Part 35 (1/2)

Now let me try to answer a few of your questions: 1. Drag racing is the strictly illegal sport of adolescent amateur automobile mechanics who transform an ordinary car into a racer. They hold outlaw matches on back roads, attain speeds of a hundred fifty m.p.h. or better, and are often killed.2. One can ”c.o.c.k” the wheel of a Thunderbird-that is the driver's wheel can be pushed forward so that the driver may seat himself without inconvenience.3. I don't remember what I meant by an axle type but I may have been thinking of [Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's] Axel, Axel, the one about the young man who says, ”As for living, our servants can do that for us.” the one about the young man who says, ”As for living, our servants can do that for us.”4. Hog belly should really be pork belly. Pork bellies are traded in the commodities market.5. A pig-in-a-wig is reminiscent of a pig-in-a-poke in the old saying, poke being an old word for sack or bag. Then there is pig-in-a-blanket or ground meat cooked in cabbage leaves. Lastly, we come to the nursery rhyme Barber, barber, shave a pig, how many hairs to make a wig? Barber, barber, shave a pig, how many hairs to make a wig? Put this all together and you get the image of a porcine man wearing what looks to be artificial hair. Put this all together and you get the image of a porcine man wearing what looks to be artificial hair.6. A Roto-Rooter man is an expensive American specialist who unstops clogged drains by inserting a long phallic segmented steel instrument called a ”snake.” And that is what a Roto-Rooter man is.7. ”Pet” [means here] arbitrary-one's favorite form of obstinacy or crankiness.8. Vacate the personae simply means to abandon one's favorite masks.9. To launder money is a well-known Mafia expression. The illest-gotten gains of gangsters cannot legally be declared as income. The underworld has its own ways of making dirty money respectable by sending it through channels, etc.10. Castro is a manufacturer of folding beds or ”hideaway” sofa beds. These generally have dangerously prominent hinges which have been known to injure hasty lovers.11. What Charlie means on p. 89 is that he believes he can see Cantabile's aura, a personal quality generally invisible.12. P.102, line 7, ”There were a few windbreaks up here on the 50th or 60th floor, and those the wind was storming.” These windbreaks, made of stout canvas, protect the workers from the weather. When the wind is high the canvas flaps mightily. On this occasion, the wind was storming, i.e., a.s.saulting the canvas.13. ”Sailing to Byzantium” is a poem by Yeats.14. Hegel, in his Philosophy of History. Philosophy of History. 15. The ”quiet” quote is from Rudolf Steiner and comes, I believe, from a book called 15. The ”quiet” quote is from Rudolf Steiner and comes, I believe, from a book called Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

Alexandra and I will be knocking about in June, probably in England. In July and August we will be at Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard and in September we will return to Chicago. I will tell her what you say about her smile.

As ever,

To Norman Podh.o.r.etz March 8, 1976 Chicago Dear Norman: I did give a talk in Miami but I intend to make it part of a longer piece.

And now tell me this: If you were described in someone's magazine as a ”burnt-out case” would you be at all inclined to contribute articles to that magazine?

Sincerely yours,

In his unfavorable review of Humboldt's Gift Humboldt's Gift in in Commentary Commentary, Jack Richardson had wondered whether Bellow was ”a burnt-out case.”

To Ben Sidran May 21, 1976 Chicago Dear Ben: You're right about your father [Louis Sidran] and me. And I often feel, when I'm writing, that I'm a composite person. Your father is certainly part of the mixture. It comes over me now and then that I'm trying to do something he wanted done. When, dying, he drove so many hundreds of miles in the station wagon with Ezra from Gettysburg to East Hampton to see me, I got the message quite clearly. I knew what he wanted, whom he loved. I admired and loved him.

I can see why it was hard for you to write to me. The difficulty makes your letter all the more valuable.

Best wishes,

To James Salter May 26, 1976 [Chicago]

Cher collegue: I write, as always, in nasty haste, a chronic condition. I am doing what I oughtn't to do, a journalistic job. Dreadful pressure.

Yes, I was miffed by the Graham Greene thing, but not seriously nor for long. Greene didn't find me ”difficult”-by ”difficult” he meant Jewish. I can't see how any reader of his novels can miss that. American is bad enough [according to Greene]. But to be Jewish as well-well, no combination could be worse.

That's all there was to that.

Alexandra and I are taking off for Dublin and Milan tomorrow. I haven't finished my piece either. I must, tonight.

Yrs. as always,

In an interview Salter conducted for People People magazine, Graham Greene had recalled Bellow as ”difficult.” magazine, Graham Greene had recalled Bellow as ”difficult.”

