Letters
Page 59
Dream III: I find myself in a library filled with unknown masterpieces by Henry James, Joseph Conrad and others. Titles I have never seen mentioned anywhere. In shock and joy I open a volume by Conrad and read several pages, sentence after sentence after sentence in the old boy’s best style, more brilliant than ever. “Why in hell was I never told about this?” I ask. Certain parties have been holding out on us. I am indignant.
I depend on these dream-events to sort me out. Or perhaps to document my disorder more fully.
We may not be going to France after all. Our friend Bloom has for some months been down with the paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome and we can make no travel plans till we know whether the paralysis is temporary. Or not. He’s making progress but there won’t be any holidays until we’ve seen him through. Somebody at the BBC last year invited me to do a program in May and if the arrangements can be made perhaps we’ll fly over and catch you before you leave London.
Best wishes for the New Year to you and Antonia and the kids from Janis and me.
Love,
In an effort to be rid of the fatwa pronounced on him by Ayatollah Khomeini, Salman Rushdie had issued a tactical statement—later withdrawn—in which he claimed to have turned to Islam.
1991
To Louis Lasco
January 18, 1991 [Chicago]
Dear Louie:
The old ties it seems are still knotted. When you wrote that you needed more surgery it was hard to take. A good many of my old buddies have gone (also an ex-wife and some brothers). The emotional effects have been variable. I didn’t much mourn the Fish. But you turn out to be somebody I won’t emotionally relinquish. To get information I phoned Rudy Lapp, and he got in touch with Abe Held. Abe is an American incarnation of the old guys at Cratch-Mandel who used to be sent out to sit with the orthodox dying. You remember him? A left-winger from Humboldt Park. Dark-faced, simpatico, an unprominent chin, humane eyes. He reported that you had no listed number. He would stay on the case. However, he had no more information.
So your letter relieved me of immediate anxiety. You’ve been in my mind quite a lot. My wife took me to see Cyrano, which I watched with double vision—or at least a divided mind. Half the interest was in you. Sitting there in the old Fine Arts (S. Michigan Ave.) I fought the sentiments inspired by the death of the lover-warrior-poet. I lost. I had to walk out on my own tears and go down to the men’s room to pee.
Now the hard part of this note comes: If a loan would be useful (don’t get up on your high horse, remember that in 1929 we pooled our pennies to try to beat the slot machine in Simon’s drugstore on Division and Leavitt) I can spare the money.
[ . . . ] Your old friend hopes to hear from you soon.
To the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
January 23, 1991 Chicago
Nomination for the Gold Medal in Poetry:
In his younger years Karl Shapiro had a reputation for stormy dissent. He dared to attack T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He wrote that Eliot had made ours an age of criticism, and that criticism was the century’s substitute for poetry. He was, in short, a maverick dissenter. That America has a particular fondness for its mavericks is a famous fact. But so many mavericks are no more than cranks or posturers, display-figures and mere celebrities. Those philosopher-poets or statesmen who have principles to defend, truths which demand their allegiance, are the real heroes of dissent. The poet shy and bold as a bullet, Shapiro has written, characterizing himself in eight words. He is a quiet writer but also a warlike and deep one, a sort of American Jonah, obedient and disobedient at the same time. His controversial book was called In Defense of Ignorance but it was poetry not ignorance he was defending. He was a born poet and the irreverent polemic was his declaration of faith. Beyond controversy in his eighth decade, he continues to give us splendidly mature poems to study and admire.
To Stanley Crouch
January 25, 1991 Chicago
Dear Stanley Crouch,
How could I fail to appreciate your book [Notes of a Hanging Judge]—how often does one see intelligence, style and courage come together? Your subjects are monopolized by demagogy. The language(s) in which they are discussed prevent thinking, make it simply impossible. The race question (all the questions, the whole complex) is, after war, the single most terrible thing we have to face. Therefore very few are able to face it at all. Public discussion of the issues is virtually impossible. Do I say discussion? Real descriptions are also prohibited. Even if they weren’t prohibited (taboo) there might not be enough intellect and talent around to do the job.
