Letters, Page 4

  1965 Catharine Carver now Bellow’s editor at Viking. “A Wen,” one-act play, appears in Esquire. Awarded National Book Award for Herzog; accepting it, says: “Without the common world the novelist is nothing but a curiosity and will find himself in a glass case along some dull museum corridor of the future.” Mayor Richard J. Daley confers five-hundred-dollar prize on behalf of Society of Midland Authors. (Bellow later remarks: “Art is not the mayor’s dish. Indeed, why should it be? I much prefer his neglect to the kind of interest Stalin took in poetry.”) In June, attends White House festival of the arts, boycotted by Edmund Wilson, Robert Lowell and others. In the East Room, reads aloud from Herzog; John Hersey reads from Hiroshima; Dwight Macdonald circulates antiwar petition among festival participants. (President Johnson says afterward: “They insult me by comin’, they insult me by stayin’ away.”) Bellow spends second summer on Martha’, Vineyard. Receives Formentor Prize. “Orange Soufflé,” another one-act play, in Esquire.

  1966 Lengthy Paris Review interview, conducted by Gordon Lloyd Harper. Dramatized version of Seize the Day, directed by Herbert Berghof and starring Mike Nichols as Tommy Wilhelm, performed in workshop at Theatre of Ideas. Bellow accepts assignment from Life to write profile of Robert F. Kennedy, then candidate for Senate from New York; abandons project after discouraging week in Kennedy’s entourage. Delivers ill-received keynote at PEN Congress in New York: “We have at present a large literary community and something we can call, faute de mieux, a literary culture, in my opinion a very bad one.” Meets Margaret Staats. Evening of one-acts, Under the Weather, premieres at Fortune Theatre, London, to generally favorable reviews. Delmore Schwartz dies in July. Under the Weather on Broadway in October at Cort Theater, starring Shelley Winters; reviews savage; closes in less than two weeks. Separates from wife Susan. Begins work on novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet. Upon departure of Catharine Carver, Denver Lindley becomes his editor at Viking.

  1967 Travels to Middle East to cover Six-Day War for Newsday. (“Many of the dead are barefooted, having thrown off their shoes in flight. Only a few have helmets. Some wear the headdress. After leaving Gaza, I saw no live Egyptians except for a group of captured snipers lying bound and blindfolded in a truck. The tent dwellers had run off. Their shelters of old sacking and tatters of plastic were unoccupied, with only a few dogs sniffing about and the flies, of course, in great prosperity.”) Balance of summer at East Hampton, New York, where Saul Steinberg and Harold Rosenberg are among his friends. Delivers “Skepticism and the Depth of Life” at various American colleges and universities.

  1968 Spring in Oaxaca with Maggie Staats; summer in East Hampton. In September at Villa Serbelloni, Rockefeller Foundation retreat at Lake Como, where he befriends young poet Louise Glück. Childhood friend Louis Sidran dies of cancer. Mosby’s Memoirs, collection of stories, published in October. Divorce from Susan. Aaron Asher succeeds Denver Lindley as Bellow’s editor at Viking. In London, confers with George Weidenfeld, his British publisher. Chance meeting with Graham Greene. Death of John Steinbeck in December.

  1969 In January, Josephine Herbst dies. Bellow enters treatment with Heinz Kohut, Chicago-based founder of influential “self-psychology” school of psychoanalysis. Returns in June to Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio; August on Nantucket. Mr. Sammler’s Planet published in back-to-back issues of Atlantic Monthly.

  1970 S. Y. Agnon dies. Mr. Sammler’s Planet published in book form. Bellow visits Nairobi and Addis Ababa. At Purdue University, delivers “Culture Now: Some Animadversions, Some Laughs,” assault on fashionable avant-gardism of, among other publications, Partisan Review under editorship of William Phillips and Richard Poirier. Receives honorary doctorate from New York University. June at Jerusalem artists’ colony Mishkenot Sha’ananim.

  1971 “Culture Now” printed in Modern Occasions, quarterly magazine edited by Philip Rahv. Bellow wins National Book Award for Mr. Sammler’s Planet. Off-Broadway revival of The Last Analysis at Circle in the Square; reviews more favorable; closes after five weeks.

