Dear David:
I too am sorry we didn’t arrive at a more solid understanding. Whatever it is that thrusts itself between us is a very potent thing. I can’t pretend to understand it and, in fact, I have made the most negligible effort. I tell you this with no attempt to mitigate my slackness, but you must not interpret this as a lack of interest in you. Far from it. I am greatly interested; but I have given myself over wholly to those matters that you limit to inner dialogues and those are my politics, too. Can I be wrong in assuming that politics are one function of a person’s humanity? I think you would not say so. This is not egotism in me, nor, as you call it, tiredness, evidence of defeat. None of that. The principal difference between us, if I guess correctly, is that I hold that the forms outside do not assure the manhood of the man. We can ask of them that they should not impede it, as they now do, but we are not safe in assuming the assurance. The right political belief, in other words, in itself secures nothing.
It is necessary to be a revolutionist. But I would deny that I was less one because I do not participate in a political movement. Perhaps your criticism would be juster if I saw, but refused to enter, the right one.
I think I could have shown you a great deal about
my
kind of politics; I would have been glad to do so, regarding it as a privilege.
Sorry about the delay, I had proofs to read. Write to me.
Yrs,
David Bazelon (1923-96) was a contributor to leading literary and political journals and the author of, among other works,
Power in America: The Politics of the New Class
(1967).
To David Bazelon
March 20, 1944 [Chicago]
Dear Dave:
Oscar told me last week that
politics
was going to print your story. I’m glad of it. I shall be sure to send you an opinion as soon as I’ve read it. I don’t think it makes much difference where a story appears just so it reaches the people you want it to reach, and
politics
is read by pretty much the same public as
PR
. Besides, I think you’re a writer and that you should write and publish and make yourself known. It’s best to get an early start. You’ll be writing much more maturely at twenty-eight than I am because of it. You get used to declaring yourself publicly and you save a lot of time and effort and spare yourself a long fight for confidence. Macdonald [editor in chief of
politics
], though on the whole I don’t care for his literary opinions, knows what writing is, and his endorsement verifies Isaac’s opinion of you, and Oscar’s and mine. It’s all to the good. I’d like to advise you, by the way, to avoid making a mistake of mine, the mistake of taking criticisms of a single story too seriously. One doesn’t stand or fall by a single story or a single book of stories.
I’d like to say this about your last remarks: I don’t advise others to follow the Dangling Man into regimentation. That was not advice. When you read Dangling Man you will see that I was only making an ironic statement about the plight of the Josephs. I don’t encourage surrender. I’m speaking of wretchedness and saying that no man by his own effort finds his way out of it. To some extent the artist does. But the moral man, the citizen, doesn’t. He can’t. As to what I would advise Johnny to do, concretely I can’t say. In general I would say, “Be a revolutionist. Nothing we have politically deserves to be saved.”
And I would include the U[niversity] of C[hicago] and the Great Books Project in nothing. Did you see that Education for Freedom article in
PM
? I think Dwight ought to run a piece about it. The information in
PM
is mostly wrong, but it’s right in spirit. [Robert Maynard] Hutchins’ anti-mammalianism deserves some grand, public derision. Some reliable man in Teacher’s College ought to be invited to try. [ . . . ]
I have an idea Dwight’s not fond of me anymore because I didn’t agree with him about the war. However, I’d be happy to be found wrong.
Write.
Yours,
To Alfred Kazin
March 25, 1944 [Chicago]
Dear Alfred:
Splendid! You’re a lucky Jew-boy. I congratulate and envy you. I’d like to come down to New York to see you off in style, with a great celebration. After all, you’re something like a personal emissary for Isaac and me and dozens of our sort, going to see what our prospects are and whether
homo sap.
offers more hope in England than here. It’s about time we heard not from newspapermen and politicos but from people we can trust. And of course it’s a wonderful thing for you, personally.
Immenso jubilo!
My book, as you suspect, gives me
veytig
[
13
]. I wish you would tell me what you think; I can have only misgivings at this stage. Clearly, the book is not what it should be, not what I can write. A more resolute character would have refused to have it published. But, alas! I fancy that even now I can give a pretty fair estimate of it. The writing is sound, the idea—of the impossibility of working out one’s own destiny freely in such a world—is a genuine one. The rest is a hash, a mishmash for which I deserve to be mercilessly handled. But it’s so hard now to find a way to use one’s best powers. What can be done? Isaac labors with the same difficulty. He has not reached the level where he can thunder. Like myself he is still somewhere in the trees. In the trees one rustles. You know whence thunder comes. I venture to say it’s not as bad as that for a critic. He finds his drama ready for him; the novelist has to assemble it from the materials he bumps blindly, fish-like, with his nose. And he has to change it, arrange it, set it in motion. And he has to be prepared to face inspection at his nakedest. I wouldn’t say that the critic doesn’t. Before I go too far, in my present wild state, let me end with this: that the critic, say [Edmund] Wilson (you painted this art yourself), has choicer, richer, subtler characters at his disposal. It’s a great advantage and a safer game.
There are other advantages. Most good writing in this century is of the cognitive type. Necessarily. Instead of a typical drama of man you have millions of disparate tendencies much easier to discuss than to represent or dramatize. But that’s a long
geshikhte
[
14
].
I suppose I shall have to take my pannings mercifully.
