I have watched the mailbox anxiously for your story. (You see the mailbox has not lost its potency; it is still the little cold tin womb in which the world makes me a little present from time to time of another installment of my life.)
Anita showed me her letter [from you] last week. I see she has told you about my new book. I quite deserve the eulogy. It is good, as far as it has come. And it has been important to me in that it has partially revived me. I had been fartroymt [4] in the worst, most narcotic sense until I began it. Suddenly, out of base merde, I began to manufacture gold. Thank God for such alchemical powers in the greatest feat of human engineering. It is not very much nowadays to make gardens out of literal shit but to transmute spiritual shit, that is something!
Only with my present short perspective, I shall never be able to finish what I started. No one is untouched, nowadays. Each of us in his way is a casualty of the war. If I were to begin to tell you what has happened to me . . . Everything from being disappointed in my job-quest with machine-like regularity to being reduced to a charity case. My father has had to give me money, to my shame. You know how full of ugly, bastardly pride I am. It really has embittered me. I have felt myself wholly abandoned. I have had no one to talk to. Isaac and Kappy are doing fairly well in New York. Sam, poor bureaucrat, has been engulfed, his human qualities swallowed. He has not time for them except on weekends and even then resents having his rest disturbed. Tarcov? No. Only with Abe Kaufman have I been able to maintain some halfway decent human intercourse and that has been nearly all in the realm of ideas, and mainly esthetic ideas. In all other ways our outlook is too different for the most essential kind of communication. And I have been spectator to my own victimization, have watched the terrific beating and endured it bodily too. Until three weeks ago when I began to write I wanted the Army to take me. The sooner the better.
And now perhaps you will be better able to judge why I did not write. I did not intend to tell you this, but the instant the typewriter began to jiggle a little more rapidly it started coming out. I cannot prevent it. I am so full of it that everything I touch is by a reverse Midas process turned somber. I have taken the first round of pummeling in my maturity and it has been dreadful. There have been more sideshows in the arcade of contumely than I can remember. Family. Even former students. Even Passin. Even Hersky [Melville J. Herskovits, Bellow’s former teacher at Northwestern] has aimed his little boot at me. Last week he called me up at two thirty in the afternoon. It seems I had used him as a reference in connection with the national roster of scientific and specialized personnel. He had phoned to tell me how much trouble it was to fill out the forms. He was a busy man, a busy man! In some detail he insulted me on each of the following: 1. The fact that I am unemployed and at home at 2:30 P.M. 2. My lack of qualification as an applicant for any consideration from the national roster. 3. The fate of my novel. (He had anticipated what would happen, he gave me to understand.) And last, in algemein [5], my wasted life. Perhaps that will help enliven for you the whole idea of the transmutation of shit. If I can turn from that to writing within the space of half a day (that’s all it took me to recover) it is I and not Squibbs who have found the Priceless Ingredient.
Hijo de la chinga madre! [6] Do you see what I mean? At four o’clock I can tell myself I am immune. At four fifteen I am lost again. Man’s happiness is largely a product of the stability of his prospects. Mine are pfffft!
The organization which has sent you so many hundreds of miles away to study aborigines might more profitably have engaged you at home. Goosing-relationships between the wives of siblings have fewer mysteries than the operation of a single draft board. In two months my status has changed three times and so far as I can tell will change again within the next two weeks or so. Was it any wonder that I longed to be called? Is it strange to prefer no future to an uncertain one? Juges en toi-même [7].
A further and more reasonable word about “no future.” I find the prospect of enjoying the benefits of a peace without having contributed to the peace (of whatever sort; I am hoping for the best) intensely disagreeable. I realize that as an artist I have the principled right to claim exemption. It would be just, but in all conscience I could not plead for it. Besides it would be foolish, don’t you think so? Like filing an appeal to be released from an epidemic on the grounds that someone should live to record it. No. You may remember the advice of the old German in Lord Jim: “In the destructive element immerse.” It is for the world to pull the artist from the destructive element and not for him to ask it to. Cervantes lost an arm fighting the Moors, Calderon, I think it was, wrote one of his plays sitting in the hull of one of the ships of the Armada. And Socrates. If I pull out of this with a whole skin I will write a book called “Socrates was a Hoplite.”
Voilà, dear Mel, the picture.
We are moving, shortly. Anita has a new job out in Dunning and we shall have to go to the North Side. I will send the new address as soon as I know what it is.
Please write.
Love,
To Melvin Tumin
[n.d.] [Chicago]
Dearest Moissay:
[ . . . ] Somehow I have not clicked with editors. About two months ago I wrote a story called “Juif!” which carried in it all the sting and tragedy I could impart. It is immeasurably above “The Dead James.” Never have I had such letters of apology from editors refusing to take it. By their own standards it is as well-tailored as any of the sweet little nostalgic pieces they print, but it is liable to awaken too much feeling. So out it goes. [ . . . ]
Permit me to give you a second example. You remember “The Car”? Last summer Whit Burnett [editor of Story] was interested in it. “Tell Bellow to bring the last few pages up to par,” he said to my agent, “and we’ll probably be able to use it.” I was in terrible need at the time, so I doctored it up and sent it in. Three months later it was returned to me. No explanation, no comment, only a brief note. “Sorry this failed to get my final OK, W.B.” When I picked up the current issue of Story it was full of a coarse-grained piece of shit by WB himself, a fictional version of the life of Robert Burns with lumps of half-digested haggis in it. Je m’en fous de tous les WB et les autres enfants chiennes. Que tu pierde sus miembros en un dia de sangre, W.B. [8]
There is nothing new with me. I am a recluse, I am a bear. I bite people’s heads off when they cross me. I have known one hundred sixty-nine brands of humiliation.