  1972 John Berryman leaps to his death from Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. (“Faith against despair, love versus nihilism, had been the themes of his struggles and his poems. What he needed for his art had been supplied by his own person, by his mind, his wit. He drew it out of his vital organs, out of his very skin. At last there was no more.”) Harvard and Yale award Bellow honorary degrees. Edmund Wilson dies in June. Bellow travels to Japan. Nicola Chiaromonte dies. Henry Volkening dies; Bellow engages Harriet Wasserman, Volkening’s protégée, as new literary agent. Death of Harvey Swados. In November, delivers “Literature in the Age of Technology” at Smithsonian Institution.

  1973 Attends meetings of the Chicago Anthroposophical Society. In April, begins six-week residency in Rodmell, East Sussex, at country house of Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Through Mircea and Christinel Eliade, meets Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea, Romanian-born professor of mathematics at Northwestern. At Viking, Elisabeth Niebuhr Sifton now Bellow’s editor. In December, Philip Rahv dies.

  1974 “Humboldt’s Gift,” excerpt from novel in progress of the same name, appears in Playboy. Growing enthusiasm for Anthroposophy and writings of founder Rudolf Steiner. (“I do admit to being intrigued with Steiner. I do not know enough to call myself a Steinerian. The college professor in me wants to administer a quick quiz to those who knock him, to see whether they have done their homework.”) In November, marries Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea. “Burdens of a Lone Survivor,” a second excerpt from Humboldt’s Gift, in Esquire.

  1975 Attends White House dinner in honor of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Travels to England to speak with Owen Barfield, barrister-philosopher and devoted Steinerian, whose book Saving the Appearances is source of Bellow’s Anthroposophical interests. Humboldt’s Gift published in August. In October, begins three-month stay in Israel to collect material for work of nonfiction; interviews A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, Abba Eban, Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Alexandra lectures on probability theory at Hebrew University. In November Lionel Trilling dies; in December, Hannah Arendt.

  1976 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt’s Gift. Nonfiction work To Jerusalem and Back appears in back-to-back issues of The New Yorker; published as book in October. In December, Bellow awarded Nobel Prize “for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.” At Stockholm, sounds familiar theme of previous addresses: “We must not permit intellectuals to become our bosses. And we do them no good by allowing them to run the arts. Should they, when they read novels, find in them only the endorsement of their own opinions? Are we here to play such games?”

  1977 First District Court of Chicago nullifies property settlement in 1968 divorce from Susan, ruling that Bellow had underestimated current and future royalties, and orders him to pay increased alimony and child support. In March, delivers Jefferson Lectures in the Humanities in Washington, D.C., two long reflections on Chicago. (“I was taken aback on my first trip to New York in the Thirties to find the tracks of the Third Avenue El so close to the parlor windows of the tenements. There was always plenty of space in Chicago; it was ugly but roomy, plenty of opportunity to see masses of things, a large view, a never entirely trustworthy vacancy; ample grayness, ample brownness, big clouds. The train used to make rickety speed through the violet evenings of summer over the clean steel rails (nothing else was clean) through the backyards of Chicago with their gray wooden porches, the soiled gray stairs, the clumsy lumber of the trusses, the pulley clotheslines. On the South Side you rode straight into the stockyard fumes. The frightful stink seemed to infect the sun itself, so that it was reeking as well as shining.”) In May, awarded Gold Medal for Fiction of American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; John Cheever makes presentation. In September, Cook County Circuit Court holds Bellow in contempt for failure to pay alimony and child support to Susan; sentenced to ten days in jail; sentence subsequently overturned. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, for autu
mn. Teaches at Brandeis, as does Alexandra. Befriends Leon Wieseltier, graduate student in Jewish history and philosophy at Harvard. Begins five-year appointment as member of Prize Fellows Committee charged with selecting recipients of MacArthur “genius” grants.

  1978 Leaves Viking for Harper & Row where his new editor is Harvey Ginsberg. In July, Harold Rosenberg dies; in August, Ignazio Silone. Travels with Alexandra to Romania to see her dying mother, Florica Bagdasar, former Romanian minister of health. Illinois Court of Appeals orders defendant Saul Bellow to pay plaintiff Susan Glassman Bellow half a million dollars in settlement of property dispute stemming from their 1968 divorce.

  1979 In March, Jean Stafford dies. Bellow spends summer at West Halifax, Vermont. Works steadily through autumn on new novel The Dean’s December.