I’m terribly pleased, by the way, at your leaving
Fortune
. Not for you. You’re not a high-pressure boy. You belong in our camp.
This has been on my conscience, too. I should have liked to speak frankly about certain matters on our last meeting in Rockefeller Center, but I couldn’t without playing hob with the private affairs of other people. Mine I wouldn’t have cared about, I’d have spilled. After it’s blown over I shan’t keep anything back.
Let’s both write oftener.
Yours,
To Jean Stafford
[n.d.] [Chicago]
Dear Miss Stafford:
You remember me, I think. Bellow, the man who never called you back because he was desperately busy elsewhere. My purpose in coming forward now is to tell you how very happy I am to find you a fine writer. I haven’t read the book, just the chapter in
PR.
It is heartening to read such writing. I reserve the right to criticize on some heads, but the writing, the writing I acknowledge with all my heart. I say it who should know by virtue of having slaved at it, if by no other.
I’ve had no occasion to use Pepto-Bismol again, but I own a large bottle. It was all I had to remind me of you until the last
PR
arrived.
Best wishes,
Stafford’s formidable debut novel,
Boston Adventure,
had been excerpted in
Partisan Review
.
To David Bazelon
November 20, 1944 Chicago
Dear David:
I’m glad you decided to pick up the fallen correspondence, though how satisfactory you will find me as a correspondent is hard to say. I don’t write letters often. My correspondence with Isaac, for instance, has quite died, but that, perhaps, is owing to our bearishness. He in his cave and I in mine. I think, however, that we are not of the same species. I am a black not a grizzly, and in my mature years not characteristically unsocial.
Oscar has told me about your troubles. Those are serious things and you might have guessed that I would not neglect this opportunity to tie them to politics. Fail with yourself and you fail everywhere. That lesson I have learned at such cost. You must win in yourself: with the psychiatrist’s help, with love’s help, with reason’s help, with the help of social action. But the revolutionary moment cannot help because it is no seat of sanity, there is no ethic in it to respect, it is baneful to reason because it is wholly deterministic. I could go on. This will make you mad. But I beg you to consider without giving in to anger what it can do for you as a
mensch
. For a writer it is poison.
I am writing away, for better or worse. I tried to finish a novelette in time for the
PR
contest but I’ll never be through throwing out twenty-page chunks.
I know you will write soon. I am braced and waiting.
Best,
1945
To Samuel Freifeld
[n.d.]
Dear Sam:
I was still in boot-camp when I heard of your father’s death. It was bitter news. I thought how you would receive it, alone in some dingy English city. I lay on my sack in the barracks and thought about it. I couldn’t write you. Any letter I wrote while at Sheepshead would not have lightened your burden. I simply took it for granted that you would know how I felt. We are so linked that neither of us ever faces a crisis without thinking of the other. I did at Sheepshead as you did at Blanding. Whenever some new horror rose I invariably told myself that you had faced the very same one and doubtless many far worse.
I didn’t ship in the regular service. After three weeks on a foul training ship based at Baltimore I was transferred to administrative duty in Atlantic Headquarters. So I was stationed in New York until I secured a release last week.
I’m going to Chicago, but not to stay. Will probably move East. My job with
Britannica
ends on January 1st. I’m going to make my way Rosenfeld-style, as a free lance.
Love,
In early spring, after a third deferment from the Army, Bellow had enlisted in the Merchant Marine and been posted to Atlantic headquarters at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Following the Japanese surrender in August, he had been released to inactive status.
To James T. Farrell
September 15, 1945 [Chicago]
Dear Jim:
I’m putting in for a Guggenheim (Jim Henle [Bellow’s editor at Vanguard Press, who had published
Dangling Man
the previous year] says my chances are better this time) and I’d appreciate it greatly if you would once more consent to sponsor me. I’m putting on one of my annual drives to get out of Chicago. It grows more like Siberia all the time. I come in, petition the Czar to free me from banishment, he refuses and I get into the Pacemaker with the other condemned and return. Seriously, Chicago oppresses me in a way only another Chicagoan can understand. It terrifies outsiders—[Edmund] Wilson, for instance, in his piece on Jane Addams in “Travels in Two Democracies”—but it haunts the natives.
I don’t know what you thought of my first book. I hesitated to ask you to back my Guggenheim application if you thought I was a ham. I asked Jim Henle about it and he said you thought I was a good writer. I didn’t expect you to like
Dangling Man
but I would have been disturbed to learn that I was in your opinion a bum and ought to take up finger painting.
Sincerely,
1946
To Edmund Wilson
April 22, 1946 [Chicago]
Dear Mr. Wilson:
I want to thank you for supporting my Guggenheim application. I didn’t get a fellowship, as you perhaps know if you have seen the announcements. It occurs to me that one aspect or another of [my prospectus for]
The Victim
offended, antagonized or even frightened some of the people on the committee. In the nakedness of outline some of its ironies were disagreeable, I suspect. I’m inclined to think that they aroused someone’s dislike.
But who can guess anything about the motives and ways of institutions? You woo them like Ixion and clasp a cloud.
The Victim
is nearly finished and is scheduled by Vanguard for spring, 1947. I like it better than my first book, myself. In spite of its theme it doesn’t—I think—have the tone of
souffre-douleur.
[
15
]
I very much appreciate your having gone to the trouble of recommending me.