Two weeks ago I stopped work on my novel—it was not direct enough—and have since solaced myself with a book called The Notebook of a Dangling Man. It has taken possession of me. I have written twenty-thousand words already and have not come one third of the whole way. It is the complete wartime swansong of a “righteous man” who strove with all his heart not to be an undergroundling but who now sees himself forced to the pavement and begins to realize that he may have to be a telluric creature after all because the age requires it. I don’t know myself what the QED will be because I have not finished the demonstration. It will have to be the end-product of its own logic. I think it will end with questions not answers. But then, the work of the artist cannot be expected to comprehend that of the scientist and the philosopher as well. It sets up the hypotheses and tests them in various ways, and it gives answers, but these are not definitive. However, they need not be definitive; they sing about the human situation. It is a kind of truth these answers give, the truth of sorrow and of celebration, the truth that we are stamped with immortality and the truth that we live meanly.
I shall be finished in a month, for certain and perhaps sooner.
Now for some news. Kappy is leaving the country on a mission. I don’t know whither; North Africa is the most likely spot for him. They don’t speak French on Guadalcanal.
Edith [Tarcov] has had a little girl Miriam Jean; Rochelle [Freifeld] ought to yield any day now. Voici tout le but humain. [9]
Don’t pull my leg about fighting off your adorers like Gauguin in the movies. [ . . . ] You ought to be s
tarting home soon, no? Pack up your papers and come. Leave something in Guatemala for the next anthropologist. Don’t hog it all. However, I don’t think you ought to leave the country without meeting three officials of higher rank than the ones Herb boasts of knowing in Mexico. If possible, meet the President. I want to be present when you tell him, “Señor X and I discussed the Indian problem. I handed him an eighty-five-page memorandum in Spanish and six of the principal varieties of Chibchan on the teaching of Kant in the Sixth Form. He rewarded me with the Order of El Caiman Gordo, third-degree, and said that after the war he would authorize a grant for me to go all through the country teaching the natives contraception and that I would naturally travel overland in his Buick which is decorated fore and aft with the Seal of State. And, Herb, you won’t believe this, er ret mich a shidukh mit sein tochter [10]. She carries a dowry of eighty thousand milreis or pesos or whatever the coin of the realm is, and a biannual world cruise. I was made a chief of the Prtchiwai tribe for successfully dosing the elder of the shamans with castor oil on the first occasion of his tasting salami. I was initiated”—here bend to show the clan cicatrices—“and when I left was accompanied fifty miles by singing, weeping villagers. When I reached the coast I sent each of them an alarm clock and five Coca-Cola bottle-caps in token of Bruderschaft [11].”
Write soon,
Love,
To William Roth
February 23, 1942 Chicago
Dear Mr. Roth:
I am sending the uncorrected mss. at Rahv’s insistence. The whole novel is about two hundred pages long, i.e. between sixty and seventy thousand words.
Only the first chapter has been rewritten—the rest is first-draft.
If you will be kind enough to attend to The Very Dark Trees speedily (for better or for worse) I will be infinitely grateful, because the Army is hot on my heels and I should like to have the fate of the book decided before I leave.
Yours very truly,
Bellow had submitted The Very Dark Trees, his next novel after Ruben Whitfield, to William Roth, editor in chief of the Colt Press.
To William Roth
April 2, 1942 Chicago
Dear Mr. Roth:
The Army has just notified me that I will be inducted on June 15th.
With this hanging over me I would like to clear up all my business, and especially The Very Dark Trees, as quickly as possible. Please let me know how I stand at your earliest opportunity.
Very truly yours,
P.S. Are you interested in novelettes? I have several which I am very eager to publish.
To William Roth
April 3, 1942 Chicago
Dear Mr. Roth:
Your letter bowled me over; I am neither too shy nor too hardened to admit it freely, and I wish I could frame a very special kind of “thank you.” The occasion certainly calls for it.
I do not mind waiting until November, and your terms are entirely satisfactory. Just now, it happens, I have no pressing need for an advance. I have money enough and time enough to complete and polish the novel. You see, I am teaching part-time in a local normal school. The draft board has deferred me to permit me to finish the term there.
The other copy of the novel was farmed out and is still wandering around somewhere in the desolate sticks of the industry. I have been trying to call it in for some time. If I get it within the next few days I shall notify you and there will be no need for you to send your copy. But if it does not come in I shall have to ask you to send me it for I have none with me. Thank you again. I shall be waiting for some further word from you and a contract.
