Part 50 (1/2)

To Richard Stern March 12, 1996 Brookline Dear Richard- You are unchallengeably the most generous writer I've ever known. Your firefly friends can be certain when their tails light up with a new color that your innocent heart will respond with joy.

When I got out of the hospital (crawled out) last winter I ran a test or two-naturally-to see whether there was a charge still in the batteries. And of course repet.i.tions-deploying the old troops-wouldn't do.

And . . . I've got at least four or five readers. G.o.d has not abandoned me. Why the Lord of hosts has let the ranks become so thin, who can say? Continuons! Continuons! [ [124]

Much love from your well and grateful friend,

To Martin Amis March 13, 1996 Brookline My dear Martin: I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the ”warehouse of good intentions”: ”Can't do it now.”

”Then put it on hold hold.”

This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death-because one can't can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses. die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.

I entered the hospital in '94, a man biologically in his forties. Coming out in '95, I was the Ancient Mariner, and the Mariner didn't write novels. He had only one story and delivered it orally. But [I told myself] you are are a writer still, and perhaps you'd better come to terms with the Ancient. a writer still, and perhaps you'd better come to terms with the Ancient.

I may be about to resolve all these difficulties, but for two years they have totally absorbed me.

I've become forgetful, too. Nothing like your father's nominal aphasia. I find I can't remember the names of people I don't care for-in some ways a pleasant disability. I further discover that I would remember people's names because it relieved me from any need to think about them. Their names were enough. Like telling heads.

I can guess how your father must have felt at his typewriter, with a book to finish. My solution is to turn to shorter, finishable things. I have managed to do a few of those. Like learning to walk again-but what if what one wants, really, is to run run?

I am sure you have thought these things in watching your father's torments.

Last Sat.u.r.day I attended a memorial service for Eleanor Clark, the widow of R. P. Warren. I found myself saying to her daughter Rosanna that losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-gla.s.s window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces-down to the last gla.s.sy splinter.

Of course you are are your father, and he is you. I have often felt this about my own father, whom I half expect to see when I die. But I believe I do know how your father must have felt, sitting at his typewriter with an unfinished novel. Just as I understand your saying that you are your dad. With a fair degree of accuracy I can see this in my own father. He and I never your father, and he is you. I have often felt this about my own father, whom I half expect to see when I die. But I believe I do know how your father must have felt, sitting at his typewriter with an unfinished novel. Just as I understand your saying that you are your dad. With a fair degree of accuracy I can see this in my own father. He and I never seemed seemed to be in rapport: Our basic a.s.sumptions were to be in rapport: Our basic a.s.sumptions were very very different. But that now looks superficial. I treat my sons much as he treated me: out of breath with impatience, and then a long inhalation of affection. different. But that now looks superficial. I treat my sons much as he treated me: out of breath with impatience, and then a long inhalation of affection.

I willingly take up the slack as a sort of adoptive father. I do have paternal feelings towards you. It's not only language that unites us, or ”style.” We share more remote but also more important premises.

And I'm not actually at the last gasp. I expect to be around for a while (not a prediction but an expectation). Whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet said.

Yours, with love,

Martin Amis's father, Kingsley Amis, renowned author of Lucky Jim Lucky Jim (1954) and many other works, had died in October of the previous year after a long decline, subsequently chronicled by Martin in his memoir (1954) and many other works, had died in October of the previous year after a long decline, subsequently chronicled by Martin in his memoir Experience Experience (2000). (2000).

To Reinhold Neven du Mont April 12, 1996 Brookline Dear Reinhold: Harriet Wa.s.serman and I have not been able to continue as agent and client. My new agent, as you may have heard, is Andrew Wylie. Harriet has cast me into outer darkness and no longer communicates with me though there is unfinished business to do.

In any case I write to inform you that Mr. Wylie will be representing me and that he has full authority to speak for me. You and I have always had excellent relations and there will be no change in our amicable customs.

I hope that you are well and happy. I have almost recovered from several illnesses and am writing again. I have just finished a novella-something entirely new, I hope.

Yours as ever, Neven du Mont was an editor at Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Bellow's German publisher.

To Albert Glotzer April 19, 1996 Brookline Dear Al, I spoke with Yetta [Barshevsky Shachtman] and she told me that it was your habit to attend the Boston Marathon and wait at the finish line for your son the runner. I too encourage the oddities of my three sons and my sole grandson, Andrew, who grew up in California where oddities are never in short supply. So I was hoping to see you last Monday, but Yetta said that you were making a quick round trip and would not stay overnight. On last Tuesday I was expected at Queens College-booked for a reading-but the Nervous Nellies of the Queens English Department called on Monday to warn me of bad weather ahead. They urged me to get on the next shuttle. So I was actually in New York City on Monday night. I did my thing on Tuesday. By Wednesday afternoon I was back in Boston. This was my first solo journey and I regretted leaving Janis behind. I am like you in my boyish rejection of elderliness. Antiquity-why not come right out with it? You pack a s...o...b..ll on a winter day and imagine taking a belly flop on your sled as we all used to do back in the beautiful Twenties-I was ten years old in 1925. All that remains is the freshness of the impulse.

