Letters Read online

  I am going to be in New York the weekend of December 7th, and I’d like to pick the boy up on Friday evening and keep him with me for the weekend. If you insist on his attending Sunday School, I can take him there myself and wait for him. With nearly two months’ notice, I hope you will not invent any appointments at the last moment. Two weeks ago you told me Adam could not see me because he had to see the dentist. He told me last Saturday that he’s never been to the dentist.

  I shall send you my new address in Chicago and I expect to hear from you about the weekend of the 7th. I hope we have seen the last of these unnecessary vexations and squabbles.

  To Toby Cole

  October 28, 1962 Chicago

  Dear Toby:

  The money’s come, and Susie and I have found an apartment on the South Side (address forthcoming; just now the joint’s being painted) and everything is highly satisfactory so far. Can’t say I miss New York. Chicago with its old associations is oppressive at times and will challenge the flexibility of both of us. But we can always go back to Tivoli, if we’re overcome, and spend the rest of our lives in recovering.

  Of course I’m highly pleased about the Piccolo Teatro [di Milano]—don’t they want to wait till I’ve rewritten the play? They’re welcome to it as is. Or perhaps [Giorgio] Strehler has ideas that might be of use to me? I’d be glad to hear from him (when I’ve finished my book; all these moves have not advanced it). [ . . . ]

  Since Zero [Mostel] is having temperament (an old-fashioned affliction of artists in the last century) why shouldn’t [Jackie] Gleason have a look? Tell Zero from me that what his mood wants is a swift kick in the rear to hasten its departure. We all carry approximately the same load of unwashed plates from life’s banquet. On the weak flat feet of the soul. Henderson should make things easier, not harder. Well, don’t repeat this to him at all. Just give him my regards and say “Bellow’s compliments, and please hurry up a little.”

  Revolutionary greetings,

  Toby Cole (1916-2008) was a Los Angeles-based theatrical agent and activist well known for her advocacy of blacklisted talents such as Zero Mostel. In later life, she was a frequent presence on Pacifica Radio. Legendary director Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997) co-founded the Piccolo Teatro in Milan soon after the war and ran it for many years.

  To Oscar Tarcov

  October 30, 1962 Chicago

  Dear Oscar—

  Having fled defeated from the scene of my own disorganization, I am here, organizing a new chaos. I can send you the details soon—I’ll enjoy doing it. [ . . . ]

  We’ve found an apartment at 1755 E. 55th St. which is being painted and can be occupied next week. Meantime you (or Zara) can reach me at the University. (It’s very curious. I am not interfered with at all. My only work has been my own: Herzog. I should be finished soon. But Chicago is both depressing—dreadful!—and exhilarating. I am waiting to find out why I came here.)

  Susie and I could be happy on an ice floe.

  It’s too early to say how Greg is doing. His first enthusiasm for the school was great but it’s wearing off as he settles down to the academic grind. He brings a very personal attitude to every class. If he likes his teacher he does well. If the man doesn’t meet his personal requirements the results are awful.

  We miss you,

  To John Leggett

  November 12, 1962 Chicago

  Dear Jack:

  [ . . . ] My wife read your last note and wanted to know whom you had seen me with in Central Park. I don’t take girls to Central Park. At my age a man needs steam-heated love. [ . . . ]

  Yours for propriety,

  Jack Leggett (born 1917) was an editor at Houghton Mifflin and Harper & Row who left publishing in 1969 to run the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. He has published, among other books, A Daring Young Man: A Biography of William Saroyan (2002).

  To John Berryman

  November 13, 1962 Chicago

  Dear John:

  Just now in Poetry I read four Dream Songs, and wish to say, this being the hour when strength is low, thank you. We keep each other from the poorhouse. If it hadn’t been for you there would have been many a night of porridge and a thin quilt, cocoa made with water. I will try to return the favor. With Herzog.

  Of the eminent names above [on the Committee for Social Thought masthead] I know only half. I love Ed Shils (have you read any of his books?) and David Grene is splendid—rides a horse in the Forest Preserves and teaches Greek and Latin. He also has a farm in Ireland.

