by Saul Bellow
Yours with love,
Author, linguist, psychotherapist and philanthropist Evelyn Stefansson Nef (1913-2009) was the widow of John U. Nef, Bellow’s longtime colleague in the Committee on Social Thought. Previously, she had been the lover of Buckminster Fuller, the wife of puppeteer Bil Baird, and the wife of explorer Vihjalmur Stefansson.
To Richard Stern
November 15, 1998 Brookline
Dear Richard,
Your notes always give me great comfort.
Am I all right? No, just partly right. My memory, of which I was West-Point proud, keeps disappointing me. Last week I couldn’t remember Katharine Hepburn’s name and the name of her lover—Somebody Tracy eluded me for several days. And I actually have to go back to reference works, to my great shame. Well, perhaps God is trying to tell me that though I could remember everything, I didn’t really understand anything. The pacemaker, however, keeps my heart regular, and I can drink all the wine I like at dinner and thumb my nose at caffeine.
I wouldn’t throw in the towel—yet. A little anecdote to illustrate; I dug it up last month in writing a note to Jack Miles (you’ll see this for yourself in the next number of TROL): An old man lives in the forest alone and gathers winter fuel and finds himself one day unable to lift his burden of sticks. He raises his eyes to heaven and says, “O God, send me Death,” and when Death comes Death says, “Did you send for me, sir?” The old man replies, “Yes, lend me a hand with these sticks. Just put them on my shoulder and I’ll do the rest.”
You may want that towel one day to wipe your inspired brow.
Say hello to Alane.
Yours ever,
1999
To Edward Simmons
June 3, 1999 W. Brattleboro
Dear Edward:
Your mother tells me how well you’re doing. You’re off to college now and, inevitably, I think of my own college days back in the Thirties. Those were the Depression years and we were given to understand that our parents were hard-put to raise two dollars for our tuition. Three hundred dollars a year were no trifle, in those lean times, and I was often reminded that idling and drinking were forbidden. A handful of people had money to burn but the immense majority were flat-broke, very nearly down and out. Nevertheless I was often playing pool when I should have been in class. Luckily I was also a smart Jewish kid and read tons of books on my own so that I passed my exams—I squeaked by in my early years. It was only in my junior year that I began to do better, graduating with honors and a fellowship to the University of Wisconsin.
The powers of your own mind will turn against you if you don’t master them. They’ll cut you down. You seem, to go by your record, to have discovered this for yourself.
But enough of this sententious stuff. I congratulate you. You’re doing just fine, and I am pleased for your own sake, and for your parents’ as well.
Congratulations.
Your godfather,
To Werner Dannhauser
October 6, 1999 Brookline
Dear Werner:
It’s about time you heard from me.
I promised to eliminate what you thought to be objectionable material and I wrote a revised version of Ravelstein. It took quite a lot of doing and the doing went against the grain. When I was done the results were highly unsatisfactory; what was lacking was the elasticity provided by sin. In the midst of this lengthy, time-consuming and ultimately sterile procedure I remembered how displeased Bloom had been with The Dean’s December. He objected to the false characterization of Alexandra and he didn’t spare me one bit. But now the shoe is on the other foot and I saw no reason why I should do in Ravelstein what Allan himself had so strongly objected to in the earlier novel. After all, I was trying to satisfy Allan’s wishes, and I couldn’t have it both ways. I couldn’t be both truthful and camouflaged. So I did as I think he would have wished me to do. And I know that I am going to alienate most of my Straussian friends. Some of these old friends I can well afford to lose, but you are not in that number. In your case, the loss would be hard to bear. Believe me, none of this is literary frivolity. I’ve taken the whole matter with great—the greatest—seriousness. And I hope I’ve made clear to you the sort of bind I found myself in. I should expect to lose friends, but I don’t expect you to be one of them. I don’t think much remains to be said. I often give thought to the Jewish category of kherem, which means excommunication. I do hope this novel is not going to estrange us.
Right now I’m taking heat on three fronts: i) Paternity—a fresh start at the age of 84; ii) The messy explosive mixture that James Atlas is preparing for me in the form of a biography; iii) The hue and cry about [Ravelstein] against which I must brace myself. Janis occasionally says to me that maybe we should move to Uruguay. I have a remote connection with the family of the dictator and I did get an A in my high school Spanish course . . .
2000
To the Swedish Academy
[n.d.] [Brookline]
I wish to nominate the American novelist Philip Roth for the Nobel Prize. His books have been so widely examined and praised that it would be superfluous for me to describe, or praise, his gifts.
To Martin Amis
February 7, 2000 Brookline
Dear Martin,
I used to be a ready correspondent but somehow over the years I lost the habit of writing letters. Maybe the death of so many pals was at the bottom of this, a first generation and then a second and even a third dying. I suspect I’ve lost count. It may even be that the confidences I made to my friends are now offered to my readers. That, if true, is not a good development—but I’m not prepared to go any further in that direction. It’s enough to say that I feel like talking to you and that I find myself very often turning to you for relief. It is a kid’s game to have imaginary conversations, convinced somehow—as kids are—that the imaginary gets translated reliably into the minds of your friends.
