Part 38 (1/2)

To Daniel Bellow January 31, 1980 Pasadena Dear Daniel, Since I haven't heard at all from you I take it that we won't be seeing each other in California either because there is not time between terms or because you did not meet the little condition I set-no need to spell that out. But we often think of you and wonder what's become of you. I mailed off your camp application signed and with a check so your summer is protected. I wish that I could see you more, I often miss you and I think somehow that you have arranged matters so in your own mind that the absence is mine from you and not yours from me. But the move East was after all by your choice. No reproach, I just think you should bear it in mind along with other facts, realities, truths. [ . . . ]

The other day I saw a set of Parkman in a bookshop. If I thought that you were interested in the early history of North America, the French-Indian wars, I'd send it to you. These are most exciting books. I'd read them myself if I had the time. I did read The Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail once and parts of the book on the Pontiac. once and parts of the book on the Pontiac.

I'd be awfully glad to hear from you.

Love,

To Bobby Markels January 31, 1980 Pasadena Dear Bobby, I am taking advantage of a crack typist to whirl back a reply. I enjoyed your poem, as I do all your productions. They are so relaxed that they do me good also in the way of detente. I met a lady who lives in your county and she tells me all the young people in Mendocino are in a lovely state of gentle ease. I asked her whether there was any sign of cultivated pot, but she said that she thought everyone there was naturally amiable, lovely and kind. I said this was certainly true of the one person I knew in Mendocino. I didn't at all mind being listed by you. I thought if I could remember the s.h.i.+rt you ironed for me and still had it I would have it mounted and hung in the living room with a sentimental legend. [ . . . ]

You shouldn't complain too much about being fifty. Fifty doesn't seem much to me, my next birthday will be the sixty-fifth. The fifty years will have been worthwhile however if you have become wise enough to see through Nelson [Algren].

You mustn't be too hard on your own egotism. The Bible says, ”I am a worm, and no man.” When it comes to being hard on oneself the Bible is way ahead of us. Actually, atheists can never know how really insignificant they are. The same probably goes for agnostics. They only get a rain check.

Ever your affectionate friend,

Bobby Markels (born 1930) is the author of How to Be a Human Bean How to Be a Human Bean (1975) and other works. She lives in Mendocino, California. (1975) and other works. She lives in Mendocino, California.

To Albert Glotzer January 31, 1980 Pasadena Dear Al, To keep you posted on [Ilya] Konstantinovski, he wrote to me from Paris where Gallimard is about to bring out his book. Would I read it, give him a blurb? As the much-esteemed maestro H. L. Mencken used to sign himself ”with all the usual hypocrisies,” Konstantinovski gave me the usual hypocrisies. I don't mind that, and I suppose by now the book is waiting for me in Chicago. Harper's turned it down. The first reader said it was very good but the second opined that it was the rebellious outburst of a lifelong line-toer, that Konstantinovski, who had no intention ever of returning, was setting himself up in the West as one of the Major Russians of our time and was even recruiting a supporting cast of willing ladies. It seems that when he speaks to ladies he complains that they are unwilling to return his caresses and other acts of kindness. He's not a very attractive man but it can't be as hard as all that. There are ladies in every category, even his. I'll send you a short report when I've read his book. [ . . . ]

Ever yours,

Ilya Konstantinovski's book was Le Seider de Varsovie. Le Seider de Varsovie. It has never appeared in English. It has never appeared in English.

To David Shahar March 25, 1980 Pasadena Dear David, What shocking news! To be mugged in Jerusalem, in your own quiet neighborhood. The police were right, you were lucky to save your eye (I hope you are entirely recovered) from the neo-barbaric a.s.sault, as you call it. I take it from your letter that your attackers were not Arabs but North African [i.e., Sephardic] boys, since you speak of their wanting to hit an Ashkenazy. This is your introduction then to the tense watchfulness which has for years been the lot of New Yorkers, Chicagoans, even Londoners, I suppose. Not Muscovites. Theirs is a different system: Crime is a state monopoly. From now on you had better take your Jimmy [Shahar's dog] with you when you go out for cigarettes. I hope he is fiercer than his namesake. Our own Jimmy [Carter] as you probably are aware is an affliction to us and to the rest of the world. I can't say that he is actually the cause of our decline but he has become the foolish, impotent and repulsive symbol. But this is not a political message, rather a note of sympathy. [ . . . ] We send our love to both of you and to the children.

David Shahar (1926- 97), a fifth-generation Jerusalemite and much-honored Israeli writer, was best known for The Palace of Shattered Vessels The Palace of Shattered Vessels (1969-94), his eight-volume series of historical novels. (1969-94), his eight-volume series of historical novels.