  Susie and I are settling slowly. Susie is a perfectionist and must have plenty of time. She’s an adorable woman.

  Greg is on the cross-country team here and takes courses in mathematics and political theory. Life is very long.

  Greet your wife, and much love,

  To Edward Shils

  November 21, 1962 Chicago

  Dear Edward:

  If [Samuel S.] Goldberg did show up, I hope he wasn’t too much trouble. He was traveling with my former father-in-law, Tschacbasov the painter, one of the stranger formations of nature in its recent experiments. The thought that they might have appeared together before you in Cambridge [England, where Shils was in residence at King’s College] visited me like a nightmare. Not even a student of life like yourself ought to be exposed to so much of it at one time.

  As for me—for us—Chicago has opened its arms. I’d like it to stay that way—open arms, not a closed embrace. Susan is very happy here. It would have been unfair and even dangerous to try to keep her on the farm. She has a taste for solitude, like me, but shouldn’t be encouraged. Here she has many friends, and isn’t dependent on mine as she would be in the East. As for me, I haven’t the smallest complaint to make of Chicago; my life here has been altogether pleasant if disordered—but that’s normal with me. I’ve been working very hard, perhaps harder than I should, to finish Herzog. I don’t know whether the poor fellow can stand as much attention as I’ve devoted to him. The Committee has been splendid. I float in and out, have a talk with Father Kim. He tells me why he didn’t become a Communist; I tell him about modern literature. Then I walk on the Midway for the fresh air, and in the stacks for the stale, gaze at the bare shelves in the office and wonder what books [Friedrich von] Hayek kept. I see his cane, like a prop from Sherlock Holmes, hanging on the wall . . . They say he loved mountain climbing. He has left behind a Schnitzlerian flavor which I very much enjoy. Elsewhere in the city, a certain number of spooks occasionally rise to haunt me. Bitter melancholy—one of my specialties—but sometimes I feel that certain of these old emotions have lost their hold. I realize they no longer have their ancient power. Good idea for a story: the Limbo of terrors which have lost their grip. [ . . . ]

  Yours, as ever,

  Edward B. Shils (1910- 95), preeminent University of Chicago sociologist and fellow at King’s College, Cambridge (1961-70), and Peterhouse, Cambridge (1970-78). His many books include Ideology and Utopia (1936) and The Calling of Sociology (1980). At the Committee on Social Thought, Bellow had moved into the office formerly occupied by Friedrich von Hayek, influential Austrian-born economist and political philosopher, author of The Road to Serfdom (1944).

  To Ralph Ross

  November 26, 1962 Chicago

  Dear Ralph:

  I’m afraid John Berryman is overboard again. Monroe Engel just phoned from Cambridge to say that John and his wife came up from Providence, and it’s the same sad story—poetry, drink, etc. Nothing for it but to sigh. It’s the only way he gets a little rest and comfort, poor John. He came to Tivoli to see us last October, and seemed better than usual. With a child coming, his poise was astonishing. I figured it not to last—safe bet . . . Last year when I talked to the people at Brown I told them he’d be slightly irregular. I hope he’ll soon be out. You may want to send him a note. The address is:

  McLean Hospital

  1075 Pleasant St.

  Belmont, Mass.

  (It’s always Pleasant St., Golden Valley, Lotus Isla
nd.)

  Meanwhile we sturdier citizens go on. I haven’t had a bad fit since I left Mpls. and even then, as you subsequently observed, I wasn’t altogether insane. Ludwig and Sondra had really laid a terrible burden on me. [ . . . ]

  Anyway, we’ve put that behind us. Though it may be dangerous to say it, I’m extremely lucky in my new wife Susan.

  Do you ever pass through Chicago? We’re at 1755 E. 55th St., Butterfield 8-2530. It’s the Committee on Social Thought, the most beautiful of all my employers.

  Greetings to Alicia, and to you my warmest and best,

  To Edward Shils

  December 17, 1962 Chicago

  Dear Ed—

  I’ve put myself in the Bulletin for spring with a vague course title. This winter I’m offering something called “Comic Literature from Rameau’s Nephew to Abram Tertz’s ‘The Icicle.’”

