Letters Read online

  Susan wants to go to the Vineyard again but I am tempting her in this wilderness with visions of Europe. We may eventually find ourselves an acre somewhere near your pond and put up a Bucky Fuller dome, unless the zoning ordinances prevent it. Please give my best to Leda. I was distressed to hear she was ill again and I hope she’s better.

  All best,

  To Edward Shils

  January 26, 1966 Chicago

  My dear Edward:

  The Air India crash gave us a shock. I knew that you were in Cambridge, but you often fly that route and I associate you with it, and I myself am often up in the Boeing 707. Now that Civil Aeronautics has pronounced the 727 dangerous I’ve stopped using it. Sometimes I feel what a vain numbers-game I’m playing or catch myself applying imaginary brakes in the air. No one has gone into the air traveler’s mind, so far as I know. It’s waiting for its Dostoyevsky. I have a very distinct impression that sinners derive expiation from jet flights and clear their adulterous consciences by the risk they take, deserving the fair because they are brave. (Not so very brave, but then the fair are not so often very fair.) Then, too, plane travel does something for people in despair. I’ve seen it happen. Wishers-for-death especially find it soothing. But this is not a good subject—I have tickets to New York Friday night. I’m going to visit Adam, and to look into other less agreeable things. Also, I want to put Mr. Pawlyk aside for a few days. At times I feel very strong and rich, but more often inept and poor with this new subject. I can make a sensible forecast. I’m sure it will be powerful but strange, perhaps too strange. To be really good, among the best, one must get hold of a kind of Tolstoyan normalcy which no one can challenge. I don’t believe I can expect that now. I think what I have is relatively good poise in the midst of abnormalities. [ . . . ]

  The most agreeable thing about Chicago is that one doesn’t run into many writers, critical razboiniks [75] and gangsters of the pen. But then Chicago is also in a state of extraordinary winter nullity, and we haven’t seen many people. Winter nights are long. I have an electric blanket and read War and Peace. I’m convinced that Leo was a somatological moralist. Eyes, lips and noses, the color of the skin, the knuckles and the feet do not lie. The tone of Speransky’s laughter tells you his social ideas are unreliable. It’s not a bad system. I seem to have used it myself, most of the time. [ . . . ]

  You were marvelous in England. We shouldn’t have taken so much of your time, it made me guilty, but you gave it so willingly and freely and charmingly that I was extremely happy all day. It wasn’t just the visit to Cambridge, delightful in itself, it was the love that went into it that made it so extraordinary.

  Susan sends her love, too.

  “Mr. Pawlyk” was evidently an earlier name for the hero of what would become Mr. Sammler’s Planet.

  To Alice Adams

  February 23, 1966 Chicago

  Dear Alice,

  It gave me a good deal of pleasure to read your novel [Careless Love]. Something like a personal contact. I suppose that disqualifies me somewhat as a critic. I felt it to be about you, I read it as though the woman had been you. But I suppose that’s a proof of quality, since you came forward very clearly as a very charming woman, no nonsense, level-headed and clear about everything. It’s an excellent portrait within its limits. What I object to (not very strongly since the book was so pleasing to read) are the limits which I would describe as follows: Women like your heroine do seem to live completely in relationships and think of very little apart from their own feminine happiness. This is in its own way attractive—until one strikes what one is always sure to strike, namely, wretchedness, the unreliability of men, the poor human stuff of lovers, the fact that just as in poor Emma Bovary’s time they are telling sleazy lies and carrying on their deceptions. What you want to do next, if I may make a recommendation, is to write the last book in the Bovary series. The woman who ends the trend will be gratefully remembered.

  Having recorded this objection in my solemn and heavy Jewish way I feel free to express the rest, which is gratitude. I much enjoyed reading the book. It made me think of Oregon and that drunken night when you told me that I came on compulsively as a heymish [76] type.

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  29 March 29, 1966 Chicago

  Staats—

  Well, I thought that if the plane blew up it would let me out of a good deal of difficulty, and I’d be well ahead, with you as my last recollection. After ten million miles of creeping—a Dutch summit! I see you like that, and I think of you all the time. All the time.