The plain facts are yet to be stated, and it’s only men like you who have even begun to state them. So I hope (I pray!) that others will follow your example.
At your urging, I looked up [Meyer] Lansky in the library. Only one book, smart but sketchy, by a man named Hank Messick. I’ve begun to read it (the first half already read) and promise to think about it.
Many thanks, and best wishes,
To Ruth Wisse
February 12, 1991 Chicago
Dear Ruth,
Since we last dined (so pleasantly) I’ve been pursuing vain things (writing fiction) and I have (ungraciously and with unbecoming laziness) failed to answer important letters (like yours). I’ve thought now and then about your suggestion that I publish the talk I gave in Montreal but I can’t stop now to revise and edit. Besides, the lecture pleased you, and that’s the only sort of “publication” I care about. Where would I print it—in Harper’s or the Atlantic ? In Playboy? Though you think so, I have no feud with Commentary. Norman [Podhoretz] and [Neal] Kozodoy have decided that I don’t exist. They review Gore Vidal and they ignore me. And they printed an idiotic story by Joe Epstein of which I am evidently the “protagonist”—a second-rate Jewish writer from Chicago. Gross, moronic, and clumsily written.
I could make those people very unhappy by describing them. Ober es geyt mir nit in lebn [111]. And besides, it wouldn’t really amuse me.
I think all the better of you for being so loyal to Commentary but I don’t believe you’ll ever bring it off—conciliation, I mean.
But I do read the magazine still and I did read your piece on anti-Semitism. I approved. I liked it. You’re right of course and I love you even when you publish in Commentary.
Yours affectionately,
To Karl Shapiro
February 23, 1991 Chicago
Dear Karl:
Apprehended while trying to do the right thing!
A conference call [to determine the recipient of the American Academy’s Gold Medal in Poetry] was arranged—staged—with [Donald] Hall and [Harold] Bloom, two highly experienced political infighters. I knew Hall once. Never met Bloom. He sounds like one of those new instruments, shaped like a sax and sounding like an oboe—I believe it’s called a basset-horn. A voice full of tremors, fluctuating between Oxford and the Bronx. These two conspirators of the East had met and agreed on a list. My additional nomination [of you] took them aback for a moment. One of them said, “Let him be listed but I shan’t vote for him.” The other said, “Neither will I.” Both parties then hung up on me. It’s been fifteen years since the Academy invited me to collaborate. They’re going to say that I still haven’t learned to follow the rules. But who knows—maybe Justice will be done. Let’s see what the ballots say. If I were as frivolous as I might be, and perhaps I should be, I could write a tale about the Typhoid Mary of Justice, a carrier of the germ whom the medical police are hunting on both coasts.
Sorry to hear of your phlebitis—I mean your excess of iron. But we need all the iron we can get, in these times. I have no current diseases, if you don’t count a small hemorrhage in the right eye. It gives me a damn sinister look, and won’t go away. For my time of life I’m in good condition. Janis tends me like a plant and now and then is rewarded with a flower.
Love to you and Sophie,
To Roger Kaplan
March 27, 1991 Chicago
Dear Roger,
Sorry, I should have written to tell you what was happening but Janis and I were a long time in the switches, to use a Middle Western expression—something like that Old Jimmy Durante song, “Did you ever have the feeling that you had to go / Started to go / Decided to stay / Started to stay / Decided to go?” That should do it.
For the time being we have decided to stay [in Chicago]. We have also decided to go in the Spring of ’92 [to Paris]. ’91 as it happens is out of the question. I am supposed to deliver a manuscript to Viking Press in September or October—with a month’s grace. Let’s hope that all options will still be available next spring. I had sent a letter to M. [Jack] Lang, the Minister of Culture, inquiring whether his Ministry has any accommodations for a visiting Commander of the Legion of Honor. As of now, five months later, no reply. So this whole Commander of the Legion thing has been exposed as a hoax. Another case of How many divisions does the Vatican have? I thought I had tuyau [112]. I don’t even have a soda-pop straw. [ . . . ]
Yours most affectionately,
Roger Kaplan, son of Harold “Kappy” Kaplan, is a regular contributor to The American Spectator and lives in Washington, D.C.