  Susie and I thrive in Chicago, though it has been gloomy. I’m becoming accustomed to the blitzed look of Hyde Park. The vast amount of writing I’m able to do makes me immune to the Stygian darkness. There are of course bright beacons here and there, which beckon. Jean Malaquais, Erich Heller and Stephen Spender are at Northwestern, but these beckoning beacons have not tempted me from my desk. [ . . . ]

  Merry Xmas to you and Adam,

  1963

  To Edward Hoagland

  January 7, 1963 Chicago

  Dear Ted:

  Unfortunately the career of The Noble Savage is ended, so I’m sending back your article to Asher in the hope that he may remember the name of your agent. It is gone from my mind. The disappearance of the Savage makes it suspiciously easy to say that I would have printed your article—I really would have though, because I agreed with it largely and see that you’re a writer, and the magazine existed to print writers. Malamud’s book [A New Life] soured me; it was mixed up between comedy and earnestness and I suspect he was going by some modern system of critical logarithms and not by his own sort of reckoning. Nor do you prove to my satisfaction that distance from the social issues is more desirable. If there is Baldwin here writing an abominable novel on the issues of the day, Italy provides the example of a Silone who wrote Bread and Wine after the outbreak of the Ethiopian War. But of course you recognize yourself that what is wrong is the stridency of writers like Baldwin and their tone of personal injury, at times nothing but an infant cry. The jazz musician in Baldwin’s last book sobs to the heavens, “You motherfucker, ain’t I your baby too?” He seems to be asking for a nice comfy layette just like the white chilluns have. Perhaps it’s the fact that Malamud and Hawthorne have severed themselves from infancy that impresses you. That is significant, in American literature. Hawthorne of course lights out for old age as soon as the bonds are cut, streaking away for palsied eld.

  Of myself, no defense. I have done the things I ought not to have done and left undone etc. in the regular Pauline form.

  I hope your work is going well. Europe has excited you, and your marriage has made you happy. I am happy for you and send you best wishes,

  The “abominable” Baldwin novel was Another Country. “Palsied eld” is from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: “for all thy blessèd youth / Becomes as agèd, and doth beg the alms / of palsied eld.”

  To John Berryman

  January 7, 1963 Chicago

  Dear John:

  Congratulations! How I envy your daughter! If I thought I’d get a similar result I’d start now to persuade Susan; renew the covenant, show our trust in the species (what have I done for it lately?!). What a lucky man you are, for all that comedy about the drained and seedless bag. The biological order lets us know (“Don’t call me, I’ll call you”).

  Recently there drifted into reach as I rocked in the ocean of life a copy of Encounter with more of your poems. Henry is the only prophet left, the last true child of Jeremiah. Texas will not heed him nor learn from him, but we Bible students are in your debt forever.

  I have put aside Herzog for a while to write a comedy—Old Bummidge is on the threshold of production. Let us hope he will utter some words of truth to the occupants of ten-dollar seats.

  Susan is well and joins me in sending love to you both,

  To Henry Volkening

  February 25, 1963 Chicago

  Dear Henry—

  If the article in Perspectives had been about you, I would have had the same feelings. When I do the mental balance of what people playfully call my “career,” I find that my love for H. Volkening is among the biggest of the credits. You can never get into the Freifeld class. He’s a sort of brother I must always be prepared to make allowances for, dependably incompetent Sam. He’ll never understand. You, on the other hand, are always far ahead of me. So we have a good balance.

  I see very little here of Sam. I’m still under the curse of busyness. Last week I finished re-writing the play. The experts predicted it would take six months. It took twenty days of very hard work. Since Joe Anthony was pleased with Act I, he won’t dislike Act II—they’re remarkably consistent. I’m not too busy to brag a bit. This is as sweet a piece of work as I’ve ever done. What the team will do with it we can’t foretell, of course, but I’ve acquitted myself honorably. Now back to Moses [Herzog] and Britannica. I’ve had what mouse-psychologists call a “closure.” The eighth note of the scale has been played at last and I’m enjoying this sense of completion.

  It makes me feel stronger.

