Letters Read online

  1968

  To Edward Shils

  January 20, 1968 Chicago

  Dear Ed:

  I spoke to your mother yesterday. She complains that she is feeling weak, but she sounded better to me. Her voice seemed stronger. I think it knocked her out to come back from [Dr.] Horner’s office on the train. She couldn’t get a cab, as I assume she wrote you. Anyway, I think I hear some improvement.

  I came back from NY a few days ago with my Gaullist ribbon and medal. Your last letter was on the dining-room table and I re-read it for company. The situation in Chicago is odd and getting odder. It’s a peculiarly contactless life, when you’re not here. There are lots of people in these buildings. As if the pioneer emptiness were set upright, with indoor plumbing, books, food, but the spirit of the prairies still dominant. [ . . . ] No one other than David Grene asks me to dinner. If it weren’t for my divorce case I would have no social existence whatsoever [ . . . ] I simply get up in the morning and go to work, and I read at night. Like Abe Lincoln. When I go out there’s my city—sodden, mean and boring. [ . . . ] I tell myself that in any great city I could see as many people as I liked and wonder why I put up with such privation. It gets one. In that same light I saw N[athan] Leites with his bald musclebound skull hurrying through melting slush, moving with ballistic energy from 53rd to 55th, a bottle under his arm—moving with such force, and the muscles of shyness and analytic subtlety (probably pointless) gathered up on his shaven head. [ . . . ]

  Anyway, there it is. I miss you very much. And I may turn up [in England] in mid-May.

  Love,

  To Meyer Schapiro

  March 18, 1968 Oaxaca

  Dear Meyer—

  I thought you were in England. Now that I know you’re at home I shall certainly come to see you before you leave.

  This is my second morning in Oaxaca. When you wake up in the tropics you understand the horror of your Northern fatigue. And the flowers tell you that you have been around much too long. Unfinished business is my excuse.

  Of course I want to contribute to the Delmore fund. And I hope John Berryman will become, and remain, one of the judges. I haven’t seen him in two years, and he was in poor condition then, in full alcoholic bloat. I’m very fond of Berryman, and I admire him. I see why these self-destructive lives are led. But I can’t convince myself that it is a good tradition.

  Did you receive tear-sheets of a longish story [“The Old System”] I published in January? I thought you might be interested in it. The New Yorker wanted deletions, so I gave it to Playboy in protest—lucrative protest. However, there are no poor but honest magazines. The quarterlies are about as corrupt as the slicks, and Hugh Hefner has pleasanter vices than Wm. Phillips.

  My best wishes to you,

  To Richard Stern

  July 16, 1968 [East Hampton]

  Cher Richard—

  The summer is hot in East Hampton, and all the artist roses are preening, even the ailing and the possibly dying are drinking their gin in the sun and talking welfare, reform or revolution, anarchy, guerilla warfare, action—building stately mansions on foundations of personal wretchedness.

  The swimming is excellent.

  I am getting in some good travail.

  Since you mention weights and measures, I am about ten pounds too heavy and now eat yogurt at lunch. Toujours poursuivi des femmes, pourtant tracassé. Des circonstances assez marrant. Elles sont toutes fachées—au nord, ouest, et ici même. Mais je continue tout de même de faire mes devoirs [78].

  Adam is in excellent condition, only a spot of mother-induced neurosis here and there. Surtout raisonnable [79]. One can always talk to him, which cannot be said of too many. I realize that this is the last of his childhood, and that we will go forward, towards fuller forms . . . I skip the next comment.

  I have death on my mind, today. S. S. Goldberg is ill, John Steinbeck is in the Southampton Hospital, Jean Stafford has just been released from same. So we, here, are feeling the wing. But in this weather it is more cooling than anything else. The Angel of Death, floating over the house, brings air-conditioning.

  Much love,

  Tape-moi une lettre. [80]

  To Richard Stern

  [n.d.,] [East Hampton]

  My dear Richard:

  Je m’impatiente de lire ce que t’as écrit [81]. It’s a pity because I won’t be in Chicago now until October, but perhaps you can send Xerox copies to the Villa Serbelloni, that old Rockefeller château [at Bellagio]. I feel as though I might be more at home in a junkyard, closer to origins, than at Lake Como, but one takes one’s junkyard with one.

