Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Arthur Miller, Gloria Steinem, Frederick Exley, Susan Cheever, Martin Amis, Norman Mailer and others recall their encounters with the Nobel laureate.
Apr 6, 2005 | William Phillips, editor
Cocky and self-assured
It was a charmed circle. But perhaps the most charmed was Saul Bellow, the only one who got as far as a Nobel Prize. He always thought of himself as a maverick, a loner, not a New Yorker; whether this self-image was literary or personal I cannot say, perhaps a bit of both. But we did think of him as part of the new alignment of writers, and there was a good deal of affection and respect for him ...
We met about the time his first story, "The Mexican General," appeared in Partisan Review in 1942. Here was a fresh talent, exhibiting a remarkable control of tone and subject ...
Bellow must have had early on a strong sense of being set apart. I recall once when he was visiting us for a weekend at our summer place in New Jersey, we were sitting outside, talking, and our landlord who lives next door began to mow the lawn. The noise of the mower interfered with our conversation each time it came close to us, as it moved in a narrowing circle. Saul became irritated and said quite matter-of-factly to me that we should tell my landlord to stop mowing: it simply did not occur to him that we might move ...
He was cocky and self-assured, almost relaxed, which might have been the other side of his person. But except for occasional episodes of suspicions, when he questioned someone's loyalty or attitude toward his work, Saul was extremely sweet and gentle, and, when he felt at home, extraordinarily charming ... (1942)
From "A Partisan View: Five Decades of the Literary Life," by William Phillips (Stein and Day, 1983)
Alfred Kazin, literary critic
Sense of destiny
I met Saul Bellow, who was just in from Chicago, and who carried around with him a sense of his destiny as a novelist that excited everyone around him ... As I walked him across Brooklyn Bridge and around my favorite streets in Brooklyn Heights, he looked my city over with great detachment ...
He seemed to be measuring the hidden strength of all things in the universe, from the industrial grime surrounding Brooklyn Bridge to the prima donnas of the American novel, from the last effects of Hitler to the mass tensions of New York. He was measuring the world's power to resist him, he was putting himself up as a contender. Although he was friendly, unpretentious and funny, he was ambitious and dedicated in a style I had never seen in an urban Jewish intellectual; he expected the world to come to him. He had pledged himself to a great destiny. He was going to take on more than the rest of us were. (New York, 1943)
From "New York Jew," by Alfred Kazin (Knopf, 1978)
William Barrett, editor
Edge of the circle
It was Saul Bellow who was the past master of protecting himself in his relations with the group. Whenever he was in New York, he made contact with the Partisan Review circle, but he did not let himself get entangled in it. He needed to observe the New York intellectuals, to be stimulated by them, and learn from them what he wanted -- that was his job as a writer, and Bellow was a full-time writer. But he always moved at the edge of the circle. He was wary and guarded -- above all, guarding the talent and concentration of his vocation. At the time he was gestating "Augie March," and when the book came out I immediately recognized the hero as one part of himself that Bellow carried openly before the world. He was the kid from Chicago, carrying a chip on his shoulder, and ready to show these Eastern slickers that he was just as street-smart (intellectually) as they were ... his manner was civilized and gentle; but the chip of self-confidence was there on the shoulder just the same. And Bellow never faltered in his single-minded dedication to his muse; the solid body of work he went on to create is to be admired as, among other things, a triumph of character. (New York, mid-1940s)
From "The Truants: Adventures Among the Intellectuals," by William Barrett (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1982)
Irving Kristol, editor and critic
"What kind of writer?"
Writers for Partisan Review -- [included] wonderful stylists like Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy ... but I sensed that they were not suitable models for me. They were out of my class, as it were. I recall a conversation I had with Saul Bellow ... I had then joined my wife in Chicago, where she was doing graduate work at the University of Chicago and where I was waiting to go into the Army. Saul and I were friends and neighbors. He was just publishing his first novel, and I was writing occasional book reviews for the New Leader ... I confided to Saul that I thought I had the potential to be a writer. He looked at me suspiciously and asked: "What kind of writer?" (Saul has always been convinced, as most novelists are, that the world does not need more than one novelist.) I thought for a moment and then said briskly, "Well, good enough to write for the New Yorker." He roared. At that time, we intellectuals did not think too much of that slick magazine. (mid-1940s)
From "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea," by Irving Kristol (Free Press, 1995)
