Part 30 (1/2)

Dear Maggie- I'm troubled about your visit-it seems too soon. Europe has left me with still raw hurts, not likely to heal in a short time. I don't want them reopened, nor do I want you to be hurt again, and my heart tells me to let things ride, to recover first and not to force anything. For the sake of continuing friends.h.i.+p, we ought to keep away from each other.

Love,

To Harvey Swados August 30, 1969 Nantucket Dear Harvey: The novel I have as you say ”committed” has kept me busy, and galleys, etc. will continue to keep me busy until October. If it's only advice, mine would be no better than other people's and probably inferior to Candida's. But if you want me to read your book, I can do that in October. I'll be back in Chicago as the nights lengthen. If that does you any good, I am your obedient servant.

As I read your letter I see that we don't share very many basic a.s.sumptions. No other two college Trotskyites can have gotten so very far apart. I doubt that I have more use for Nixon and Johnson than you have. My going to the White House [in June 1965] was nonsense, probably. It pleased no one, myself least of all. I wouldn't have gone at all if I had been obliged by my own obstinacy to mark my disagreement with all parties. First I made my views on Vietnam and Santo Domingo as clear as possible in the Times Times, and then declared that I would go to show my respect for the President's office-the office of Lincoln. I know about Harding, too, and Chester A. Arthur, but I am not at all prepared to secede. I am not a revolutionary. I have little respect for American revolutionaries as I know them, and I have known them quite well. I don't like the Susan Sontag bit about a doomed America. I had my fill of the funnyhouse in Coney Island.

A reliable source tells me that Johnson's view of the White House culture gala was as follows: ”They insult me by comin', they insult me by stayin' away.” Could Dwight Macdonald have been more succinct? In fact they have a lot in common.

My best to Bette.

Yrs,

To Philip Roth December 12, 1969 Chicago Dear Philip: Your note did me a lot of good, though I haven't known what or how to answer. Of course the so-called fabricators will be grinding their knives. They have none of that ingenuous, possibly childish love of literature you and I have. They take a sort of Roman engineering view of things: grind everything in rubble and build cultural monuments on this foundation from which to fly the Bulls.h.i.+t flag.

Anyway, it pleases me greatly that you liked Sammler. Sammler. There aren't many people in the trade for whom I have any use. But I knew when I hit Chicago (was it twelve years ago?) and read your stories that you were the real thing. When I was a little kid, there were still blacksmiths around, and I've never forgotten the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil. There aren't many people in the trade for whom I have any use. But I knew when I hit Chicago (was it twelve years ago?) and read your stories that you were the real thing. When I was a little kid, there were still blacksmiths around, and I've never forgotten the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil.

Do you like Woodstock? I lived across the river for eight years. Was Was it living? But the place was not to blame. It was beautiful. it living? But the place was not to blame. It was beautiful.

Yours,

PART FOUR.

1970-1982.

You know? There's the most extraordinary, unheard-of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it. But now this is true of the world as a whole. The agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way. Now I begin to understand what Tolstoi was getting at when he called on mankind to cease the false and unnecessary comedy of history and begin simply to live.

-Humboldt's Gift

1970.

To John Berryman January 19, 1970 Dear John- Without preliminaries, we have a magazine-Harold Rosenberg, Keith Botsford and I, and of course no magazine involving me can work without you. Poems are essential. Could you also, as with Shakespeare at thirty, think of doing Mozart at twenty, or Bach at forty? [ . . . ]

I am going to London for three weeks to escape the book reviews.

Love,

The magazine was Anon, Anon, a single issue of which would appear. a single issue of which would appear.

To Margaret Staats February [?], 1970 [Postcard of ”Tippoo's Tiger” at Victoria and Albert Museum]

The sultan had the device wound up, and the British soldier being killed would cry ”Help, Mercy.” It gave the sultan endless pleasure.

As ever,

To Frances Gendlin [Postmark illegible; postcard of Debre Berhan Sela.s.sie Church, Gondar, Ethiopia]

Dear Fran- Now Ethiopia. Swept through Kenya and Uganda. Minimum of dysentery. Great fatigue. Bought a mine with Peltz. Feeling grand but I miss you.

To Frances Gendlin February 9, 1970 New Avenue Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya Well, the whole mining deal was pure con. Peltz's man w'd not appear. Evidently it was an intercontinental swindle. Hugely funny.

So we are making a safari, and this is written on a bucking plane en route to Kampala, to Murchison Falls. We shall see elephants and crocodiles.

I'd have been very glad if you had joined me, for I do miss you, and no number of elephants and crocodiles can take your place. Nights especially. Forgive me for hoping mildly that the weather is bad in Chicago. African planes are are hot. I'm sweating. But in Africa one must. Imagine: ”He toured Africa without sweating” (said of a cold man, and I am not cold). hot. I'm sweating. But in Africa one must. Imagine: ”He toured Africa without sweating” (said of a cold man, and I am not cold).

Love, To Frances Gendlin [Postmark illegible; postcard of two lionesses, Uganda]

Dear Fran- This, the Upper Nile, is simply astonis.h.i.+ng. If the tsetse fly doesn't bite me I shall never forget it. If it does, give away my Mercedes and burn my bills. I sh'd have asked you along.

Love, To Frances Gendlin [n.d.] Hotel Raphael, Rome I am writing with a ballpoint quill in the lobby of this hotel-an original idea. Why didn't I think of it? The hotel is entirely like that, up-to-date Renaissance. You'd adore it.

I planned to go back to London today, but it's raining fiercely in Rome and I haven't the flying stomach for it after the trips from Addis Ababa to Asmara to Khartoum to Cairo to Athens and here, twelve hours that left me somewhat vacant and pill-bilious (for the troubled gut, for malaria and for sniffles I took a weird mixture of tablets, and Peltz and I drank beer continually, dying of thirst and fearing the water).