Last Sunday, here in Boston, I spoke at Harvard before Richard Pipes's society [the Shop Club]; its members are Polish intellectuals and Jewish intellectuals (from Poland). The members.h.i.+p was singular, to say the least. n.o.body has more intellectual style than these east Europeans. I thought this was a very odd lodge. My subject was anti-Semitism (otherwise known as Jew-hatred) in literature. I concentrated almost entirely on Dostoyevsky and on L.-F. Celine. Afterwards we attended a party at the Pipeses'. Among the guests were many who knew more about my subject than I did, and I wish I could remember their names. The only name that does come back to me is that of the brother of the late James Merrill, a boyish old man, ruddy and blue-eyed, with white curls, who looked as if he might have just left his fielder's mitt on the hall table. For all his billions he was so fresh and engaging that my heart went out to him. He turned out to be an amateur scholar deeply interested in Polish history and literature. But I was monopolized by a mathematician I had known in a former incarnation and by a Polish Celine expert who spoke to me in French about Celine's sick-joke pamphlets recommending the Final Solution.

A house in the country was a great idea, but completely utopian. I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available. At this very moment, the roads are swimming in mud in Vermont. How to deal with mud time? Perhaps I might start a new fas.h.i.+on with mud skis. I seem to be one of those natural revolutionists who comes up regularly with million-dollar ideas. [ . . . ]

I invite you to come and stay with Janis and me when you attend next year's Marathon. This will give both of us something to live for.

Yours,

To John Auerbach and Nola Chilton May 3, 1996 Brookline Dear John and Nola- If I don't write to you, I scarcely write at all. My correspondents have given up on me. Not to write means to be fundamentally out of order, and I suppose that that can be said of me. I am not ”drunk” but I am ”disorderly”-old before my preparations to be old are completed. I keep thinking what I shall shall be doing be doing when when-and when when overcomes me while I'm still considering what to do about it. overcomes me while I'm still considering what to do about it.

A month in intensive care, unconscious, was what did it. At last I was convinced.

It's necessary for me to be in Boston [on account of] its doctors. I have a five-foot shelf of pills. Janis makes sure I take them on schedule, and visit the cardiologist, the neurologist, the dermatologist, the G.U. man, the ophthalmologist, etc. A friendly physician has explained to me that four weeks in intensive care take six months to recover from. I must not expect to be normal again before the end of 1996.

But I have much to be grateful for. Without Janis I'd have joined my ancestors by now. I do think of them them quite a lot. I'm edging near. But I can't conceive of any sort of life, in any dimension, without her. And, after all, seeing my parents, brothers, friends is by no means a certainty. There's a large cloud of ambiguous promises over all our intimations-a dark atmosphere of hints. This side of death there's nothing definite, about the afterlife, to be found. quite a lot. I'm edging near. But I can't conceive of any sort of life, in any dimension, without her. And, after all, seeing my parents, brothers, friends is by no means a certainty. There's a large cloud of ambiguous promises over all our intimations-a dark atmosphere of hints. This side of death there's nothing definite, about the afterlife, to be found.

The best one can do (the best I I can do) is to write stories. I've written a novella-s.e.xy but the setting (by and large) is a cemetery. I'll send you a copy when it's fit to be read. can do) is to write stories. I've written a novella-s.e.xy but the setting (by and large) is a cemetery. I'll send you a copy when it's fit to be read.

You mustn't think I've forgotten you. I think about you both. But I very seldom send letters. And I can hardly bring myself to read the mail.

I hope you are well, thriving, happy.

Love, Janis adds her her love, as well. love, as well.

The s.e.xy novella would appear next spring as The Actual. The Actual.

To James Salter May 20, 1996 Brookline Dear Jim, I can't match your chatty insouciance, n.o.body can. Real insouciance takes character. It's one of the gifts that's been withheld from me. If I were able to take matters lightly I should have come along on this junket. I've had two trips this spring, one to Toronto that knocked me out and another to Queens College that laid me low. A trans-Atlantic trip is something I can't face. Perhaps if I had two or three months to recover in Paris I could do it, but a round trip is out of the question. Also I'm too unforgiving to write degage degage [ [125] anecdotes. To take an example of such skills from your own letter, I loved the Nabokov taxi-cab anecdote but the image of a rose on a hairy chest on which you finish it rubbed me the wrong way. Nabokov was like that-one of the great wrong-way rubbers of all times. Somewhere he said, and said very well, that Borges was a marvelous writer and then he went on to add that Borges's pieces are like beautiful verandas and that after the eighteenth or twentieth porch one says, ”Great but where are the houses?” This is Nabokov at his best. At his gruesome worst he pins feminine roses to simian bosoms.

In the old days I used to stay in Gallimard's attic on the Rue Bottin-little bedrooms such as the bedrooms I was used to in Chicago in the Depression: three bucks a week. I'd like nothing better than to follow you around Paris from one thrilling party to another. What a gift you have for filling your days with good company. When your letters come to be collected, you'll be in a cla.s.s with Samuel Pepys.