by Saul Bellow
All this may pass but no one can be certain that it will.
Meantime the trees grow, the birds sing, the flowers do their stuff, the green is greener than ever. And there’s Janis, without whom my blood wouldn’t circulate.
And I cling to my friends, as well.
With much love to you and Nola,
To Stanley Elkin
July 22, 1992 W. Brattleboro
Dear Stanley:
Some pen pal you got yourself.
I haven’t written to anyone in months, and I puzzle over this, whether it’s self-absorption or conceit or what. Not really self-absorption, because I don’t take myself as a subject for self-examination, never place myself on the psychological witness stand and am not so much modest as uninterested in studying my motives. I had a father-in-law years ago, a “great painter” in a sort of Stalinist Moulin-Rouge style. He described me to my then-wife as an “oral miser.” He didn’t take into account my seriousness about language. I don’t like babbling. Also I was fascinated by his four-square profundity about art, sex, the Collective Unconscious, his mixture of Marx and Jung, his guile, his swami airs—his commitment to his powers of penetration. The summit of unlikely resemblances: He was like a poet named St.-Jean Perse. Perse would stand on his toes, go rigid, widen his eyes and penetrate you. As in the Eliot line (I see from your last book that you are fond of Eliot) “When I am formulated, wriggling on a pin.” They pinned you. Only, I made a phenomenal escape every time.
No it isn’t self-absorption. I think continually about people. Because I didn’t answer your March letter, perhaps, I’ve thought about you every day for months and often read your essays [Pieces of Soap], agreeing or differing. No, it’s another problem, totally other: I haven’t got it together, as the children say. It hasn’t been together for quite a while now. Maybe there’s a profound reason—an enormous and total re-tooling. I’m an old man, after all. I have to rethink, restructure, revise. I’m not even faintly myself when I’m not writing, and won’t write as I formerly (in other lives) wrote. That isn’t good enough. It isn’t deep enough. Not sufficiently comprehensive. Doesn’t satisfy the emotional hunger, the ultimate craving. I never had what my old-time Village pals called “Writer’s Block.” If I’m ever blocked, it’s in conversation. Which is why the revolutionary painter father-in-law called me an oral miser. He was right, in a way. I clammed up because he was listenable-to rather than talkable-to.
Maybe the difficulty is due to the season. Strange things happen to the soul in summertime. Rudolf Steiner, whose books I’ve read by the score, wrote that in summer nature passes out, goes unconscious, lies in a deep sleep. You would think that it slept in winter, which is barren, all its faculties frozen. On the contrary, winter is a season of intense consciousness or wakefulness. It’s in the prolific summer that the earth is overtaken by sleep, yielding itself in a swoon to fertility. If the soul had its way it would lie dazed all the summer months.
Like you (in many ways) I agree that writing is writing. I have trouble with thank-you notes or letters of recommendation and so I prefer to think of the pages of fiction that I write as letters to the very best of non-correspondents. The people I love—the great majority of them unknown to me.
Old Tschacbasov wasn’t even listenable-to, he was a repulsive old phony and low self-dramatizer, a would-be Father Karamazov but without intelligence or wit. I materialized unwillingly in his studio because I was married to his daughter. She saw me as an “artist” too and held it against me. In the end she fired me because I was her father all over again, in an inferior version.
All best,
To Teddy Kollek
August 17, 1992 W. Brattleboro
My dear Teddy,
I often think of our visionary conversations at the Mishkenot about a sequel to my Jerusalem book. I sometimes feel that it would be too much for my poor old faculties and that my time-abused frame could never be equal to it. What I need is to hear the summoning Voice to which Samuel answered “Hineni”[113]. In your optimism you suggest that I should be lying awake nights—with a hearing aid perhaps. As Mayor of Jerusalem you may have advance notice of the prophetic moment.