  1980 Co-teaches seminar, the first of many, with Allan Bloom, colleague in the Committee on Social Thought. (Authors covered over the years include Shakespeare, Rousseau, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Joyce, Proust, Tolstoy and Shakespeare.) David Grene also sometimes in attendance. Harvey Ginsberg leaves Harper & Row; Edward Burlingame now Bellow’s editor.

  1981 Attends reunion of Tuley High School. Speaks in May at Brasenose College, Oxford. In June, visits Barley Allison at Almería, Spain. Nelson Algren dies. In Paris, meeting with Samuel Beckett.

  1982 The Dean’s December published in February. John Cheever dies in June. (“I think that the differences between John and me endeared us to each other more than the affinities. He was a Yankee; I, from Chicago, was the son of Jewish immigrants. His voice, his style, his humor were different from mine. His manner was reticent, mine was . . . something else. It fell to John to resolve these differences. He did this without the slightest difficulty, simply by putting human essences in first place; first the persons—himself, myself—and after that the other stuff—class origins, social history. A fairly experienced observer, I have never seen the thing done as he did it—done, I mean, as if it were not done at all.”) Bellow and Alexandra again in rented house in West Halifax, Vermont. They begin building new house on nearby acreage Bellow has purchased. Story “Him with His Foot in His Mouth” in Atlantic Monthly.

  1983 Summer in newly completed house. “In the Days of Mr. Roosevelt” appears in Esquire in December.

  1984 Long story “What Kind of Day Did You Have?” in Vanity Fair in February. Collection of stories Him with His Foot in His Mouth published in May. Lachine Public Library renamed Saul Bellow Public Library. Revisits birthplace at 130 Eighth Avenue. In June, Lillian Hellman dies. Bellow on Capri to receive Malaparte Prize; Moravia in attendance. Bellow asks resident author Shirley Hazzard to take him to ruins of Villa Jovis, palace of Roman emperor Tiberius, which he’d last visited in 1950. (“Probably my final chance.”) At the end of August, hosts five-day international symposium in Wilmington, Vermont, that includes Czesław Miłosz, Heinrich Böll, Andrei Sinyavski, Alain Besançon, Pierre Hassner, Leszek Kołakowski, Allan Bloom, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Werner Dannhauser and others.

  1985 Anita, first wife, dies in March. Brother Maurice dies in May, brother Sam in June. Alexandra asks for divorce. Bellow leaves North End, moves to Hyde Park. Observes seventieth birthday quietly in Vermont. Elsa Morante dies. Bellow addresses Ethical Culture Society in New York.

  1986 Leaves Harper & Row for William Morrow & Company; Harvey Ginsberg once again his editor. Participates in PEN International Conference in New York. Addresses PEN in London. In March, Bernard Malamud dies; in April, Mircea Eliade. Deepening love for Janis Freedman. They begin their life together at 5825 Dorchester, Hyde Park. Sydney J. Harris dies in December.

  1987 Contributes introduction to Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. (“A style of this sort will seem to modern readers marred by classical stiffness—‘Truth,’ ‘Knowers,’ ‘the Good,’ ‘Man’—but we can by no means deny that behind our objection to such language is a guilty consciousness of the flimsiness, and not infrequently the trashiness, of our modern talk.”) With Janis, travels to Lugano, Milan, Aix-en-Provence, Lyon and Jerusalem. Writers’ Conference at Haifa; Bloom, Martin Amis and A. B. Yehoshua in attendance. More Die of Heartbreak published by Morrow. Lectures at Amherst College. Reads at Trenton College.

  1988 Receives Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan. (“I never saw anybody in public life who was so at ease and who played his role so well, with the vitality of an artist.”) In April, Paolo Milano dies. Bellow leaves William Morrow and returns to Viking. In Philadelphia, delivers “A Jewish Writer in America” to Jewish Publication Society. In spring term, lectures at Dartmouth College, then travels to Italy with Janis. Receives Scanno Prize in Abruzzo. In Paris, Bellow and Janis on holiday with Allan Bloom and Michael Z. Wu at Hôtel Crillon.

