Naturally I made the right choice. In the fullness of your vigor you are most happily not able to experience a crisis of this sort. My energy diminishing, I have had to lock some of the doors to conserve heat. Nothing else. This year I have written some articles and two stories long enough to be described as novellas; and I have defended myself against the US government and several US (ex-)wives; and dealt with children, and colleagues at the University whose mental powers like my own are failing; to say nothing of an older sister, elder brothers, and the confusions of the age. Now if I had a cork-lined room and a Celeste to wait on me hand and foot, to serve me coffee at the right temperature, and to supply me with handkerchiefs and protect me from all intrusions, I could, as Proust did, keep up with my mail. But the world has been too much with me and I have written very few personal letters. Emergency cases only.

  There have been negotiations conducted by the Atlantic Monthly for the interviews with Begin and Moshe Arens, and I have been trying to decide whether to accept—whether to stir up the hornets of Jerusalem and the Diaspora with rash and ignorant statements. Israelis now hold a monopoly over all discussions of the Jewish question, which I am not too eager to challenge. I suspect it would be a lapse of judgment to write an article. Still, I may come to Jerusalem next November to do what I probably ought not to do, and one of my rewards will be a visit to the Shahars.

  With love and best wishes,

  (It would be a mistake not to forgive me.)

  To Anne Doubillon Walter

  July 16, 1983 West Brattleboro, Vermont

  Dear Anny,

  You are probably used to my long silences. They aren’t a sign of absent-mindedness really or of old-fashioned procrastination (“the thief of time”). I am simply incapable of “keeping up.” I have never understood how to manage my time and now I have less strength to invest in attempted management. The days flutter past and this would be entertaining if I could compare them to butterflies, but there’s nothing at all picturesque or cheerful about this condition. Rather it makes me heavy-hearted. Not a leaden state, just something permanently regrettable. Thus I hold your letter of March 3rd, which I intended to answer immediately because it contained a request. I wanted to tell you that a book about me vu par yourself would please me greatly, and of course you have my permission without restriction.

  I thought of looking for you in Paris last September, but Flammarion and Co. left me no time for myself. I had nothing but the use of my eyes for looking past my interlocutors at the Seine. In my “spare” time I was presented to Monsieur Mitterand at the Élysée. He is a pleasant man, but I had some rather sharp exchanges with Mssrs. [Régis] Debray and [Jack] Lang [minister of culture under Mitterand]. I have a friend in Chicago who says that a minister of culture is a fatal clinical symptom. It tells you “culture is more abundant here.” And if the French insist on using such American techniques for getting into the papers and onto the television screen, I don’t see how they can then have the toupet [98] to criticize the Americans. All they can say against the Americans is that they have made more progress in corruption. With a little help M. Lang will outstrip us.

  For heaven’s sake, Anny, don’t worry about returning the loan. You will give me a good dinner one of these days, or send me some French books.

  Dear old friend,

  Régis Debray, famed veteran of the Che Guevara-led insurrection in Bolivia—sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment there but released after an international appeal led by Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux and others—had been appointed special adviser to Mitterand.

  1984

  To Philip Roth

  January 7, 1984 Chicago

  Dear Philip:

  I thought to do some good by giving an interview to People, which was exceedingly foolish of me. I asked Aaron [Asher] to tell you that the Good Intentions Paving Company had fucked up again. The young interviewer turned my opinions inside out, cut out the praises and made it all sound like disavowal, denunciation and excommunication. Well, we’re both used to this kind of thing, and beyond shock. In agreeing to take the call and make a statement I was simply muddle-headed. But if I had been interviewed by an angel for the Seraphim and Cherubim Weekly I’d have said, as I actually did say to the crooked little slut, that you were one of our very best and most interesting writers. I would have added that I was greatly stimulated and entertained by your last novel, and that of course after three decades I understood perfectly well what you were saying about the writer’s trade—how could I not understand, or miss suffering the same pains. Still our diagrams are different, and the briefest description of the differences would be that you seem to have accepted the Freudian explanation: A writer is motivated by his desire for fame, money and sexual opportunities. Whereas I have never taken this trinity of motives seriously. But this is an explanatory note and I don’t intend to make a rabbinic occasion of it. Please accept my regrets and apologies, also my best wishes. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.

  To Leon Botstein

  January 18, 1984 Chicago

  Dear Leon,

  I fiddled all summer like one of the three grasshoppers in the song, but since I returned to Chicago I have been too busy paying rent. (You will recall that the fiddling grasshoppers never paid rent.) My fingertips have lost their calluses. Alexandra’s greatly relieved that I have been too furiously busy to fiddle. A shack in the woods is being built for me where I will be able to play the Devil’s Trill Sonata to the foxes and the bears.

  We’ve rather given up on visits, they’re too great a strain. My social talents, never great, have dried up. I am unable to meet groups, and although I don’t dislike gossip, my custom is to file it away for future use. Alexandra feels as I do, and besides she needs graduate students in Ergodic Theory, and without Ergodic Theory s
he is apt to grow gloomy. So we decline your kind offer, albeit with profuse thanks. [ . . . ]

  Yours quite cheerfully,

  To James Salter

  January 25, 1984 Chicago

  Dear Jim,

  That was an illuminating number of Esquire. Everybody was more or less as destiny had sketched him out, and people did what they are renowned for doing, e.g., Truman Capote stepping on Katharine Hepburn’s feet. If he had bitten her he might have done some serious damage, but of all the harms he is capable of doing, this was certainly the least.

  I thought you were perceptive about Eisenhower although you were interested in the military Eisenhower most of all, not in the President. How weird those people are in the White House showcase. Now there’s a subject one of us should turn his mind to.

  I didn’t come to the party because I had two or three kinds of Asian flu at the same time. I’m sure I would have liked the party, although I am rarely happy to be the center of attention. Much better to be hidden in a corner looking at everything through a jeweler’s glass.

  How is Karyl [Roosevelt], and did she get the job I recommended her for? The lady who telephoned from Long Island wanted to make sure that she would be discreet. A confidential secretary? A governess? A stand-in for the wife herself? Southampton has surely seen that kind of thing before. It seemed just the kind of luxury cruise Karyl would adore, on a yacht called the F. Scott Fitzgerald (updated, of course).

  I think you should stand pat with Mike Strang and John Wix, and if Wix is not a good fellow to be involved with let’s not involve ourselves. I am firmly convinced that we will all be able to retire to the Riviera when our Colorado land is sold. (Having read Robin Maugham’s memoir of his uncle’s last years, I am not attracted by the Riviera. I shouldn’t like to die so far from a kosher butcher shop.)