  Anyway, you have probably written something marvelous. I judge by the fact that you are usually so guarded in your opinion of your own work. Your credit is very good with me, you see.

  I went to visit Daniel on the Vineyard. Adam and I flew from East Hampton in a chartered bumblebee with short wings through a gale, and we were scared but in heaven. Then we got down on the ground to Daniel’s cheers, and spent some time lying on the beaches and having hassles about robins’ eggs. [ . . . ]

  I want to thank you for your note on Mosby. It encourages me to write more stories. Before the Bartleby silence settles over me. When time’s winged chariot gets ahead of you and you can’t hear the wheels.

  I suppose you’ll be back in Chicago before long. Maggie (who sends love and kisses) will be staying on in the country when I leave, using my whirl-wind Pontiac. [ . . . ]

  Love,

  Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories had just appeared.

  To Margaret Staats

  September 4, 1968 Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio

  Dear Maggie,

  It couldn’t be better. The very bathroom is situated in a Romanesque tower. Everything is simply beautiful. I am beginning to recover from the flight.

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  September 5, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Dearest Maggie—

  This is very rough, but you can do it. You have the love of many people—it’s not just me. You don’t need to go through this alone. I know the doctor gave you a bad scare, but it’s about two hundred to one that the tumor is benign. If you badly need me, I can fly back, but I will wait for news on Monday.

  But don’t isolate yourself from friends—don’t lose your head, honey. These will be four grim days. They have to be faced. That’s not easy. But don’t send people away. You need them. I wish I were there with you, but since we’ve got the Atlantic between us I’ll wait for the results of the biopsy. It should be just that, only that—a biopsy. Harold [Taylor] will advise you. Take his advice. Bless you, honey.

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  September 11, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Honey, tell me what’s happened. I was up all night Tue. praying I would not get a call, but this morning I am still in the dark, really. Send me a wire, at least, saying you’re okay, if the thing was harmless. But don’t lie to me. If it was not harmless I’ll want to fly straight back. Because I didn’t hear, I have some hope. I was in despair over you yesterday, and the days before. Have you been getting my mail?

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  September 14, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Dear Maggie-o:

  I’m sorry if I was short on the phone. The reason was that we had just had a phone conversation and I wasn’t expecting it to be your call. I thought certainly that something had happened to one of the children, for why would anyone else call. And after thinking it over, though I don’t excuse myself, I think you did not do well to call me. I know your need is great, but this is no way to meet it. It’s not as though you were calling to reproach me for something or to ask me for something, or to cry. You are in pain, yes, but you have just escaped a horrible operation. You don’t have cancer. Instead of relief and gratitude you have—this. It’s not good. Not good for you, not good for me. Don’t you think, after all this time, that I feel for you, sympathize with you? Waiting here was hel
lish also. I went to talk to Dr. Bryant, the foundation’s doctor here, about your prospects and I sat it out on Tuesday without sleep, or let-up in my panic, waiting for an answer to my wire. And now, at this distance, I can only feel troubled. I can’t actually help you. To give the help you want I would have to come back.

  And I have written, and we have spoken on the phone three times, or is it four, so it’s not as if we haven’t been in contact. As for your schoolwork, what can I do about it? If you’re sick, what can you do? What can anyone do? That’s not a thing to phone across the Atlantic about either. Please, Maggie, don’t do that anymore, I beg you. You can just leave my stuff, car and all, in East Hampton and I’ll look after it later. I’ve been here now for two weeks, and there are only two more, which I don’t want to goof up. I want to get something out of them. It’s not your fault that the first two haven’t been ideal but now, if only for a bit, I want to turn off the heat. I’ve had a frightful letter from Sondra—just wicked, a horror. Sometimes I think I should apply to Mao Tse-Tung for asylum.

