Part 52 (1/2)

That's not the outstanding defect of IMAC IMAC. Your reader, out of respect for your powers, is more than willing to go along with you. He will not, as I was not, be able to go along with your Ira, probably the least attractive of all your characters. I a.s.sume that you can no more bear Ira than the reader can. But you stand loyally by this cast-iron klutz-a big strong stupid man who attracts you for reasons invisible to me.

Now there is a real mystery about Communists in the West, to limit myself to those. How were they able to accept Stalin-one of the most monstrous tyrants ever? You would have thought that the Stalin-Hitler division of Poland, the defeat of the French which opened the way to Hitler's invasion of Russia, would have led CP members to reconsider their loyalties. But no. When I landed in Paris in 1948 I found that the intellectual leaders (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, etc.) remained loyal despite the Stalin sea of blood. Well, every country, every government has its its sea, or lake, or pond. Still Stalin remained ” sea, or lake, or pond. Still Stalin remained ”the hope”-despite the clear parallel with Hitler. hope”-despite the clear parallel with Hitler.

But to keep it short-the reason: The reason lay in the hatred of one's own country. Among the French it was the old confrontation of ”free spirits,” or artists, with the ruling bourgeoisie. In America it was the fight against the McCarthys, the House Committees investigating subversion, etc. that justified the Left, the followers of Henry Wallace, etc. The main enemy was at home (Lenin's WWI slogan). If you opposed the CP you were a McCarthyite, no two ways about it.

Well, it was a deep and perverse stupidity. It didn't require a great mind to see what Stalinism was. But the militants and activists refused to reckon with the simple facts available to everybody.

Enough: You will say that all of that is acknowledged in IMAC IMAC. Yes, and no. You tell us that Ira is a brute, a murderer. But who else is there? Ira and Eve are at the core of your novel-and what does this pair amount to?

One of your persistent themes is the purgation one can obtain only through rage. The forces of aggression are liberating, etc. And I can see that as a legitimate point of view. Okay if your characters are t.i.tans. But Eve is simply a pitiful woman and Sylphid is a pampered, wicked fat girl with a bison hump. These are not t.i.tans.

There aren't many people to whom I can be so open. We've always been candid with each other and I hope we will continue, both of us, to say what we think. You'll be sore at me, but I believe that you won't cast me off forever.

Ever yours,

To John Auerbach and Nola Chilton February 23, 1998 Brookline Dear John and Nola, [ . . . ] Many years ago Bobby Kennedy several times said to me that he was concerned with small dictators who might (easily) produce a nuclear device. One of the things I have always suspected was that aberrant types would somehow find means to realize their mad megalomaniacal dreams. The tendency is, in hundreds of millions of instances, to translate imagination into actualities. You think of blowing up a federal building with a bomb made of cheap components including a sack of fertilizer, and you load your ingredients into a parked truck and it goes off and kills men, women and children. So there's no limit to the possibilities for cranks [ . . . ] Meantime our president is beset by s.e.x problems. It's a tribute to FDR and even to Jack Kennedy that their s.e.x problems didn't prevent them from governing the country, but I'm not altogether sure that Clinton can carry Monica while conducting foreign affairs. All I can definitely say about this historic episode is that it shows us what a powerful aphrodisiac great politics can be.

Meanwhile most of my contemporaries have gone to the next world, and it's no more than reasonable that I should be preoccupied with the next world, and it is natural also that at my age one should think more often about friends still living.

I hope Chris Walsh has sent you copies of The Republic of Letters The Republic of Letters. We have just published #3 #3.

Much love to both of you, To Teddy Kollek April 14, 1998 Brookline Dear Teddy, I felt when Isaiah Berlin died that I should send you a note, but then I was too dreary to do it. Instead I recalled the weeks when I was at the Mishkenot and Isaiah and his wife were at the King David just up the street.

Later on I dined with Isaiah several times in Oxford and we reminisced pleasantly about those days in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem you had totally transformed.

I often feel these days that death is a derelict or what Americans nowadays call a street person who has moved into the house with me and whom I can find no way to get rid of. The only solution is to make him a member of the family.

Enough of these gloomy reflections and fantasies. I am trying to express solidarity and exchange sympathies with an old friend who is, I hope, well and happy.

With affection,

To Albert Glotzer June 3, 1998 W. Brattleboro Dear Al- I used to be an eager letter writer, but it fills me with self-disgust now to face the growing pile of unanswered mail. Age is probably to blame-since age is there, I make use of it. Life becomes silenter and silenter. I notice that most of the mental work of the old (the work of this old man, at least) is done in silence. I find myself often talking to the dead (for instance). Others have confessed to me that they do it too. Even rationalist atheists and materialists will admit, if they're old enough, that they expect to meet their mothers in the afterlife.