  Haats.

  Bellow had met Maggie Staats at the residence of Harold Taylor, president of Sarah Lawrence College, in the early months of 1966.

  To Margaret Staats

  [n.d.] [Chicago]

  Now I know what “uneventful” means. It means a noise inside too loud to be affected by ordinary external events. Like airline turkey, gummy brownies, investment-counselors’ conversation, etc. I had an uneventful flight.

  Next, over the moors of Chicago by yellow cab. Seeing my little boy in a red hood. Dandelions. Then tiresome and strained conversation [with Sondra] covering well-known points about my bad character, mental disorders. In my favor, it is agreed that I have no malice or deadly wickedness. And that is true, so far as I know.

  Now and then even a loving heart. Aching at present for you,

  To Margaret Staats

  April 5, 1966 [Chicago]

  I long to see you again. I miss you so much, it’s like sickness, or hunger. Childish lovesickness. I tell myself how foolish it is—“A young girl I met in NY . . .” And I remind myself of “my time of life,” and of the “official structure,” my responsibilities. But the feelings only come back more strongly.

  [ . . . ]

  To Margaret Staats

  April 5, 1966 [Chicago]

  And what’s more, I don’t know which way to turn. Every choice, in advance, looks like a mistake. I wouldn’t give up the feeling for you that I have if I could. And I couldn’t. Although the absurdity of being in love now is more than my sense of irony can cope with. I’m fine, somehow, to see it overwhelmed.

  And don’t you think I know how different from those women you are? No, I don’t need destructive women.

  Not to see you makes me suffer. And I don’t know what to do.

  To Margaret Staats

  April 7, 1966 [Chicago]

  I didn’t believe it possible. Probably I thought I had been damaged, or self-damaged, too badly for this. Whatever the reasons, I didn’t expect that my whole soul would go out like this to anyone. That I would lie down and wake up by love instead of clocks.

  If I am busy, it’s because I need activity and concealment. I should be grateful. And I am. I’m also oppressed and heavy-hearted. It’s a case of amo quia absurdum [77]—the absurdity is mine, not yours. My age, my situation! It is absurdity.

  But what a super-absurdity not to love you. I feel some mystical sort of gratitude for this. I would, even if it turned out that you didn’t love me after all.

  By and by, I’ll write you how I spend my time.

  Evidently I cut my finger in NY to have a remembrance. I’ve got an awfully nice scar.

  To Margaret Staats

  April 12, 1966 [Chicago]

  Well, absurd or not, when I think of you my heart fills up. I love everything I can remember of you. With you I have a feeling I’ve never had before, that of being infinitely satisfied with another and although I don’t know you I believe that going any distance in every direction with you I can never find anything to disappoint me. I expect to love you whatever happens. Even if you should be frightened off by all these grim difficulties. You’ve made humankind and the world look different. I can never again think about women as I used to, for instance. There’s my message this morning. Instead of prayers. Now I can bear to go about my business.

  To John Berryman

  April 19, 1966 Chicago

  Dear Pal:


  I’m due in California May 1st, and thought to go earlier but now that I know you’re coming I’ll wait up until the 30th. My own life-dealings have not been too prosperous—on the spiritual side. Some creatures have it simple. A thorn in the paw removed by a dear young Christian and everybody becomes immortally happy ever after, and exists on a calendar adored by maidens and kiddies.

  I’ll prepare for our rendezvous by reading a few Dream Songs. Contact in space.

  I started some inquiries here for you. They were met with great interest and enthusiasm. If you want to arrange a conversation or two, say the word. This place seems to me better than Mpls. Nice to meet people like [—] if you happen to be on an ice floe, but why live on ice? I don’t know how serious you may be about leaving. In any case, it’s nice to have options.

  Perhaps I am about to write something. (“When may we expect a new work from your pen?” said the late E. Waugh to E. Wilson, like a divil.)