  You know what our relationship is. It’s not what you want, but it is a great deal. It is everything that I can make it. When I put my arms around you it is all there. You know I am Y. D. And don’t blame the US mails on me. Calm yourself. And honey, lay off the telephone.

  Love,

  To Sondra Tschacbasov Bellow

  [n.d.] [Bellagio]

  Dear Sondra,

  The important thing is not to fight. That’s important to you, too. If I offended you at the airport, I’m sorry, and I apologize. I shrink from letter-tournaments, long exchanges and all of that. We’ve been to the wars already and what we want now is the permanent hatchet burial. Margy [Maggie] knows she behaved badly, but she has a good explanation. She needed breast surgery (I didn’t know that) and was frantic with worry. The tumor has been removed. It was benign.

  She didn’t know that I was to repay the twenty-five bucks. I knew nothing about it from you. You didn’t tell me. When you make loans expecting me to make them good you should communicate with me, not simply assume that I underwrite all of them. I might have overlooked that however, if you hadn’t written such a provoking letter. Think what you like, I don’t expect miraculous changes, but don’t write me such letters. We can get along splendidly, just fine, if we observe the ground rules. I did not observe them at Kennedy, and you knocked them all to hell in two or three sentences. I see a pattern forming and I mean to break it up immediately. I generally pass over this kind of thing in silence, when we chat, but now I think it’s best to spell it out for you.

  First of all, then: I wrote a successful book. I owe you nothing for that. You damn near killed me. I’ve put that behind me, but I haven’t forgotten the smallest detail. Nothing, I assure you. I made something [in Herzog] of the abuses I suffered at your hands. As for the “humiliations” you speak of, I can match you easily. There is another book, isn’t there? [Above Ground, Jack Ludwig’s roman à clef of his friendship with Bellow and affair with Sondra]. It is the product of two minds and two spirits, not one. Kind acquaintances and friends have made sure that I would read it. The letters of the heroine are consciously superior in style, but the book is garbage. It is monstrous to be touched by anything so horribly written. The worst thing about it, to a man who has been faithful to his art for thirty years, is the criminal vulgarity of the thing. I don’t worry too much about my reputation, the “image” (I don’t think you pay much attention to that, either), but I loathe being even peripherally involved with such shit. Now I’ve gotten a foot in the cesspool. Enough of that. But suppose the book had been good, successful. Can you see me demanding damages? I don’t think you can. So now . . . let the thing stop there. I want you to say nothing more to me about money, and I don’t want any hints about damages and indemnities. What I have, what I spend, where I go are no concern of yours. Legally I am obliged to pay three thousand per annum for Adam. I give, by my own choice, another three and more. This is a gift and not a commitment. Bailing you out, last year, was also my choice, and it was not dictated by bad conscience, I assure you. In this way something like eight thousand dollars was spent last year, and now you write me an insolent letter about money. You had better not do that again. Keep within bounds, and I will do it too. We will be pleasant to each other, but say nothing to me about your drapes or windowshades or about my trips. Those are no business of yours; your windowshades are nothing to me. I will do everything I can for Adam, whom I love. There will be certain fringe benefits for you. But don’t push things.

  Now I’m done with that.

  I greatly appreciated your bringing Adam to the airport. It was the holiday, and it took four hours to get down from East Hampton, and I’d have had to start at dawn to stop in Great Neck, so I’m grateful. It’s not a bad idea though for Adam to begin to take some trouble for his father. It’s proper that he should. Among fathers I’m not the world’s worst, and he’s old enough to develop some feeling for what is due to a father. Gratitude. I’ve always been a grateful type myself, and he’s my child. I’d be sorry to see him grow up devoid of any sense of it.