But it’s Ravelstein I’m thinking of all the while. I’d never written anything like Ravelstein before, and the mixture of fact and fiction has gotten out of hand. There are other elements besides, because the facts are so impure. There’s fact, and then there is journalistic fact with its usual accents. You can even see the journalists transforming fact into scandal and, towards the top, scandal lapsing over into myth, moving into the medieval territory reserved for plague. I was not prepared to hear a leper’s bell ring at the cross-roads of affection and eccentric charm.
It seems that many people knew the truth about Allan. If not the pure truth then the bendable, versatile kind that academic politics is familiar with. So I found myself challenged by fanatical people. I discovered very soon that Allan had enemies who were preparing to reveal that he had died of AIDS. At this point I lost my head; when the New York Times telephoned to have it out with me I fell apart—I was unable to outsmart the journalists. So here I am, the author of a tribute which has been transformed into one of those civilized disasters no one can be prepared for.
As you well know, the attention of the public and the press is seldom pleasant, and with rare exceptions (the Pope, for instance) it gives no one a break. I tell people that Ravelstein asked me to write a memoir and that it would have been false and wicked to omit the sickness that killed him from the account I gave of his life. With an omniscient wisdom like his it would have been impossible not to predict what would come of this. But I was ready, so I thought, to handle all the embarrassments that were bound to swarm over me. I couldn’t have faced myself if I had turned aside from a character of Ravelstein’s stature. I long ago understood that what we call the art of fiction was withering because—well, because modern democracies were unheroic.
But I find myself needing to explain unheroic democracy to the journalists and the public and it depresses me beyond all boundaries of former depression. I get what comfort I can get from reflecting that at my age the shop is in any case about to shut its doors. Last week I flew to see my ancient sister in Cincinnati. She’s my senior by nine years, and w
hen I heard the news of the crash of an Air Alaska jet off the Pacific coast I thought, “Why not Delta Airlines as well, into the Ohio River?” But no. I landed safely and was driven out to the luxury funny farm where my sister lives. She was glad I had come and wanted to see pictures of the new baby. What we do not discuss is the fact that there’s only a single grave left in the family plot.
Janis feels that this is an oppressive letter but it’s given me a lift.
To Martin Amis
April 13, 2000 Brookline
Dear Martin,
When your manuscript arrived I was winding up Ravelstein and Janis had Experience all to herself. That is probably a misleading way to put it—she acts for both of us so she kept me posted while reading, and at lunch, drinks-time and dinner she described what you were up to, praised the stylistic breakthrough you had made. She is an inflammable, excitable and exacting reader. She said you had found a way to digress without appearing to, unloading a heavy freight of information without the slightest appearance of wandering.
I was taken with your asterisk-asides. Altogether, you have come up with a way of writing entirely your own. The unit is no longer a sentence but a characteristic utterance. Can it be that the Amises have somehow developed a consistent way of putting things? If I knew your father’s books better I might be able to pin down these characteristics. As it is, there is evidence of an independent expository style. From a variety of angles the book gives an account of the death of your father. Increasingly, I wonder whether these literary accomplishments are traceable to a family way of speaking. I will be interested to see whether Louis and Jacob [Amis’s sons] will be tinged by this. My own parents, along with my father’s sister, brought me up not in English but in a cognate language spoken by prodigies, wits and wizards. It’s possible that your boys, like salamanders, will make themselves at home in the flames. Your father’s conduct as well as your own point that way and that’s why Experience doesn’t read quite like a written document. I am trying to account for the strong impression your father made on me, his drinking, his womanizing. And his preoccupation with English usage, his absorption, his loyalty—amounting to fanaticism—to the right way with words. I found the man very moving and of course I couldn’t help wondering how I would appear to my own sons in my last days.
There is, or was, a Russian thinker named [Vasily] Rozanov who intrigues me. He declared that we wait thousands of years to be born, and then we come in, briefly, to do our stretch (I borrow this term from American-convict lingo). After ages of nonexistence we open our eyes, we see everything for the first time, we exist, we come into our intoxicating, dazzling “rights.” In our own generation we have glimpses of others, briefly and passionately beginning to see. This is why the murder of your cousin Lucy hits us so hard. Her aim was to live, to perfect herself, to come into her legacy. But she was murdered and buried. I can’t help thinking how very different a view of such enormities the media give us. [ . . . ]
I await your June visit, and I shall bone up on Rozanov. He is certainly worth talking about.
Love,
In 1973 Amis’s twenty-one-year-old cousin Lucy Partington vanished. Twenty years later her remains were uncovered beneath the Gloucester house of serial killers Fred and Rosemary West.
To Richard Stern
August 12, 2000 Brookline
Dear Dick,
I don’t intend to read [James] Atlas. There is a parallel between his book and the towel with which the bartender cleans the bar. What strikes me uncomfortably about Atlas is that he has great appeal for my detractors. He was born to please them. Another match made in heaven.