To Louis Lasco
March 27, 1991 [Chicago]
Dear old chum—
Of course I should have answered you sooner. At this time of life however a couple of months doesn’t feel like real procrastination. This is no defense—more like a page from The Natural History of Septuagenarianism. Intending to write is like writing. Why do I “bother” to write at all, as you put it? Because you’ve figured in my life and I in yours over six decades or so, for the most part affectionately. We see each other at fifteen-year intervals so there’s no practical involvement of the feelings.
To accuse me of “contempt” is completely cockeyed. I don’t see what the things I wrote forty or fifty years ago have to do with subsequent feelings. I always wanted you among my real friends, and I am today as much your friend as it’s possible to be. By which I mean that we’re far from each other in space and also in time. We have pictures of each other. Mine are probably more pleasant than yours. But then I have no reason to be angry with you.
I may indeed have been a putz, an asshole deserving no respect—on the other hand there’s always been warmth and sympathy between us. Whatever you may think of me, I’ve always respected you. And when I heard that you were ill my impulse was to be helpful—if help should be needed.
Ever your old friend,
You didn’t offend me at all.
To James Atlas
March 29, 1991 Chicago
Dear James,
Are you prepared to consider an alternative?
Suppose that instead of rummaging in grammar-school records devoid of real interest you were to have a tour of the city—a personal conducted tour of Hyde Park, Humboldt Park, and several other locations? I wouldn’t at all mind doing this, I might even enjoy it. If you think this is a reasonable proposal I will set aside the time—an afternoon or two. Mull this over a bit. There is no penalty for declining.
Yours with best wishes,
To Louis Lasco
April 9, 1991 [Chicago]
Well, Louie, you’re right about one thing—perhaps the only one you are right about: Battles are unnecessary. In the old days I loved you because you didn’t resemble anybody I knew. Most important of all you weren’t like anybody in my family. Suddenly, in old age (my old age as well as yours), you are like all my relatives rolled into one—accusations, recriminations, denunciations. My poor, ailing, feeble, foolish, vain flesh and blood are fed to the shredder.
Do you happen to remember a kid named Yaddi Oppenheimer? I think he became a member of our club. He was afraid to touch chicken because chicken made him flatulent. This skinny pale little kid came back to me last night, name and all. He put us on notice never to let him eat chicken. But it would never have occurred to us to rebuke anybody for farting. On the contrary; we were pleased because he made us laugh. Chances are, Yaddi is gone as we will all be, shortly. I say to myself as Lady Macbeth did: “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go!” And so I will; when I’m required to.
To change the old song a bit, “With all my faults, I love you still.”
I remain yours as ever,
To Louis Lasco
May 24, 1991 [Chicago]
Dear Louie—
Okay—I’m not the Bellow of your dreams; you’re not the Lasco I thought I knew. You think that when I wish you well I do it from self-pity, and I want to infect you with pity, blind to the fact that you’ve had heart surgery twice and that you aren’t sure that you’re going to make it.
I see it a little differently. We were boyhood friends and I wish you well. Not because I’m trying to undermine your proud determination and independence, not because it’s my way of gloating over you. Don’t be such a putz.
As for who pays for dinner when we next dine together, we can toss a coin.
A few days ago, I was on Division St. Your old block has been razed—both sides of the street. The new hospital (we used to pee in the weeds by the power plant) is monumental. It could be a stadium for the Polish Olympics.
Dope pushers on every corner. We went for cholesterol instead.