I marvel at your refusal to give in. I too am a sc.r.a.pper. Giving in to sickness is inconceivable. It's very strange that after thirty years of heart trouble (fibrillations) I am free from symptoms. I'm rid of the pills. On the other hand, walking has become painful. My arthritic joints find it hard to stand up from a seated position. But I makh zikh nit visndik makh zikh nit visndik, in Yiddish. The translation is: ”Ignore it!” We are forced to do our business, day by day, between narrowing limits and reduced perspectives. Again, it's makh zikh nit visndik makh zikh nit visndik. [ . . . ]

Much love to you, and to Maggie, To Sophie Wilkins June 17, 1998 W. Brattleboro Dear Sophie, [ . . . ] The delicious chocolates you sent are in the cupboard. Janis makes a point of eating chocolates only on birthdays-excuse me, family birthdays-and anniversaries. I am on my honor never to eat precious candies without permission, but of course I do eat them. I steal them. I am extremely fond of truffles. Of course I shouldn't eat them. I am not desperately sick but neither am I in the best of health. Atrial fibrillation is my chief complaint. Mostly I ignore such troubles. I do b.i.t.c.h from time to time, but at heart I still a.s.sume that nothing has changed much since childhood. Maybe this is what psychiatrists mean when they say that a patient is ”in denial.”

I am very happy to hear that Karl is improving. He has very justifiably taken a long holiday from injustice and idiocy. Maybe he will feel well enough by and by to take up the sword once more. As for Thomas Bernhard, he is a very strange bird indeed. I read him with respect and even admiration but he doesn't reach my warmer feelings. What he does reach is my own bottomless hatred of the n.a.z.is, especially the Austrian ones. He would have you think that virtually all Austrians were and remain n.a.z.is. I see no reason to disagree. When I read Karl's lovely poem about Auden's grave I wondered why Auden should have wished to pa.s.s his last years [at Kirchstetten] in the society of such creeps. I seem to recall that he even addressed affectionate lines to some of them. But then Austria was always a monument to bourgeois comforts, and in his declining years Auden too loved pottering in the kitchen and sleeping in bourgeois feather beds.

Janis also sends her love,

To Philip Roth September 15, 1998 W. Brattleboro Dear Philip- So sorry about the delay.

Now that I am in real earnest an old guy, requiring orderliness, I am in circ.u.mstances always of disorder-of chaos.

Ever your pal, To Evelyn Nef August 8, 1998 Brookline Dear Evvy, I would much sooner have paid you a visit but as Janis has told you the doctors ordered me to come and have a pacemaker installed. I have had my problems with doctors during this long life of mine. My medical history goes back to 1923 when my appendix was removed in Montreal and I d.a.m.ned near died of peritonitis. After that I was quite sick in Chicago and after that very sick in Boston. And now I am eighty-three years old and still stepping into the batter's box to try for one more hit. So my pacemaker and I will be happy to come and pay a visit and we shall all sit down together in your grand new house. Janis and I-and Walter [Pozen]-are looking forward with antic.i.p.ated happiness to seeing you again.

Yours with love,

Author, linguist, psychotherapist and philanthropist Evelyn Stefansson Nef (1913-2009) was the widow of John U. Nef, Bellow's longtime colleague in the Committee on Social Thought. Previously, she had been the lover of Buckminster Fuller, the wife of puppeteer Bil Baird, and the wife of explorer Vihjalmur Stefansson.

To Richard Stern November 15, 1998 Brookline Dear Richard, Your notes always give me great comfort.

Am I all right? No, just partly right. My memory, of which I was West-Point proud, keeps disappointing me. Last week I couldn't remember Katharine Hepburn's name and the name of her lover-Somebody Tracy eluded me for several days. And I actually have to go back to reference works, to my great shame. Well, perhaps G.o.d is trying to tell me that though I could remember everything, I didn't really understand anything. The pacemaker, however, keeps my heart regular, and I can drink all the wine I like at dinner and thumb my nose at caffeine.

I wouldn't throw in the towel-yet. A little anecdote to ill.u.s.trate; I dug it up last month in writing a note to Jack Miles (you'll see this for yourself in the next number of TROL TROL): An old man lives in the forest alone and gathers winter fuel and finds himself one day unable to lift his burden of sticks. He raises his eyes to heaven and says, ”O G.o.d, send me Death,” and when Death comes Death says, ”Did you send for me, sir?” The old man replies, ”Yes, lend me a hand with these sticks. Just put them on my shoulder and I'll do the rest.”

You may want that towel one day to wipe your inspired brow.

Say h.e.l.lo to Alane.

Yours ever,

1999.

To Edward Simmons June 3, 1999 W. Brattleboro Dear Edward: Your mother tells me how well you're doing. You're off to college now and, inevitably, I think of my own college days back in the Thirties. Those were the Depression years and we were given to understand that our parents were hard-put to raise two dollars for our tuition. Three hundred dollars a year were no trifle, in those lean times, and I was often reminded that idling and drinking were forbidden. A handful of people had money to burn but the immense majority were flat-broke, very nearly down and out. Nevertheless I was often playing pool when I should have been in cla.s.s. Luckily I was also a smart Jewish kid and read tons of books on my own so that I pa.s.sed my exams-I squeaked by in my early years. It was only in my junior year that I began to do better, graduating with honors and a fellows.h.i.+p to the University of Wisconsin.