  Always your affectionate friend,

  To Margaret Staats

  September 16, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Dear Maggie:

  Thanks for the letters and the clippings. I read them all as soon as they come. I’m not receiving an awful lot of mail. Once in a while Bates sends me a packet of things I wish I’d never seen—bank statements, the disaster of the checks I write, the preposterous correspondence it’s my lousy fate to be involved in. It seems that Mr. Bill Cooper accepted [on Bellow’s behalf ] an invitation, of which I was never told, to speak somewhere in Rinkdink, Penn. tomorrow the 17th, and that people are wringing their hands, demanding explanations from me. Then, too, I’m not awfully well. I have no acute difficulties, only a slight feeling of non-function and dissolution. And there are moments when I am handed a snapshot or pass a mirror and realize that I have not as yet adjusted myself to certain changes, or even grasped them, and that my self-image is about twenty years behind the real object. I don’t sleep well, I’m often hazy in the morning, and I haven’t been working awfully well. There are mornings when I urge myself to take a long walk over the mountains, and hold up freedom placards to myself. I am, after all, supposed to be Free. That’s a very amusing concept and it cheers me up oddly to have thought of it.

  The [Arthur] Kopits have been kind to me. We’ve gotten along extremely well. There have been no other younger folk about, only a lot of singing dowagers. (One lady with a recent degree in Fine Arts from Tucson, Ariz., sixty years if she’s a day, sings Viennese café music, with trills. She’s a sweet old thing, really.) Last week we had a convention of Taoists. This week medicine and the underdeveloped countries. A bony doctor from a remote province asked me today what my trade was, which grimly gratified me. I haven’t been to Milan, yet. Bellagio has one drugstore and a lot of curiosity shops. The most aged Britishers I’ve ever seen are here and they make that lady from Oaxaca, you remember her, look like Marilyn Monroe. I’ve seldom beheld such mummy shanks, such lizard-lapping of tea or heard such Limey discussions of constipation remedies. [Giangiacomo] Feltrinelli, my publisher, is coming on Wednesday to drive me to dinner in Milan. Kopits are leaving on the same day and will arrive (sailing) eight days later with news of me. I’ll give them your number. Y.D. at sunset (gorgeous but it makes me blue).

  With love,

  To David Peltz

  September 20, 1968 Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio

  Dear Dave:

  It’s been mighty fine, in some ways, and in others one of my famous exercises in suffering. For one thing, I had only been here a few days when Maggie found she had to have breast surgery, and then there was a spell of waiting for news—fortunately good. After the good news, came hysterics: all kinds of transatlantic telephone oddities. Time out for sobbing. I thought the whales and the winds were talking to me. The Lord sent relief in the form of a wet dream or two. I’ve ha
d no other. All my ladies seem furious. Not one of them has written, not even Bette [Howland]. She must have done research in my apartment and found sinful evidence. I feel neglected, old and a bit sick. I don’t think this is hypochondria. I feel the hook down in my gullet, and I hear that old reel spinning. I think I’d better come back to dreadful Chicago and find out what, if anything, is the matter. In spite of everything I have, as usual, done a certain amount of work. It may turn out all right, but I’m not at my best these days. Maggie’s line with me now is that I must mark time while she tries to develop other interests, especially, she says, since she does this out of rejection and therefore I owe her perfect fidelity. Seeing her twice a month is perfectly adequate. I have no more real needs. At my time of life they must be imaginary and delusive. [ . . . ] Sondra, also, has sent me some record-breaking words. Those I’ve saved for you, together with my reply, for to try to describe this exchange would be like trying to paint Hell with Daniel’s fingerpaints. She claims I made use of her, and of the divorce [in Herzog], to make a fortune which I now must share with her. For as things are I treat myself to European trips, etc. while she and Adam have to scrape along on pennies. If Barnum were alive, he and I could make a really great show of this. The great men are gone, though; we have nothing but punks.

  I’ll see you quite soon—early in October. I’ve missed you badly. Flee some, lose others, and that’s the story.

  Love,

  To Margaret Staats

  September 21, 1968 [Bellagio]

  Honey—I played tennis with Prof. Obolensky (Christ Church, Oxford) for nearly two hours yesterday, went to bed at 9:30 with two Gelusil pills and woke up at 8:30, having had no stomach upset. Consequently I feel like a newborn child. Many of my ailments must be caused by my reluctance to sleep nine or ten hours a day. Maybe I should simply give half my life to darkness instead of giving it all to confusion.