Always your affectionate buddy, and good ol’ boy,
To Stephen Mitchell
June 22, 1991 W. Brattleboro, Vermont
Dear Mr. Mitchell,
I have the greatest sympathy with what you have done. Let me explain: I was at the age of eight years a patient at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal—dangerously ill in the children’s ward.
My people were orthodox Russian Jews. I had a religious upbringing. In those times four-year-old kids were already reading Hebrew, memorizing Genesis and Exodus. Such was my background—the child of a despised people in the Montreal slums.
I had never been separated from the family. It was a hellish winter (1923-24) with heavy snows, fantastic icicles at the windows, the streetcars frosted over. My parents took turns coming to see me—I was allowed one short visit a week. I waited for them. There were three operations. My belly was haggled open—it was draining. I stank. I understood that I might die. I was pretty steady about this, I think. I didn’t cry when my mother came and went. I was rather matter of fact about dying. Other children were covered up and wheeled away. In the morning, an empty bed, remade, blank. It was like that.
Then a lady came from some missionary society and gave me a New Testament to read.
Jesus overwhelmed me. I had heard about him, of course—marginal information, unfriendly. (Why should it have been friendly?) But I was moved when I read Gospels. It wasn’t a sentimental reaction. I wasn’t one for crying. I had to get through this crisis. I had made up my mind about that. But I was moved out of myself by Jesus, by “suffer the little children to come unto me,” by the lilies of the field. Jesus moved me beyond all bounds by his deeds and his words. His death was a horror to me. And I had to face the charges made in the Gospels against the Jews, my people, Pharisees and Sadducees. In the ward, too, Jews were hated. My thought was (I tell it as it came to me then): How could it be my fault? I am in the hospital.
But I was beyond myself, moved far out by Jesus (Mark and Matthew). I kept this to myself. No discussions with my father, my mother. It was not their Bible. For them there was no New Testament. Obviously Jesus was not discussible with them. They had to live, as all Jews must, under a curse, and they were not prepared to interpret this to an eight-year-old child. In their struggle for existence interpretation ought not to be required of them, too. I would have been imposing on them, and it would all too plainly have been disloyal. I also sensed that.
I had never been in a position in which it is necessary to think for myself, without religious authorization, about God. Here at the Royal Victoria I was able, I was enabled—I was free to think for myself.
You will understand now why I read you with sympathy. I understand the impulse that led you to make
your own translation of the Gospels. But sympathy is not agreement. I am out of sympathy with your generational standpoint. I can’t agree that John Lennon stands in the line of the prophets, on a level with Isaiah and the rest. This seems to me a distortion due to fashion, too easy a mingling of the religious and the rock stars. I like rock stars, yes, and I admire gurus (each instance on its separate merits) but I am not so freely ecumenical as you. You and I are Jews whose experiences are roughly similar; we have judged for ourselves. Jesus, yes, but what about two millennia of Jewish history? How do you propose to come to terms with the Jew as the prime enemy of Christianity? You may be interested in a book that has influenced my understanding of these things, Hyam Maccoby’s Revolution in Judea. It argues that Jesus was anointed, a messiah, a Pharisee who tried to free the Jews from Roman tyranny. The Greek authors of the Gospels named the Jews the enemy race, universally to be hated by the rest of mankind. Love of Jesus could not then be separated from hatred of the Jews. A proposition that must seriously be considered by the likes of you and me.
Sincerely,
Bellow had read Mitchell’s newly published The Gospel According to Jesus: A New Translation and Guide to His Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers.
To John Auerbach
July 7, 1991 W. Brattleboro
Dear John,
As civilization declines the interpretation of civilized rules is left in the hands of people like me (self-appointed) and we don’t seem to do at all well. Thus I know that I should lift up the tails of my coat, take off my wig and sit down to correspondence like Voltaire. Only Voltaire had a staff of attendants to care for him while he wrote about freedom. I have only Janis, whom I love a thousand times more than Voltaire loved anybody. So I am humanly ahead but losing ground culturally.