March 27, 1991 Chicago
Dear Roger,
Sorry, I should have written to tell you what was happening but Janis and I were a long time in the switches, to use a Middle Western expression—something like that Old Jimmy Durante song, “Did you ever have the feeling that you had to go / Started to go / Decided to stay / Started to stay / Decided to go?” That should do it.
For the time being we have decided to stay [in Chicago]. We have also decided to go in the Spring of ’92 [to Paris]. ’91 as it happens is out of the question. I am supposed to deliver a manuscript to Viking Press in September or October—with a month’s grace. Let’s hope that all options will still be available next spring. I had sent a letter to M. [Jack] Lang, the Minister of Culture, inquiring whether his Ministry has any accommodations for a visiting Commander of the Legion of Honor. As of now, five months later, no reply. So this whole Commander of the Legion thing has been exposed as a hoax. Another case of How many divisions does the Vatican have? I thought I had
tuyau
[
112
]. I don’t even have a soda-pop straw. [ . . . ]
Yours most affectionately,
Roger Kaplan, son of Harold “Kappy” Kaplan, is a regular contributor to
The American Spectator
and lives in Washington, D.C.
To Louis Lasco
March 27, 1991 [Chicago]
Dear old chum—
Of course I should have answered you sooner. At this time of life however a couple of months doesn’t feel like real procrastination. This is no defense—more like a page from
The Natural History of Septuagenarianism
. Intending to write is
like
writing. Why
do
I “bother” to write at all, as you put it? Because you’ve figured in my life and I in yours over six decades or so, for the most part affectionately. We see each other at fifteen-year intervals so there’s no
practical
involvement of the feelings.
To accuse me of “contempt” is completely cockeyed. I don’t see what the things I wrote forty or fifty years ago have to do with subsequent feelings. I always wanted you among my real friends, and I am today as much your friend as it’s possible to be. By which I mean that we’re far from each other in space and also in time. We have
pictures
of each other. Mine are probably more pleasant than yours. But then I have no reason to be angry with you.
I may indeed have been a
putz
, an asshole deserving no respect—on the other hand there’s always been warmth and sympathy between us. Whatever you may think of me, I’ve always respected you. And when I heard that you were ill my impulse was to be helpful—if help should be needed.
Ever your old friend,
You didn’t offend me at all.
To James Atlas
March 29, 1991 Chicago
Dear James,
Are you prepared to consider an alternative?
Suppose that instead of rummaging in grammar-school records devoid of real interest you were to have a tour of the city—a personal conducted tour of Hyde Park, Humboldt Park, and several other locations? I wouldn’t at all mind doing this, I might even enjoy it. If you think this is a reasonable proposal I will set aside the time—an afternoon or two. Mull this over a bit. There is no penalty for declining.
Yours with best wishes,
To Louis Lasco
April 9, 1991 [Chicago]
Well, Louie, you’re right about one thing—perhaps the only one you are right about: Battles are unnecessary. In the old days I loved you because you didn’t resemble anybody I knew. Most important of all you weren’t like anybody in my family. Suddenly, in old age (my old age as well as yours), you are like all my relatives rolled into one—accusations, recriminations, denunciations. My poor, ailing, feeble, foolish, vain flesh and blood are fed to the shredder.
Do you happen to remember a kid named Yaddi Oppenheimer? I think he became a member of our club. He was afraid to touch chicken because chicken made him flatulent. This skinny pale little kid came back to me last night, name and all. He put us on notice never to let him eat chicken. But it would never have occurred to us to rebuke anybody for farting. On the contrary; we were pleased because he made us laugh. Chances are, Yaddi is gone as we will all be, shortly. I say to myself as Lady Macbeth did: “Stand not upon the order of your going, but go!” And so I will; when I’m required to.
To change the old song a bit, “With all
my
faults, I love you still.”
I remain yours as ever,
To Louis Lasco
May 24, 1991 [Chicago]
Dear Louie—
Okay—I’m not the Bellow of your dreams; you’re not the Lasco I
thought
I knew. You think that when I wish you well I do it from self-pity, and I want to infect
you
with pity, blind to the fact that you’ve had heart surgery twice and that you aren’t sure that you’re going to make it.
I see it a little differently. We were boyhood friends and I wish you well. Not because I’m trying to undermine your proud determination and independence, not because it’s my way of gloating over you. Don’t be such a
putz
.
As for who pays for dinner when we next dine together, we can toss a coin.
A few days ago, I was on Division St. Your old block has been razed—both sides of the street. The new hospital (we used to pee in the weeds by the power plant) is monumental. It could be a stadium for the Polish Olympics.
Dope pushers on every corner. We went for cholesterol instead.
Always your affectionate buddy, and good ol’ boy,
To Stephen Mitchell
June 22, 1991 W. Brattleboro, Vermont
Dear Mr. Mitchell,
I have the greatest sympathy with what you have done. Let me explain: I was at the age of eight years a patient at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal—dangerously ill in the children’s ward.
My people were orthodox Russian Jews. I had a religious upbringing. In those times four-year-old kids were already reading Hebrew, memorizing Genesis and Exodus. Such was my background—the child of a despised people in the Montreal slums.
I had never been separated from the family. It was a hellish winter (1923-24) with heavy snows, fantastic icicles at the windows, the streetcars frosted over. My parents took turns coming to see me—I was allowed one short visit a week. I waited for them. There were three operations. My belly was haggled open—it was draining. I stank. I understood that I might die. I was pretty steady about this, I think. I didn’t cry when my mother came and went. I was rather matter of fact about dying. Other children were covered up and wheeled away. In the morning, an empty bed, remade, blank. It was like that.