To Ralph Ross June 15, 1980 Chicago Dear Ralph, I'm not one of your prompt repliers: rather, a muller over of letters. No, I don't need the Barfield book, I have other copies, also marked. I sometimes wonder what one can get out of Barfield if one hasn't learned the ”system.” Some of it is very curious, the different view of physics, for certain, the conviction that the law of the conservation of energy is all a mistake (this idea has too many poetic implications to be dismissed). My friends refuse to take any of this seriously. I forgive them as a friend should, and I perform other operations, in confirmation of my right to hold peculiar views. (Or is it a privilege, not a right?) Then I feel that I'm being faithful to Truth, through thick and thin. And it will do them good in the long, long long run, perhaps after death. [ . . . ] run, perhaps after death. [ . . . ]

Alexandra adds her love to mine.

Yours,

To Walter Hasenclever June 12, 1980 Chicago Dear Walter, Your letter arrives as I am poised for departure, about to launch myself from my wire, too heavy to be a bird, too sinful to be any sort of angel (but somehow I continue to view myself as a flier). Will you come for dinner or for a longer visit? I can tempt you with an unpublished ma.n.u.script. Please call us when you arrive. I shan't ask you to bring George Bush when you come-I have nothing really against Mr. Bush, his standing with me improves now that I learn he was one of your pupils, but if he is running on the Reagan ticket as Vice-President he will be too busy to dine with us. The country does does need a President but where is it to find one? Maybe the office should be abolished for the next four years. need a President but where is it to find one? Maybe the office should be abolished for the next four years.

Yours ever, To Dean Borok June 17, 1980 West Halifax, Vermont Dear Mr. Borok- I at length answer. I always meant to, but my wife and I were in Pasadena until mid-April and then came back only to prepare to leave again. These are (unnecessarily) busy days, and life grows more complex with the years. I had expected it to be simpler.

I took the liberty of showing your letter to my brother Sam, seeing no reason why you should mind. He was moved by it-he, too. (We both found it curious that you should be in Montreal, where we started out; I was born in Lachine.) Neither of us could form a picture of the life you've led. But that's hardly strange when you think that we have no clear picture of our eldest brother's life, either. He sees none of us-brothers, sister, or his two children by his first marriage, nor their children-neither does he telephone or write. He had no need of us. He has no past, no history. His adopted children do not seem to care for him. His present wife? An enigma. He probably has some money-he's thought about little else all his life. But he's old now-seventy-three. And ill; he's had a coronary bypa.s.s. I tell you all this to warn you about the genes you seem so proud of. If you've inherited them (it's possible you have) many of them will have to be subdued or lived down. I myself have had some hard going with them.

If you can find the right way to do it, perhaps you should write the story of your life. To get rid of it, as it were. In writing it successfully, you will forgive everyone in the process. Yes, all those who sinned against you will be forgiven. (That's what I would call a successful effort to get one's life down on paper.) Thank you for writing.

I wish you happiness,

Borok, out-of-wedlock son of Maurice Bellows, wrote to Bellow after he read The Adventures of Augie March The Adventures of Augie March, having realized that a version of his own birth is narrated in the novel.

To Hymen Slate July 22, 1980 West Halifax Dear Hymen- I'd be a better correspondent if I weren't writing all the time. You have to be a graphomaniac to spend hours on a ma.n.u.script and then turn, for relaxation, to letters. A critic, years ago in Paris, said I had bureaucratic tendencies. He offended me then. Now I'm inclined to see it his way. I learned to organize my daily life for a single purpose. There was was one other drive, the s.e.xual one, but even that presently gave way. My erotic life was seriously affected, too, in that I diverted myself with a kind of executive indiscriminateness-without a proper interest in women. one other drive, the s.e.xual one, but even that presently gave way. My erotic life was seriously affected, too, in that I diverted myself with a kind of executive indiscriminateness-without a proper interest in women.

(Why is it that as soon as I sit down to write to you I find that I am busily examining my character. In another existence you must have been my confessor.) Vermont is exquisite, and I am doing here what I am supposed to do (or what I intended to do) but I miss our Sunday gabfests. I am glad to discover this. Sometimes I suspect I have too few dependencies. [ . . . ]

I hope your health is good. I have a small case of arrhythmia or tachycardia. Not serious.

Love,

To William Kennedy August 22, 1980 West Halifax Dear Bill- I'm not what you'd think of as a drifter but I do drift in a real (i.e. barely conscious) sense-a sort of desert rat with a Smith Corona instead of a prospector's mule. Not even the Committee on Social Thought fully remembers me. Just as well.

Your letter, which delighted me, finally reached Vermont where I've been dug in writing (what else?) a small book-something of a cherry bomb or small grenade, I like to think.

I've seen some of your writing. I liked one of your books a lot (I can't recall the t.i.tle; sclerosis probably gaining on me). I didn't see Billy Phelan Billy Phelan, but I was stirred by your Upstate outlaws and molls. Did I recommend you for a grant after reading that (which probably you didn't get)? I suspect occasionally that a favorable letter from me is the kiss of death.

And yes, I understand about poor Tom Guinzburg, a poor D.P. with loads of money.

I'd love to see you again and have a talk. We had good talks at Rio Piedras but we were bush-league prophets (or futurologists, not to overload the great word ”Prophet”). [ . . . ]

Very glad to have heard from you.