—Henderson the Rain King
1960
To Pascal Covici
January 18, 1960 Belgrade
Dear Pat—
Yesterday when I arrived in Yugoslavia, there was no mail at all. Can it be that Sondra hasn’t forwarded it, or that you’ve got my schedule mixed up? I’ll be in Yugoslavia until about Feb 1st. And I have a feeling there’s something very wrong in Minneapolis. I’ve written separately to four people, one of them the psychiatrist, asking for news but haven’t had a single answer. From Jack Ludwig I received a letter in Warsaw one-sentence-long saying only that Adam was well—as of Dec 28th or so. Can you find out for me what the situation is? Air mail to Belgrade takes only four days. This universal silence makes me afraid. The news must be awful. Jack would tell you, if you phone him, whether I ought to come back.
Yours,
To Ralph Ellison
January 20, 1960 Belgrade
Dear Ralph,
I’m much better. I’m beginning to sit up and take solid nourishment, and I’d enjoy my convalescence greatly if I didn’t have to do this cultural functionary bullshit. But even that has its compensations. I wouldn’t have minded Poland—particularly Poland—for all the meetings and lectures and teas and whisky I had to wade through. Eastern Europe has told me a lot about my family—myself, even. It’s made a Slavophile of me.
About Adam I never hear. I phoned Minneapolis finally, and spoke to the psychiatrist. From Macedonia. This was Macedonia’s first call to Mpls. Adam’s all right. He’ll even out—he’s built for it. [ . . . ]
How’s the book? How’s Fanny?
My love to the three of you.
To Pascal Covici
January 22, 1960 Belgrade
Dear Pat—
The reason for the wire was that no bills had been forwarded and I didn’t want Ralph to have an awkward time with the oil company. But the stuff arrived today. Never a word about Adam. Never. I had to phone Minneapolis—the psychiatrist—from Skopje in Macedonia (very near Romania). Adam’s fine.
There was so little room for deterioration when I left New York that it’s easy now to say I’m better. I really am. I’ve even begun to sleep again, without drugs. And I met a young lady in Poland—well, not so young, but lovely—who comforted me well. I thought also she had given me the clap, and I was very proud but the doctor in Warsaw said it was only a trifling infection. The clap
can
be arranged, I suppose, if a man has a serious ambition to get it. I’m just a dilettante.
As for work, I’ve been doing a little, picking at the play and writing a story. My stories aren’t very successful. They always turn into novels, because one thing leads to another. I suppose I lack a sense of form. Well, now that I realize, perhaps I can begin to study the matter. If a critic were to say it, I’d ignore him. The story
is
about Sondra, and it may be a trial run, who knows? First I must stop in my travels. I’d better come home, I think, and file my taxes and move East and complete the play and start the book. And begin my life. More and more I feel that I haven’t yet got under weigh. When, O Lord?
Next week I dash through Italy. Write me c/o Cultural Affairs U.S. Embassy, Rome. I haven’t the time to shop for trinkets. Yugoslav tableware is awful. Would Dorothy like some Serbian embroidery? Good, I’ll get her some. On Feb. 15th I sail to Haifa (U.S. Embassy, Jerusalem) and on March 3rd, Rome and on March 18th London again and on March 22nd or so home.
Love,
To Ralph Ross
February 4, 1960 [en route]
Dear Ralph—
On the train from Ljubljana to Venice I am suddenly struck by a motive of prudence—the first in several years. You advised me to get a lawyer in Mpls. and I think you were absolutely right. I can’t trust Jonas Schwartz [Sondra’s lawyer], and I don’t know what arrangements he will think just. No reason why I should allow him to do any thinking for me.
This is a major pain in the neck to you, I know; this is the price you must pay for being the most reliable friend I have in Mpls.
Can you get a lawyer to look after my interests? The case is simple to describe: 1.) Sondra has abandoned me but 2.) I am willing to let her have a divorce on two conditions: a.) that I pay no more than a hundred fifty a month for Adam and b.) that I have the right to visit Adam regularly and to have him with me during his holidays. Should the lawyer need more information he can reach me c/o Cultural Affairs U.S. Embassy, Rome till Feb. 1st, or Tel Aviv till March 1st. After March 1st, I’ll be in Rome again for a week. Then London, then home.
Have you become parents yet? I hope everything is going well. In the first days of your fatherhood I hesitate to bring upon you my post-graduate tribulations. But life is pushing at my back. And I suppose it’s a good sign that I’ve decided to defend myself, finally. I can tell you without the distortion of optimism that I’m very well. Now. Since Poland.
The train is bucking its way into Trieste.
Goodbye,
Love,
I was greatly comforted in Warsaw.
Ralph Ross was a philosopher and much-loved teacher at New York University and, subsequently, at the University of Minnesota.
To Richard Stern
[Postmark illegible; postcard from Venice—Piazza San Marco] Today—special for Bellow—Venice has a snowstorm. God salts my every bite. Just the same it
is
Italy. Even the irrigation ditches are dug with sensitivity.
Be all my sins remembered,
To Pascal Covici
March 4, 1960 Tel Aviv
Dear Boss—
I’m flying out of here today, filled with impressions and tired out. Stranger pilgrimages have been made, but few so fatiguing. I’m down about twenty lbs. and ready to go back to my business, which is to be fatter and to write books. I’ve had too much of sights and flights, and girls. Still I wanted to wear myself out, and I’m well satisfied with the results I’ve gotten.