  1989 Begins work on two major novels, All Marbles Still Accounted For and A Case of Love (both unfinished at his death). Malcolm Cowley dies. In March, Bellow publishes A Theft. In June, Barley Alison dies. On August 25, in Wilmington, Vermont, marries Janis Freedman. On leave from Chicago, teaches autumn term at Boston University and gives BU’s Convocation Lecture. Speaks also at Harvard. In September, Robert Penn Warren dies; in October, Mary McCarthy. Bellow travels to Washington to receive PEN/Malamud Award. In Bartlesville, Oklahoma, receives P. V. Helmerich Distinguished Authors Award. Novella The Bellarosa Connection published in December. Death of Samuel Beckett.

  1990 “Something to Remember Me By” published in Esquire. Bellow speaks at celebration for Vaclav Havel in New York. In May, he and Janis go to Amsterdam and London. Warm friendship with Martin Amis. Delivers Romanes Lecture at Oxford. In London, tea with Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street. (“She didn’t need me. She answered her questions herself.”) With Janis, belated honeymoon at Sidmouth in the south of England. On June 10, John Auerbach, Al Glotzer, Zita Cogan, Saul Steinberg, Eleanor Clark, Rosanna Warren, Keith Botsford, William Arrowsmith, Philip Roth, Claire Bloom and others gather for surprise seventy-fifth birthday party thrown by Janis at Betty Hillman’s Petit Chef in Wilmington, Vermont. (“It was very Chekhovian,” Roth recalled. “People got up and burst into tears and sat down.”) In New York, receives Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Takes up study of Latin; reads Caesar’s Commentaries. Alberto Moravia dies in September. In October, at Art Institute of Chicago, Mayor Richard M. Daley hosts a second birthday celebration. Travels with Janis for lectures and readings in Montreal, San Antonio, Miami and Cincinnati.

  1991 Continues with All Marbles Still Accounted For and A Case of Love. Winter trip to Italy and Israel with Janis. At invitation of Bruno Bartoletti, lectures on Mozart in Florence. For Travel Holiday, writes “Winter in Tuscany.” Visits friends John and Nola Auerbach at Kibbutz S’dot Yam in Caesarea. Attends Tuley High School reunion. In July, Isaac Bashevis Singer dies. Allan Bloom seriously ill; Bellow and Janis attend to him daily.

  1992 In April, dinner at Robie House to celebrate fiftieth anniversary of Committee on Social Thought. Bloom in attendance; dies in October of complications from AIDS. (“What did the people who reproached him for his elitism want him to do about his evident and—I might add—benevolent superiority?”) Death of William Barrett.

  1993 William Arrowsmith dies. Beena Kamlani now Bellow’s editor at Viking. It All Adds Up, collection of nonfiction pieces, published. With Janis in Paris from March through May; teaches at Raymond Aron Institute at invitation of historian François Furet. Lectures in Portugal and Hungary in April. Chancellor John Silber invites Bellow to teach at Boston University; he accepts and, ending three decades at University of Chicago, moves with Janis to Boston. (“I gave Chicago the best years of my life, as they say in divorce court. [ . . . ] When people asked me, why are you leaving, I said because I can’t walk down the street any more without thinking of my Dead, and it was time. I had a girlfriend here or went to a party there or attended a meeting there and so forth. Most of the people whom I had known so well and loved so well were gone.”) In November, travels to University of Iowa, where he guest-l
ectures at Frank Conroy’s writing workshop. Delivers convocation address at University of Toronto.

  1994 George Sarant, son of Isaac and Vasiliki Rosenfeld, dies. In March, Bellow honored at Boston Public Library dinner. Lectures at Adelphi University and, in April, at Harvard. Travels to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle on speaking engagements. In November, while on working holiday on Caribbean island of Saint Martin, falls dangerously ill from ciguatera poisoning after eating contaminated fish. Back in Boston, hospitalized from Thanksgiving until the New Year.

  1995 In January, Edward Shils dies. Bellow resumes teaching duties at Boston University; still convalescent, holds classes at home on Bay State Road. Again able to travel, returns to Hyde Park to address capacity crowd at Mandel Hall of the University of Chicago on “Literature in a Democracy.” Visits friend Werner Dannhauser at Michigan State University and delivers lecture there. Ralph Ellison dies in April. Stanley Elkin dies in June. In July, Bellow’s last short story, “By the Saint Lawrence,” appears in Esquire. With Keith Botsford, founds new literary journal, News from the Republic of Letters. Gallbladder surgery in December.