Janis and I will be in Chicago in October and although we can’t do for you what the multi-million Pritzkers can, we always fall back on the resources of the poor, namely, love and respect. Send us your date of arrival and we will round up the anshey ha’ ir [114] and lay on a memorable evening or two.
A friend of mine, Margaret [Staats] Simmons, editor-in-chief of Travel Holiday magazine, will be visiting Jerusalem September 22nd-23rd and has expressed a wish to make an archeological tour. She will be staying at the King David. Travel Holiday, owned by The Reader’s Digest Inc., has a large circulation and Mrs. Simmons is a person of good taste. A little ancient grandeur is all she needs to make her happy. She will write to your office by and by.
Ever yours affectionately,
To Rosanna Warren
October 21, 1992 Chicago
Dear Rosanna,
Pestering? If I were to give out licenses to pester, you’d be near the top of my list. I used to plead lack of time, and now I can add old age in my polite refusals. What’s more, I’ve been hammered flat by the recent death of an old friend [Allan Bloom]. But Bill [Arrowsmith] was an old friend too and it would be more a pleasure than a duty to read his translation of Montale. I promise, even, to get to it as quickly as possible.
In the old days we used to say about people like [John Kenneth] Galbraith that he was vaccinated with a gramophone needle. But we’ll all be in Vermont again next summer and if you come to visit us he’ll be sure not to be there.
To John Auerbach
November 12, 1992 Chicago
Dear John—
Getting used to a new and none-too-pleasant mode of life—vacancies to fill which are by nature unfillable. I pass Allan’s doorway and the great apartment house is like a monument, a pyramid with oneself under it all. I feel and I believe also that I look like someone else these days—perhaps an older member of my own family, but certainly not me, S. Bellow. An uncle or perhaps an aunt. Also I feel a powerful impulse to race away, to escape the constraints which go with being so-and-so, a person for whom (physically) I have no use.
These puzzling differences from what I am accustomed to consider myself must come from mourning, and they may or may not pass. (How can I tell?)
I sometimes think that if I were in S’dot Yam we could give each other comfort. If only I could get there by subway! I’d dearly love to walk along the sea with you and watch the water coming in.
I hope this note doesn’t depress you. I turn to you when I’m sad, as we will turn to the people we love.
In an effort to “get out from under” I’ve made myself impossibly busy. I have dozens of jobs to do and drive myself to get them done. A foolish and characteristic measure which only makes things worse. Janis thinks a few days in Vermont catching up on sleep will do us some good, so we’ll go off next week. Chicago now has its first taste of winter—you will remember from your pre-Israel days how the seasons trek one up and down.
Our best love to Nola.
Your friend,
To John Silber
December 27, 1992 Chicago
Dear John,
You’ll be wondering what became of me. Let me say first, however, how splendid your offer is, and how generous—how pleased I am by it and how grateful.
I can now go on to tell you that it has made my whole life flash before me like the experience of the drowning. We have had to consider, my wife Janis and I, just how life should be lived—i.e. what to make of the future. On the whole, a cheerful thing to do, although there are lurid flashes of an apocalyptic nature on the horizon, and the horizon is furthermore uncomfortably close. Problems of moving and resettlement arise. And then as I grow older I think of reducing the time spent in teaching.
Since Boston and BU have a great many attractions, would it be possible to teach half-time? I coul
d make the public appearances—I don’t mind those too much—and it would be agreeable to live in Brookline or the Back Bay. Would it be possible to find a teaching position for Janis? She has just gotten her Ph.D. while studying in the Committee on Social Thought. She taught college courses in political theory and also in literature, and she would be ideally suited for your undergraduate Humanities program.
I’m tremendously grateful for your super invitation, and I hope you will forgive all this elderly fussing about “what to do with my life.”
Endless thanks and all the best,
Silber was at the time president of Boston University.