  We await you,

  To Margaret Staats

  April 20, 1966 [Chicago]

  In spite of my desire to ease up, I can’t let things alone, and I think I’m behaving badly; close to blindness; I sense it. It can’t be right to aggravate the disorders at the most disorderly painful stage. And I don’t think any good can come of such raw feelings. I think it would be best to force myself to stop, and wait. Only I keep thinking of you.

  (Interrupted by ten students.)

  Love!

  To Margaret Staats

  April 21, 1966 [Chicago]

  One gets home late afternoon and rages inside till about midnight, falling into bed and sleeping like a stone in the exhaustion of anger and disappointment. So different from our sleep together. In conversation there have been no holds barred but one. To hear and say such things is degrading. But perhaps everything ought to come out.

  When I’m not quieter at heart, I can’t remember you as I want to remember. That hurts. This afternoon, though, I feel you again, very sweetly inside me.

  I’m the one in sole charge, from Sunday evening, for most of the week. Perhaps we could keep Sunday evening for ourselves and the following Monday. You’d lose only one day’s work. And I will try to be in NYC earlier in May.

  The picture shows you’ve always had the same dear character as well as the knock-knees. I’ll keep it awhile, to absorb the mystery of it. If I may.

  Same message.

  To Margaret Staats

  April 23, 1966 [Chicago]

  It was very different, a week ago. A sad difference.

  Sometimes I think all these personal differences—“I was happy a while ago, now I am sad”—are a sort of joke. (Henderson’s “I want!”)

  Why should people, like me, who have won so much freedom, or had it handed to them, feel themselves in jail? Maybe because a week has gone by which might have been full of love but instead was empty. It’s not really a very funny joke.

  But I’d better not try thinking today. My mind isn’t very good. It’s like the weather coming over the Lake: foggy. The sparrows are sitting in my tree waiting for spring to start again. I knew their ancestors.

  To Margaret Staats

  April 28, 1966 [Chicago]

  I keep wondering about you—what you must be feeling, what your fears may be. I feel extravagantly protective towards you. It’s odd, loving a creature whom I will probably not understand, but only bless without comprehension, and gratefully. I recognize at the same time that it would be better if my protection weren’t really needed. My vision of your family makes me anxious, too, and I wonder how much fight is left in me. I used to be quite strong, but it would be only natural to wear out. I don’t feel it, but somehow I expect to, having seen vigorous people crack, give out and die—friends and contemporaries. No wonder I think about this. I’d better.

  To Margaret Staats

  May 31, 1966 [Chicago]

  I find it harder and harder to wake up each morning and cling to sleep and dreams. Meantime paper builds up over me like the white cliffs of Dover. Then most of the day I’m drowsy and heartsick and I hear Chicago carrying on its business, like a bad brass band playing all the old tunes. I’ve been hearing that noise since I was nine years old. Last evening old T[ed] H[offman] gave me a Dutch uncle’s lecture about my inability to grasp my own idea except when writing fiction. Almost anybody can profit by my clairvoyance, but I personally can never do it. Maybe that’s what it means to be at the edge of the expanding universe. You go forward because everything there is pushes from behind.

  I suppose I’m doing my best to come clean, and I listen carefully when I’m told what’s wrong with me. But can I understand? I used to have a flourishing literary business to which I could turn but something has gone wrong with that, too.

  I miss your voice, eyes, touch and body.

  To Margaret Staats

  June 2, 1966 [Chicago]

  I’d be a lot better if I could put my arms about you and kiss you even once a day, and be kissed—you’ve never yet accepted a kiss from me without kissing; the fact is important. So my missing you is nothing abstract.

  I’ve been using sleeping pills because, in the night at least, I don’t want to know what’s going on. In the evening, especially, there are dismal conversations here, and I am put into situations in which hard words (not angry but hurtful) have to be spoken. After which it’s better simply to cap out. I’ve been going to bed at 11:00 and sleeping ten hours or better. You’d think I wouldn’t be tired. But it’s not sleep I need, it’s you.