Then a lady came from some missionary society and gave me a New Testament to read.
Jesus overwhelmed me. I had heard about him, of course—marginal information, unfriendly. (Why should it have been friendly?) But I was moved when I read Gospels. It wasn’t a sentimental reaction. I wasn’t one for crying. I had to get through this crisis. I had made up my mind about that. But I was moved out of myself by Jesus, by “suffer the little children to come unto me,” by the lilies of the field. Jesus moved me beyond all bounds by his deeds and his words. His death was a horror to me. And I had to face the charges made in the Gospels against the Jews, my people, Pharisees and Sadducees. In the ward, too, Jews were hated. My thought was (I tell it as it came to me then): How could it be my fault? I am in the hospital.
But I was beyond myself, moved far out by Jesus (Mark and Matthew). I kept this to myself. No discussions with my father, my mother. It was not
their
Bible. For them there was no
New
Testament. Obviously Jesus was not discussible with them. They had to live, as all Jews must, under a curse, and they were not prepared to interpret this to an eight-year-old child. In their struggle for existence interpretation ought not to be required of them, too. I would have been imposing on them, and it would all too plainly have been disloyal. I also sensed that.
I had never been in a position in which it is necessary to think for myself, without religious authorization, about God. Here at the Royal Victoria I was able, I was
en
abled—I was free to think for myself.
You will understand now why I read you with sympathy. I understand the impulse that led you to make your own translation of the Gospels. But sympathy is not agreement. I am out of sympathy with your generational standpoint. I can’t agree that John Lennon stands in the line of the prophets, on a level with Isaiah and the rest. This seems to me a distortion due to fashion, too easy a mingling of the religious and the rock stars. I like rock stars, yes, and I admire gurus (each instance on its separate merits) but I am not so freely ecumenical as you. You and I are Jews whose experiences are roughly similar; we have judged for ourselves. Jesus, yes, but what about two millennia of Jewish history? How do you propose to come to terms with the Jew as the prime enemy of Christianity? You may be interested in a book that has influenced my understanding of these things, Hyam Maccoby’s
Revolution in Judea
. It argues that Jesus was anointed, a messiah, a Pharisee who tried to free the Jews from Roman tyranny. The Greek authors of the Gospels named the Jews the enemy race, universally to be hated by the rest of mankind. Love of Jesus could not then be separated from hatred of the Jews. A proposition that must seriously be considered by the likes of you and me.
Sincerely,
Bellow had read Mitchell’s newly published
The Gospel According to Jesus: A New Translation and Guide to His Essential Teachings for Believers and Unbelievers.
To John Auerbach
July 7, 1991 W. Brattleboro
Dear John,
As civilization declines the interpretation of civilized rules is left in the hands of people like me (self-appointed) and we don’t seem to do at all well. Thus I know that I should lift up the tails of my coat, take off my wig and sit down to correspondence like Voltaire. Only Voltaire had a staff of attendants to care for him while he wrote about freedom. I have only Janis, whom I love a thousand times more than Voltaire loved anybody. So I am humanly ahead but losing ground culturally.
Of course I should write to you, my conscience is severely troubled. I think of you continually and I seem to have translated “thinking about” into communication. Which means that civilization has fallen into solipsism. I assume there are two kinds of solipsism—restful and busy. Busyness quickly betrays you to barbarism. What makes me so busy? “My hasting days fly on in full career.” (J. Milton, aged twenty-three.) I have X-plus pages to write and I do it under the shadowy threat of “too late.” So . . . I am trying to meet a deadline imposed by a contract that I signed in order to spur myself to work more quickly. But I haven’t got the energy I once had. Well into my late sixties I could work all day long. Now I fold at one o’clock. Most days I can’t do without a siesta. I get out of bed and try to wake up. I ride the bike or swim in the pond. After such activities I have to rest again. It’s evening, it’s dinnertime. Nine-tenths of what I should have done it now seems too late to do: I protect myself from anxiety by opening some book or other; I catch up on the newspapers. I discover the moose population has increased, and that animals in the road cause more and more fatal accidents. I water the garden and promise myself to do better tomorrow.
I read your story, as I read all your stories. They come straight out of your feelings and go directly into my own. They please me even when I have reservations about them. In your latest it seems to me that you say more than is necessary about Entropy. Your story stands on its own without physics or philosophy. Exceptions to entropy only signify exceptions to death. Life defies entropy as it does the laws of gravity. It wasn’t quite clear to me why the Baroness Dinesen-Blixen was in the story. She’s always been a bit too trendy for me. I like most of her stories, but dislike the cult that has formed around her. What’s high in your story is the human quality, the instant conviction of significance in the writer and the people he associates with. What brings them to life is your warmth.
The Doubleday complete Conrad should be sea-borne cargo by now. Let’s hope the books arrive in time for your next birthday. Meanwhile since that good-bad magazine
Encounter
has gone out of business without reimbursement to disappointed subscribers, Janis and I are taking out a subscription to
The Economist
in your name. It’s a business magazine, true, but then the planet now is overwhelmingly business. In the latest issue I learned why the Quebecois consider themselves sound enough financially to go it alone. Not the most interesting subject, but simply and sharply described. Good for my mind to see the world handled so neatly week after week. The mental level is high-average and generally dependable. And at least it’s not mainly propaganda like
The New Yorker
.