1993
To Jonathan Kleinbard
April 25, 1993 Paris
Dear Jonathan,
[ . . . ] I can’t cope with life in Chicago. A month in Paris has brought back to me the life I knew in the past—free movement, peaceable crowds in parks. I don’t expect Boston to be different from Chicago, but there is Vermont close by. I don’t feel like breathing my last in the Maginot Line (5825 [Dorchester], Apt 11E).
I shall miss you and Joan and your friendship. Janis will feel being away from Joan as a serious privation.
But it was understood tacitly that we’d have to get out of Chicago. Allan said to me, “You’re planning the moves you’ll make when I die.” That was a bad moment for me, but he was right of course, and I was silent. But after a time I said, “Yes, but I’ll be catching up with you soon enough.” He agreed with that, and we went back to discussing the Bulls’ chances against the Knicks.
So—who was the sports figure that said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”? He was dead right.
We’ll continue to love you both from Boston, Vermont, etc., as well as from the life-to-come.
We’ll be back on May 17th, to pack, etc. and we’ll have more to say then.
Yours ever,
To Philip Roth
July 20, 1993 W. Brattleboro
Dear Philip,
Curious how futile good intentions feel in a case like this. The whole of one’s personal morality is on the line—a tug-of-war in which I am outweighed a million to one by the imponderables. If you were to ask I’d come down to see you, though I’ve never seen myself as a bearer of remedies. I can’t think of a single cure I ever worked. My idea of a mitzvah was to tell you a joke, which was like offering to install a Ferris wheel in your basement. Certainly not a useful idea.
This may seem to be a greeting from the horizon but I’m really not all that far. I feel anything but distant.
Affectionately,
Roth had suffered a serious illness, followed by the dissolution of his marriage to Claire Bloom.
To Roger Kaplan
July 20, 1993 W. Brattleboro
Dear Roger,
Don’t think we’ve forgotten you—it isn’t forgetfulness, it’s the hurlyburly of relocation. There was a thirty-year accumulation of Chicago junk to transport, to say nothing of our cat Moose, without whom no stable domestic life is possible.
I don’t know how useful I can be to you, you’ve done such a job (just as I did at your time of life) of supercomplication. I tried to get this complex operation down in the first pages of Henderson the Rain King with a catalogue of burdens, duties and handicaps.
It gave me some feeling of being helpful or useful through our mere presence in Paris. I can’t say that I have any grasp whatever of your psychological problems. Psychology (let’s be thankful for some things) is not my trade. Nor do I size you up as the sort of person who will tell his shrinker everything. You’d be sure to keep a few capstones or even cornerstones in your pocket. (It slows one up to carry so much rock, but it’s the safest strategy.)
Besides, I don’t want your foundation stones, only your affection. Reciprocity guaranteed.
Yours ever,
To Nathan Tarcov
August 18, 1993 W. Brattleboro
Dear Nathan,
Your invitation is very kind and I thank you for it. I find it a bit difficult just now, before I have had time to set up a routine for myself at BU, to make plans for this academic year. I’d be more than happy to come in ’94-’95. I name these years with a certain hesitancy. At my time of life one becomes somewhat circumspect in the matter of future dates, but the natural thing is to go ahead and make them since I’ve never had the experience of being prevented by certain powerful forces—often mentioned but not as yet seen (by me)—from keeping an appointment.
It boils down to this: I’d love to come but I am not at this moment able to set a time. I shall be thinking about an appropriate book suitable for discussion at a high-powered seminar.
I was distressed by the Sunday Times review of Allan’s book. It was not only criminal from an intellectual standpoint but also showed how low the Times has sunk. If I were not personally involved I should have written to Max Frankel to ask him how he could allow such stuff to be printed and why it was that he was willing to identify his point of view with that of the Nation . This Katha [Pollitt] is the sort of hit-person bred nowadays in the lower depths of New York.
Yours affectionately,
Nathan Tarcov, son of Oscar and Edith, has been for many years a professor of political philosophy in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His books include Locke’s Education for Liberty. Katha Pollitt, a staff writer at The Nation, had negatively reviewed Allan Bloom’s posthumously published Love and Friendship in The New York Times Book Review.