There’s hardly anything I do as well as I know I can and that includes traveling. I’m still waiting for my life to begin. However, I’m nearer to a beginning than I’ve ever been. [ . . . ]
Is everything well with you? Do you want regards from Billy Rose (Ben Hecht’s friend)? Everyone comes to Israel. You should, too. Get a real Romanian meal.
Remember me to Dorothy,
With love,
Bellow had evidently seen the impresario Billy Rose in Israel. Thirty years later, Rose would turn up in the Jerusalem sequence of
The Bellarosa Connection.
To Ralph Ellison
March 8, 1960 Rome
Dear Ralph—
While you were being blasted by snow, I was in the Red Sea staring at tropical fish through the glass bottom of a boat. Have you had a rough time at Tivoli this winter? I read that this has been another blizzard of ’88, and I have visions of you and Rufus [the Ellisons’ dog] snowbound and Bill Lensing heading a rescue party.
But these events are always worse in the papers.
Is the
Savage
out? Is the book going again? Is Fanny well? I hope the answers are all of the best.
I’m away again tomorrow. Paris, London and on the 22nd NYC. Two days to see Greg and I go to Washington and Chicago and Mpls. There I expect to stay a month (six weeks!), get divorced, kiss Adam, and towards the end of May join you in Tivoli.
Perhaps Jack Wheeler can do the bedrooms upstairs while you’re away in Chicago. What are your dates there?
Best love,
To Marshall Best
March 16, 1960 London
Dear Marshall:
[ . . . ] As to my own writing and the Ford Foundation—I’ve been writing while traveling. I always manage to keep at it. Besides, if I hadn’t gone off in November I might now be in the loony bin and not in London. This has a metaphorical sound but I mean it literally. You might as well hear from me what I assume you’ve heard from Pat [Covici] or Harold [Guinzburg]. In October, my wife asked me for a divorce and I almost cracked. It was entirely unexpected. Then I decided almost instinctively that I’d better get away and for that reason accepted the offer of this trip, and I’m anything but sorry, for I’m fit again. It’s not certain that I’d have done much writing in Mpls. Probably I’d have mouldered at my desk, trying. You know that I’m not reckless and irresponsible and that I wouldn’t go off on a toot abandoning all work and responsibility. An emergency arose and I met it as well as I could.
Many thanks for your letter.
See you soon,
Marshall A. Best (1901-82) was editor and later chairman of the executive committee at the Viking Press.
To Marshall Best
March 17, 1960 London
Dear Marshall:
Brooding about your letter, I can see the whole thing clear. You recommend me to the Ford Foundation, and my gay lark in Europe puts you in a tough position. But suppose it hasn’t been a gay lark? Suppose I have been dutifully suffering my way from country to country, thinking about Fate and Death? Will that do as an explanation? And if, here and there, I gave a talk in Poland and Yugoslavia, did I violate the by-laws?
All jokes aside, what I saw between Auschwitz and Jerusalem made a change in me. To say the least. And that ought not to distress the Ford Foundation. I’m sorry to cause you any embarrassment, but there ought not to be any in my going to Europe and the Middle East for a few months. Now I’m coming back to write a book, and I see nothing wrong anywhere. I might have written a thousand pages in Minneapolis and thrown them all away. I know I’ve done the necessary and proper thing and it annoys me to be criticized for it.
All best,
To Alice Adams
April 9, 1960 Tivoli
Dear Alice—
They held your letter for me till I got back from Europe where I had gone for five months to get over the shock of divorce. This time it was done unto me (as I had done unto others). All this marrying and parting amounts to idiocy. Nobody will do well, nobody is well. We all prescribe suffering for ourselves as the only antidote for unreality. So—I’ve emptied bottles and bottles, and now I’m going to dig in at Tivoli, my
feste Burg,
my asylum, and reconsider everything all over again.
Love,
To Susan Glassman
May 5, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dear Susan:
No, I haven’t forgotten to write, only I’ve been so pressed, harried and driven, badgered, bitched, delayed (and even—in Maryland—taken into custody by the State Police) that I haven’t even had time to sit down and cross my legs. Till now, in Tivoli. Good old Tivoli. There are so many ghosts in this old joint that my own, in new sheets, are like laughable freshmen. Come, we’ll cut the grass and play croquet with spooks.
Love,
To Stanley Elkin
May 13, 1960 Tivoli, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Elkin:
I approve very highly of your story and am sending it on to the other editors with the hope that they will share my admiration for it. I’ll let you know their decision as soon as I know it myself.
Sincerely yours,
P.S. I particularly liked the grocery on 53rd Street and the employees and shoppers, but I was not at all sure that the last passages really bore the accumulated weight. It is too easy to float to a conclusion with the support of certain Jewish symbols. I am a little bit suspicious of the use you make of them.
Elkin’s story was “Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers.” It would appear in
Perspective
rather than in
The Noble Savage.
To Herbert and Mitzie McCloskey
[n.d.] [Tivoli]
Dear Herb and Mitzie,
I’m sure you made the right decision abt Mpls. Time to bust out. It had given you about all it could give. Anyway, change is one of my elements—money for Morgan, fire for phoenixes and salamanders, and new addresses for me.
Ergo!
I’ll spare you the sad details of my visit to Mpls. I crept back to Tivoli, where I’m by myself, with too much on my mind to fill the solitude yet. I’m winding up the play
The Last Analysis
. I am getting ready to write a novel. Now that I’ve been thrown out of middle-class security I can’t avoid being a writer. Though I’m one of the finest avoiders in the land.