  Today I wrote a few sentences. Then the mail brought the London reviews [of Under the Weather, an evening of one-act plays]. Those were all favorable, but since people can’t let things alone it was said, here and there, that I am cold and self-centered and that I could never, of course, sustain a full-length play. Which helps to strengthen my opinion that the arts and government attract the worst people. The best are astronomers and geneticists. And pure souls like you.

  To Margaret Staats

  June 3, 1966 [Chicago]

  Here’s a change-purse from Paris. Some would call it a porte-monnaie, some une blague, though strictly speaking a blague is for tobacco.

  You know, I really don’t care for the sort of life that has formed about me in the last few years—accountants, tax-experts, investment counsellors, organizations and fronts, fund-raising, autobiographing, speechifying, mail-answering, lawsuits, interior decorations, spleen and other antipoetic phenomena. I feel it all today. One half hour at my desk. Two at the telephone. And now I’m going to play squash with my friend David Peltz, for relief. I can think of better things to do. With you. As I wish I were now. This separation is very hard.

  To Margaret Staats

  June 6, 1966 [Chicago]

  I suppose I’d better take it easy. It’s dreadful how I miss you. All the oldest, worst longings are stirred up—some seem very old, wild, peculiar, something like wrinkled furies along the line of marsh. I see them by the roadside. What I think continually, about you, does not seem to make sense. I can’t say that I know what I’m doing. What’s more, I’m aware that you, too, are an odd one—must be odd—and I become afraid of destruction exactly where I feel most certain and most (even biologically) safe.

  So today—cloudy, muggy—I go into the street, and I feel a terrible, anxious, devouring bondage, and I try to detach myself, almost by suggestion, from the leaves which stream along in the breeze. One could simply be tranquil and free—like that.

  It’s also like the thought of being with you—all pleasure. Almost all freedom, but only almost. I keep wondering—doubting that you can long accept me. Not that that would stop me, but it is anxious-making.

  But it is love. What can one do about that?

  To Margaret Staats

  [n.d.]

  Like a walrus then she kissed him

  Wet and whiskered, weighing tons

  Pink-and-gray-reticulated

  With pale eyes like polar suns

  —Frozen yellow polar suns
>
  Spiral of the cosmic floes!

  On her violet bristles bright

  She blows with weighty daintiness

  Her bubble of marine delight

  —Frothing with marine delight.

  Kisses from a walrus

  Wet and croaking, weighing tons

  Pinkish gray her belly swelling

  And pale eyes like polar suns

  —Frozen yellow polar suns

  Spirit of the cosmic floes!

  Over violet bristles bright

  She blows upon deep pillows

  Her bubbles of marine delight

  —Frothing gaily with delight.

  To Sondra Tschacbasov Bellow

  June 8, 1966 [Chicago]

  Dear Sondra,

  I have added thirty dollars to cover Adam’s tennis lessons. I shall continue, as in the past, to pay for his needs—within reason. It came as news to me that you were sending him to camp in August. When we discussed his summer plans, you said he would be in Chicago during the month of August, after his visit with me. I think I should be consulted about such arrangements. I am however prepared to pay the camp fee. Please ask Journey’s End to bill me directly, as last year.

  I understand from [my lawyer] Mr. [Marshall] Holleb that an increase in my monthly payments for Adam is still under consideration.

  Sincerely,

  To Margaret Staats

  June 18, 1966 [Chicago]

  For the first time, I feel I’ve gone out to a dangerous depth with you. Friday P.M. gave me a bad shock. You didn’t tell me you were going out with anyone. Your only date was with [—] and his parents on Sat. The Friday man did not seem to me a casual date, but, judging from your changed tone towards me, one that means something to you. You didn’t want to express feeling towards me in his presence. I thought, in fact, that you wanted to get rid of me. I’ve never before felt that you were anything but straight with me; but these last twenty-four hours I’ve felt it, terribly, wondering whether being in love with you isn’t my ticket to destruction.