  I’ve all the money I need, besides, so let’s not let Rusty get sassy with us. I suggest you pin him down this week.

  Susie and I are driving to Austin, Texas on March 2nd, returning to Chicago about the 12th of the month.

  Yours, as ever,

  Joseph Anthony (1912-1993) would indeed direct The Last Analysis on Broadway. “Rusty” was L. Rust Hills (1926-1983), longtime fiction editor at Esquire.

  To Toby Cole

  March 21, 1963 Chicago

  Dear Toby—

  We see eye to eye about Bummidge, thank goodness, and I hope for everyone’s sake that Zero will put his eye where it belongs. The latest news from Joe Anthony is good but not good enough. He wants to direct the play, thinks I’ve solved the main problems, but he’s a very busy man and has about five large projects for next season. We are simply in his stable, and the hay is very tasty but I’m not a vegetarian. Joe is hoping that Zero will accept. He hopes thereby to gain time since Zero is tied up for some months to come.

  Now I can easily understand Zero’s position. He may want to continue with [A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum] and I assume that Hal Prince will offer him a fatter contract for the next year. In that case I could never blame Z. for rejecting Bummidge. But if Z. isn’t going to play with us we must have a new director as well as another star, for it would be absurd to wait for Anthony who may—may!—be able to find time in winter of ’64 for us. This is why I must insist on a quick decision by Z. And Z., I know, will grasp the situation quickly. I must ask you to push the matter with impartial zeal—I mean in other words that you must make the thing work for me! If this project doesn’t advance it will collapse. One beam is buckling already—Joe—and I’ve told Lyn Austin that I’d like her to find out what Jerome Robbins is up to. Should Joe leave the scene we must be prepared to replace him. But I’d say nothing about this to Zero.

  Happy Lent.

  Love,

  Lyn Austin was the Broadway producer Bellow had been dealing with.

  To John Berryman

  October 19, 1963 Chicago

  Dear John—

  My advice is to put nothing in your title to color all the poetry from above. You might as well call it “The Spiritual History of America under the Administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Anyway, it’s Henry who belongs on the title page and on the spine. I vote for “76: The Lay of Henry.” But your own judgment is the only important one.

  I can’t say that all is well with us. My lifelong friend Oscar Tarcov was carried off by a heart attack on Wednesday. I feel I’d rather die mys
elf than endure these deaths, one after another, of all my dearest friends. It wears out your heart. Eventually survival feels degrading. As long as death is our ultimate reality, it is degrading. Only waiting until Cyclops finds us. It is horrible! And it figures that we should be ruled by murderers.

  But I know you are pleasantly excited by life—Kate, child. I shall keep the rest of my feelings to myself. All except my love,

  Berryman’s collection would be called 77 Dream Songs when it appeared in 1965.

  To Nathan Tarcov

  October 22, 1963 [Chicago]

  Dear Nathan—

  I am deeply, bitterly, sorry that I couldn’t attend your father’s funeral. Oscar and I had an unbroken friendship for thirty years, and since I was sometimes hasty and bad-tempered it was due to him that there were no breaks. I loved him very much, and I know that no son ever lost such a gentle, thoughtful father as you have lost. This is probably not a consoling thing to tell you but I’m sure it expresses what you feel, as well as my belief and feeling. Oscar’s sort of human being is very rare.

  My friendship with him and with Isaac Rosenfeld goes back to 1933, when my mother died. I’m sure I brought to these relationships emotions caused by that death. I was seventeen—not much older than you. If I explain this to you, it’s not because I want to talk about myself. What I mean to say is that I have a very special feeling about your situation. I experienced something like it. I hope that you will find—perhaps you have found—such friends as I had on Lemoyne St. in 1933. Not in order to “replace” your father, you never will, but to be the sort of human being he was, one who knows the value of another man. He invested his life in relationships. In making such a choice a man sooner or later realizes that to love others is his answer to inevitable death. Other answers we often hear are anger, rebellion, bitterness. Your father, by temperament, could make no other choice. Perhaps you wondered why I was so attached to him. He never turned me away when I needed him. I hope I never failed him, either.