Yours ever,
To Philip Roth
[n. d.] [Brookline]
Dear Philip—
[David] Remnick must know that he struck it rich, this time—no Eng. Lit. Prof. would be capable of doing what you’ve done with my books. And I too have learned from you. I see now what I was evidently incapable of seeing unaided: that I’ve done what everybody else does. Everybody takes the cognitive line. Like any sociologist, we understand; like any psychologist, we analyze. No big deal.
What is a big deal is that I’ve had a breakdown and you covered for me. You’ve concealed my disorder and kept me looking normal—no minor achievement.
Yours,
Roth’s essay “Re-Reading Saul Bellow” had been commissioned by David Remnick, editor in chief of The New Yorker. It appeared there on October 9.
2001
To Keith Botsford
January 9, 2001 Brookline
Dear Keith,
A few gritty but happily minor details are on my mind this morning: I think it would be advisable to remove my name from the masthead of The Republic of Letters, starting with the next issue, and from the stationery when next you order it; also my name should disappear from the joint bank account. (On my tax return, The Republic of Letters will be listed as one of my investments, and I shall be claiming a capital loss—or whatever the accountants want it listed as.)
I am sure you won’t object to my fading away. On this morning of black and white, snow and tree trunks, some instinct for simplification rises up. I feel like Bismarck when he stepped aside at the request of the young Kaiser. My list of old friends grows shorter and shorter. We, though, shall still be having dinners, drinks, and discussions; and if from time to time I send you some notes, I hope you will view them as coming from a contributor. I hope you will continue to have me as a contributor, and if you have suggestions for me in that line, I should be only too glad to have you as my editor.
With every good wish,
2002
To William Kennedy
February 28, 2002 Brookline
Dear Bill,
I don’t think it’s too late even now to tell you how deeply I loved Roscoe. I think it’s your most successful novel yet, and I expect that more is to come. Heretofore, I was always concerned about your bringing together your singular and wonderful view of things with the idea of a large fiction always at the back of your mind, and I think you have finally united them both. I have always nagged at you to do just that, and I see that in spite of my nagging you have presented me, and the American public too, with exactly what we have been longing for. I hope you will be able to forgive me for this delay, but it takes me longer than most to catch up with things.
Your gratified reader,
To Karina Gordin
February 28, 2002 Brookline, Mass.
Dear Karina,
Since I am half-Gordin—on my mother’s side—I want to say that I was grateful to be in touch with the family again, and that your letter pleased me.
There comes a moment, with increasing frequency, when artists feel that they are hopelessly surrounded by goats and monkeys. I am against falling into despair because of superficial observations such as the foregoing. Actually, I’ve never stopped looking for the real thing; and often I find the real thing. To fall into despair is just a high-class way of turning into a dope. I choose to laugh, and laugh at myself no less than at others.
Affectionately,
2004
To Eugene Kennedy
February 19, 2004 Brookline
Dear Gene,
I tried to reach you by phone yesterday. Spurlos—the word employed by German submarine commanders. It means “without a trace”: not so much as an oil slick on the bosom of the Atlantic. (It occurs to me that you must have studied German under the Hollywood German experts.)
I don’t do much of anything these days and I spend much of my time indoors. By far my pleasantest diversion is to play with Rosie, now four years old. It seems to me that my parents wanted me to grow up in a hurry and that I resisted, dragging my feet. They (my parents, not my feet) needed all the help they could get. They were forever asking, “What does the man say?” and I would translate for them into heavy-footed English. That didn’t help much either. The old people were as ignorant of English as they were of Canadian French. We often stopped before a display o
f children’s shoes. My mother coveted for me a pair of patent-leather sandals with an elegantissimo strap. I finally got them—I rubbed them with butter to preserve the leather. This is when I was six or seven years old, a little older than Rosie is now. Amazing how it all boils down to a pair of patent-leather sandals.
I send an all-purpose blessing . . .
EDITOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOW LEDGMENTS
This volume includes about two fifths of Saul Bellow’s known output of letters. In some instances, I have emended eccentric punctuation in the interest of clarity, and have silently corrected a handful of spelling errors along with three insignificant factual misstatements. Letters made up of single-sentence paragraphs I have sometimes recast for ease of reading. Deleted material—most of it of doubtful interest, a miniscule portion removed for legal reasons—is indicated throughout by the customary ellipsis between brackets. I have broken with the standard practice of italicizing only published books, as Bellow tended to underline rather than place between quotation marks the titles of works in progress, particularly after an excerpt had appeared; for consistency, I have kept to this in the chronology as well. As to the clarifying or connecting language between brackets: I have sometimes fallen in with the author’s voice (e.g., in a letter to Susan Glassman, “Now the CBC has paid me an unexpected three hundred to produce [my one-act play] ‘The Wrecker’”) and sometimes used third person (e.g., in a letter to John Auerbach, “Smadar [Auerbach’s daughter] and her husband have been very kind”). About half the original letters are typewritten and half are by hand. Bellow’s cursive comes clear to anyone who perseveres with it. I have been able to decipher every word but one, perhaps blurred by a raindrop or (given the circumstances) a tear.