To Samuel S. Goldberg July 26, 1976 Chicago Dear Samuel, [ . . . ] A gossip item from the Chicago newspapers announcing the triumph of Susan Bellow greeted me when I returned from Europe. I thought you might like to run your jurist's eye over it. You know, I'm really beginning to think badly of the legal profession. Judges and lawyers simply don't understand how a writer makes his way through life. Page five speaks of the ”defendant's misrepresentations.” I didn't misrepresent. I simply had no idea what my future income would be. It's true that I took an advance of fifty thousand, but suppose I had been unable to complete the book?

Maybe when you have studied the doc.u.ment you will be able to explain it all to me and especially the murky paragraph at the bottom of page six.

As ever,

The First District Court of Chicago had issued a ruling that Bellow misled former wife Susan Gla.s.sman Bellow about his income and directed him to pay increased alimony and child support.

To Owen Barfield August 13, 1976 Chicago Dear Mr. Barfield- By now you will perhaps have written me off as someone who straggled in and then faded out in pursuit of other enthusiasms. The fact is that I continue as well as I can with Steiner and that I am still trying to train myself. I haven't been able to do this steadily. Last autumn I decided-took it as a duty-to write a short book about Israel. I'd never seriously studied Zionism (i.e. the terrible question of the fate of the Jews) but having come to Jerusalem with my wife I ”discovered” it; I began to a.s.sume a degree of responsibility for it. A solution is beyond anyone's powers, but I wanted at least to state the problem of Israel clearly to the civilized public. For six months I soaked myself in the literature of the subject and spent my nights in reading and my days taking interviews and writing them down. The results have just appeared in The New Yorker The New Yorker (July 12 and 19). They aren't satisfactory but they seem to have had a certain effect. I worked very hard at them. I worked myself into such a state of fatigue that I was unable to pull myself together physically, much less write thoughtful letters. The morning meditations, which I continued faithfully, helped somewhat, although there were days in which I could only ramble through them in a promissory way. Later, I would do them properly. (July 12 and 19). They aren't satisfactory but they seem to have had a certain effect. I worked very hard at them. I worked myself into such a state of fatigue that I was unable to pull myself together physically, much less write thoughtful letters. The morning meditations, which I continued faithfully, helped somewhat, although there were days in which I could only ramble through them in a promissory way. Later, I would do them properly.

I didn't mind your dismissing Humboldt Humboldt. I expected that. It is a comical and very American examination of the cares and trials of ”civilized” people in a civilized country. These cares are by now plainly ludicrous and one can't be truly serious about them. The ultimate absurdity is that it is the spiritual matters, which alone deserve our seriousness, that are held to be absurd. Perhaps it was wrong of me to put this longing for spiritual fruit in a comic setting. I knew that you could never approve and would think it idiotic and perhaps even perverse. But I followed my hunch as a writer, trusting that this eccentric construction would somehow stand steady.

I shall send you the little Jerusalem book when it is published in October.

With best wishes,

To Louis Lasco August 25, 1976 [Chicago]

Highly esteemed Katastrof Efimovitch-my dear school friend: I thank you for your congratulations. I am afraid I have too many irons in too many fires; letters go unanswered. Like yourself I should be thinking of retirement. I used to flinch from this as a bourgeois idea. Whenever I emerged through the door of a jet plane into California suns.h.i.+ne my first thought was: ”Retirement!” And then: ”But I am too young!” (Meaning, in fact, that I had not yet satisfied my adolescent ambitions.) But now I think more kindly of people who move gracefully and tranquilly give up, surrender themselves to a quiet and gentle elderliness. Maybe this [long adolescence] is the only maturity I am destined to know.

I don't see Glotzer in Chicago-nor Freifeld, nor Peltz, nor S. J. Harris; none of the Division St. children. Some of them are annoyed with me. I can't say that this causes me much regret. I'm fond of them but nearly fifty years of the same bluffing have worn out my powers of politeness. I seem to have been an extraordinarily polite young person. I sometimes miss Peltz, a good man to have a hearty dinner with. He has some sort of grievance against me. I suppose it will last a decade or so, and we will be reconciled just before the articulo mortis articulo mortis [ [84].

I enjoy hearing from you. ”Rosh Hashanah is at our throats again” made my day. Give your dear old mother my warmest regards. I begin to believe that her brother actually was reincarnated in me.

Your affectionate friend, Bedouin Trofimovitch To Teddy Kollek September 9, 1976 Chicago Dear Teddy, Yours was the first of the Israeli reactions [to To Jerusalem and Back To Jerusalem and Back] and I was understandably apprehensive. The form I adopted obliged me to write quite explicitly about people-and one never knows. There are art historians who explain that two hundred years ago people accepted unfavorable portraits of themselves; warts, harelips, paunches, wrinkles and all. See what Goya did to the Spanish Bourbons. They didn't seem to mind, but our far less n.o.ble contemporaries wish to appear without a flaw. One of the paradoxes of democracy.

Your letter pleased me very much and I have received many kind notices from Israel and from America. So I'm encouraged to return to Jerusalem. If you should know of an available apartment, we would be most grateful to have it.