I wanted to see you in Michigan, but it was impossible to go just then. I wouldn’t have had much time with you in any case. I have to satisfy myself by re-reading your books. I don’t think I shall be coming to England very soon. In Edinburgh two years ago an Anthroposophical lady, admonishing me, said, “Mr. Barfield will have to take you in hand in Kamaloca.” But perhaps I will have made some progress by that time and you won’t have to be so quite severe with me.
Yours most affectionately,
“Kamaloca” is the first stage of the afterlife, according to Anthroposophy.
1980
To Louis Lasco
January 3, 1980 Pasadena
Dear Luigi—
Peltz loves to tell of a visit to a Polish girl on Iowa St.—third floor. He blew the opportunity—pants down, two bucks gone. The girl was concerned. She said, “Oh, kid, you need practice—practice, practice practice!”
As an old Polish girl, of a sort, I too am a bit concerned. You’re a witty writer, but in the mss. you’ve lost your two bucks. Now, with a little practice you can get, and give, great satisfaction.
Ever yours, with love,
Soolabodoff
To Daniel Bellow
January 31, 1980 Pasadena
Dear Daniel,
Since I haven’t heard at all from you I take it that we won’t be seeing each other in California either because there is not time between terms or because you did not meet the little condition I set—no need to spell that out. But we often think of you and wonder what’s become of you. I mailed off your camp application signed and with a check so your summer is protected. I wish that I could see you more, I often miss you and I think somehow that you have arranged matters so in your own mind that the absence is mine from you and not yours from me. But the move East was after all by your choice. No reproach, I just think you should bear it in mind along with other facts, realities, truths. [ . . . ]
The other day I saw a set of Parkman in a bookshop. If I thought that you were interested in the early history of North America, the French-Indian wars, I’d send it to you. These are most exciting books. I’d read them myself if I had the time. I did read The Oregon Trail once and parts of the book on the Pontiac.
I’d be awfully glad to hear from you.
Love,
To Bobby Markels
January 31, 1980 Pasadena
Dear Bobby,
I am taking advantage of a crack typist to whirl back a reply. I enjoyed your poem, as I do all your productions. They are so relaxed that they do me good also in the way of détente. I met a lady who lives in your county and she tells me all the young people in Mendocino are in a lovely state of gentle ease. I asked her whether there was any sign of cultivated pot, but she said that she thought everyone there was naturally amiable, lovely and kind. I said this was certainly true of the one person I knew in Mendocino. I didn’t at all mind being listed by you. I thought if I could remember the shirt you ironed for me and still had it I would have it mounted and hung in the living room with a sentimental legend. [ . . . ]
You shouldn’t complain too much about being fifty. Fifty doesn’t seem much to me, my next birthday will be the sixty-fifth. The fifty years will have been worthwhile however if you have become wise enough to see through Nelson [Algren].
You mustn’t be too hard on your own egotism. The Bible says, “I am a worm, and no man.” When it comes to being hard on oneself the Bible is way ahead of us. Actually, atheists can never know how really insignificant they are. The same probably goes for agnostics. They only get a rain check.
Ever your affectionate friend,
Bobby Markels (born 1930) is the author of How to Be a Human Bean (1975) and other works. She lives in Mendocino, California.
To Albert Glotzer
January 31, 1980 Pasadena
Dear Al,
To keep you posted on [Ilya] Konstantinovski, he wrote to me from Paris where Gallimard is about to bring out his book. Would I read it, give him a blurb? As the much-esteemed maestro H. L. Mencken used to sign himself “with all the usual hypocrisies,” Konstantinovski gave me the usual hypocrisies. I don’t mind that, and I suppose by now the book is waiting for me in Chicago. Harper’s turned it down. The first reader said it was very good but the second opined that it was the rebellious outburst of a lifelong line-toer, that Konstantinovski, who had no intention ever of returning, was setting himself up in the West as one of the Major Russians of our time and was even recruiting a supporting cast of willing ladies. It seems that when he speaks to ladies he complains that they are unwilling to return his caresses and other acts of kindness. He’s not a very attractive man but it can’t be as hard as all that. There are ladies in every category, even his. I’ll send you a short report when I’ve read his book. [ . . . ]
Ever yours,
Ilya Konstantinovski’s book was Le Seider de Varsovie. It has never appeared in English.
To David Shahar
March 25, 1980 Pasadena
Dear David,
What shocking news! To be mugged in Jerusalem, in your own quiet neighborhood. The police were right, you were lucky to save your eye (I hope you are entirely recovered) from the neo-barbaric assault, as you call it. I take it from your letter that your attackers were not Arabs but North African [i.e., Sephardic] boys, since you speak of their wanting to hit an Ashkenazy. This is your introduction then to the tense watchfulness which has for years been the lot of New Yorkers, Chicagoans, even Londoners, I suppose. Not Muscovites. Theirs is a different system: Crime is a state monopoly. From now on you had better take your Jimmy [Shahar’s dog] with you when you go out for cigarettes. I hope he is fiercer than his namesake. Our own Jimmy [Carter] as you probably are aware is an affliction to us and to the rest of the world. I can’t say that he is actually the cause of our decline but he has become the foolish, impotent and repulsive symbol. But this is not a political message, rather a note of sympathy. [ . . . ] We send our love to both of you and to the children.
David Shahar (1926- 97), a fifth-generation Jerusalemite and much-honored Israeli writer, was best known for The Palace of Shattered Vessels (1969-94), his eight-volume series of historical novels.
To Ralph Ross
June 15, 1980 Chicago
Dear Ralph,
I’m not one of your prompt repliers: rather, a muller over of letters. No, I don’t need the Barfield book, I have other copies, also marked. I sometimes wonder what one can get out of Barfield if one hasn’t learned the “system.” Some of it is very curious, the different view of physics, for certain, the conviction that the law of the conservation of energy is all a mistake (this idea has too many poetic implications to be dismissed). My friends refuse to take any of this seriously. I forgive them as a friend should, and I perform other operations, in confirmation of my right to hold peculiar views. (Or is it a privilege, not a right?) Then I feel that I’m being faithful to Truth, through thick and thin. And it will do them good in the long, long run, perhaps after death. [ . . . ]
Alexandra adds her love to mine.
Yours,
To Walter Hasenclever
June 12, 1980 Chicago
Dear Walter,
Your letter arrives as I am poised for departure, about to launch myself from my wire, too heavy to be a bird, too sinful to be any sort of angel (but somehow I continue to view myself as a flier). Will you come for dinner or for a longer visit? I can tempt you with an unpublished manuscript. Please call us when you arrive. I shan’t ask you to bring George Bush when you come—I have nothing really against Mr. Bush, his standing with me improves now that I learn he was one of your pupils, but if he is running on the Reagan ticket as Vice-President he will be too busy to dine with us. The country does need a President but where is it to find one? Maybe the office should be abolished for the next four years.
Yours ever,
To Dean Borok
June 17, 1980 West Halifax, Vermont
Dear Mr. Borok—
I
at length answer. I always meant to, but my wife and I were in Pasadena until mid-April and then came back only to prepare to leave again. These are (unnecessarily) busy days, and life grows more complex with the years. I had expected it to be simpler.
I took the liberty of showing your letter to my brother Sam, seeing no reas