Appreciatively yours,
Bellow’s letter of April 2 had evidently crossed in the mail with Roth’s acceptance.
To William Roth
June 24, 1942 Chicago
Dear Mr. Roth:
After rushing like the devil to get through in time I was turned back temporarily at the induction station on a technicality. I’ll be free now till mid-July. Since I didn’t expect to be here this summer I gave up my teaching job and I will have an incomeless month unless you can see your way clear to advancing me something.
It would be a bad time to go over the mss. for errors. My friends and I read it in a hell of a hurry the night before I was to have been snatched.
I don’t know where I’ll be when the proofs come. I’ve arranged to have a friend here read them for me. But that will be only in the last extremity (i.e. in case I should happen to be in China or Australia).
Sincerely,
To William Roth
[Postmarked Chicago, Ill., 29 July 1942]
Dear Roth:
I owe myself a kick for inconsiderateness. I should have thought to ask you what your plans were and whether you had some sort of war immunity. Instead I took it for granted that you were deifically remote from any such concerns. This coordinator business has a promising sound and I hope you prosper at it.
Your faith in me is bracing. You haven’t seen the novelette and you have only my word that it is good. It will be as good as I can make it, so much I can promise. I’ll send it on in a few weeks and hope with fervor that you won’t be disappointed in it.
Now as to the book, I have no hopes for quick results and no particular anxiety, just the usual, rather remote, niggling uneasiness. I have not sent the carbon-copy out and I have no intention of doing so until you get some replies from the East. Then if the results are disappointing I shall simply send both copies to Macdonald and go off to the Army and let the law of probabilities take care of the rest.
Yours, etc.
To William Roth
[n.d.] [Chicago]
Dear Roth:
I was terribly hard hit by the bad news, as you might expect. I had thought that the book at least was something I need no longer worry about. Your own situation, as I gather it, makes me feel equally bad. I hope you can salvage more than you imply you can. There is no need to send more money. I would return the fifty if I did not need it so badly, myself having gotten myself in debt.
About the disposition of the manuscript: Do you think you can find another publisher for it? I hate to bother you with difficulties you might be spared. If you haven’t the heart to trouble with it just send it back collect. I’ll do what I can to dispose of it. It does seem to me that you ought to do something to hold your gains together for the post-war period, encyst yourself, somehow, until the trouble is over. I’m sure most of the people you’ve been dealing with would want to go along. Perhaps you can continue. It should be something to hope for, at any rate.
But to sum up in the matter of the manuscript: If you don’t think you can find someone to take it I should like you to send it back so that I can offer it to a few more publishers before the war snuffs out all my chances.
Condolences and all my best wishes,
Upon being drafted himself, William Roth had suspended operations at Colt Press.
To William Roth
[n.d.] [Chicago]
Dear Roth:
I haven’t tried anyone yet. Rahv wrote in Macdonald’s name that he would undertake to peddle the novel for me. What’s your opinion? Is that a good idea? I don’t want to put you to a lot of trouble; you’ve been much fairer to me already than you need have been. But if you want to continue handling this for me I shall not expect you to exert yourself for nothing, and if a miracle should come to pass I insist you get an agent’s percentage—(it is so figmentary that I hesitate to speak of it). Please be guided by your own interests in this and not by any feelings of obligation.
One of my friends suggests that I get three or four more copies typed and send them around. If you think that’s a good idea and want to handle this for me I will raise the necessary money and send it on. There would be no sense in having it done here.
Don’t bother with [James] Laughlin [at New Directions]. He read the first six or seven chapters and after an equal number of months decided that he didn’t want the book. I don’t like the way he does things. He’s spoil
ed; if it occurs to him to clear up a bit of business he may do it, haphazardly, or he may let it hang until he gets around to it, forgetting meanwhile that there are others involved to whom the time means much more.
I should like to explain that I feel I am miles and centuries away from The Very Dark Trees—whole developmental heights. Oh, I still feel it deserves publication, in fact since I will never have time to finish any of the long things I have started I am determined it must be published, for it is to give me the right (in the postwar period, if we have one) to continue as a writer. But in a sense it is business, not literature. I am taking you at your word and am working over a novelette which is, well, fifty times better than the novel. (I should amend that to “ten times” for the sake of objectivity.) I hope you will be able to persuade your partner to go on publishing, even if it is only small things that you bring out.
By all means let’s understand each other clearly on this agent business, and that as soon as possible.
Luck,
Try a last stab at your partner.
To William Roth
[n.d.] [Chicago]
Dear Roth:
Evil days. My old gray head no longer goes up with pride when someone says, “My boy, you are promising.” But then, too, I am inured to some extent. I have so often been kicked in the shins I have ceased to think that there is any personal malignancy in it. It’s just the general lot, that’s all. I need no one to tell me your shins are in bad shape also.
It’s too bad we shan’t meet until and unless we last out the war. The disposition of a book is not as important as that. There will be more books, if God sees fit to let me come through, and undoubtedly you will publish them if you are similarly protected. But meantime I would like to verify my idea of you.