To John Auerbach
October 18, 1993 W. Brattleboro
Dear John,
We’re getting a serious taste of the dying year in Vermont. The leaf-season was brilliant. Now comes cold rain, fog and the trees are dripping. No different from the Polish winters you used to know.
I think of you often, but I seem incapable of writing letters, and the incapacity is symptomatic. I seem to sacrifice everything in order to write a few pages (more often than not, bad ones that have to be thrown away). Loose all over the place—bills and business letters, other peoples’ manuscripts accumulating on windowsills and in paper cartons. Everything is on hold. I’m unable to face the fact that I’m not going to catch up. [ . . . ]
“Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,
Dreaming on both.”
(Measure for Measure)
The only remedy is to come to terms with the biological facts, which I seem to resist bitterly. I do as I learned to do as a sick child (1923, in Montreal) and read books, magazines, papers, clippings, catalogues (L.L. Bean) and even recipes or directions for use on the backs of boxes. I hide in print. All I need to do is acknowledge that I am no longer thirty, nor forty, fifty, sixty, seventy. Old Cousin Louie [Dworkin] used to say when I came to see him—“I’m in the slemonium!”
I suppose I’m trying to find a way of my own—in this as in everything else.
Now tell me—is the TLS coming? We took a subscription two months ago.
Greet Nola for me.
Love,
“Slemonium” was evidently Cousin Louie’s private word for the stage of life beyond seventy.
1994
To Margaret Staats
January 4, 1994 Boston
Dear Maggie—
We’re in Boston now after much hugger-mugger, and trying to live with the aches caused by much property and attendant responsibilities. Just now everything has been shut down by winter storms. I sit facing the Charles, which has been iced over and snowed upon, and it isn’t going anywhere either. We’ll have to wait for the January thaw—I know it’s supposed to arrive—guaranteed by Yankee lore and tradition. And then we’ll go out and gather impressions of Boston. I have a fair understanding of the Green Line—the other subway colors, not yet.
Janis has found a cake plate for Signora Cinelli-Colombini (you remember her) and will send it to Montalcino. You with your bottomless memory are sure to be familiar with the name. Signora C.C. entertained us while I wrote th
e “Winter in Tuscany” article. You said that we should send a suitable present, and at last we’ve made a selection.
This morning I was playing whirling dervish—literally. It’s one of the Tibetan lamas’ exercises for squaring oneself with the chakras (vital centers of the spiritual-romantic self). I got dizzy (my first effort) and fell down. A real fall that shook the house. No damages to report.
Yr. indestructible old chum,
“Winter in Tuscany” had been commissioned for Travel Holiday and had appeared there in November 1992.
To Martin Amis
July 24, 1994 W. Brattleboro
Dear Martin,
I can generally diagnose my friends’ disorders by reading [their stories and novels]. I know from experience that a real comedian is at his best when he’s most wretched. I don’t like Freud at all but he was on target when he wrote that happiness is the remission of suffering, something he may have swiped from Schopenhauer. You will have guessed that this note is inspired by [Amis’s story] “Author, Author” in Granta. It’s the sort of comic x-ray that sinks the diagnostician’s spirits and fills the connoisseur’s heart with pure pleasure. I hear an echo here of Brutus after the assassination: We loved Caesar for his greatness but killed him because he was ambitious.
But of course writing well is also a sign of cure and recovery.
Janis who was also knocked flat—“decked” with happiness—sends love.
Yours as ever,
To Julian Behrstock
September 15, 1994 W. Brattleboro
Dear Julian—
As you will have guessed, I am disturbed to hear that you’ve been ill and had major surgery. When you have bad news your generous impulse is to reassure everyone. That, I’ve learned, is one of your deepest traits. You could hardly have gone through a course of chemotherapy without deep-fatigue—but the Midi and some rest and musing bring back your joie de vivre, and your mood is upbeat.