The Life of Saul Bellow

by Zachary Leader

  For careful reading of the entire manuscript I am grateful first and foremost to Lindsay Duguid, who improved the book at every stage of its composition. Andrew Gordon also read the entire manuscript, correcting mistakes and offering shrewd advice. For reading portions of the manuscript I am grateful to Karl Miller, Nathan Tarcov, Erik Tarloff, John Lloyd, Philip Roth, Ellen Siegelman, and Janis Freedman Bellow. Much is owed to several researchers: Jonathan Roy Turner, in particular, a resourceful and efficient research student at Roehampton; David Goodstone in London, now San Francisco; Aleksander Feigmanis in Moscow; Angelina Davydova and Andrei Kudryashov in St. Petersburg; Krista Reynan, Laura Alagna, Abby Durnett, and Justin Race in Chicago; and Manny Steinberg, who acted as translator for several interviews with Bellow’s non-English-speaking relatives in Israel.

  For help in archives, libraries, foundations, and institutions I am grateful to the following: Cheryl Schnirring, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois; Donald Davis, Archives, American Friends Service Committee; Helene Tieger, Bard College Library; Anne Garner and Isaac Gewirtz, Berg Collection, New York Public Library; Robert Rothstein, Geddes Language Center, Boston University; Pamela Hopkins and Yu Hua Li, Harvard University Archives; Claudine Klose, Historic Red Hook; Ellen Keith, Matt Krc, and Debbie Vaughan, Chicago History Museum; Susan Art, Sharon Hudak, Jeanine I. Alonso, Heatherlyn Mayer, Rita Vazquez, Office of the Registrar, University of Chicago; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University; Laurie Rizzo, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library; Elizabeth B. Dunn and David M. Rubenstein, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University; André Bernard and Edward Hirsch, Guggenheim Foundation; William Furry, Illinois State His torical Society; Shannon Hodge and Eva Raby, Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal; Alice Birney, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; London Library; Barbara Cline and Tina Houston, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; Erin George and Elizabeth Kaplan, University of Minnesota Archives, Elmer L. Andersen Library; Frank Blalark, Office of the Registrar, University of Minnesota; Liat Cohen, Elie Derman, Ofira Ratsab, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, the Jerusalem Foundation; Maria Molestina, the Morgan Library and Museum; Patrick Quinn and Janet C. Olson, Northwestern University Archives; Tamara Thatcher, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University; Kristen Turner and Rosalba Varella Recchia, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University; Cheryl Van Emburg, Salzburg Seminars; Wendy Chmielewski and Mary Beth Sigado, Swarthmore Peace Collection; Dean Rogers, Archives and Special Collection, Vassar College Libraries; Georgette Ballweg, Office of the Registrar, University of Wisconsin; Lori B. Bessler and Lee Grady, Wisconsin Historical Society; Leslie L. Leduc, Corporation of Yaddo.

  I am grateful to the following individuals for offering information, advice, and hospitality: Victoria Aarons, Gillon Aitken, Martin Amis, Janet Ariad, David Bell, Julie Ann Benson, Judith and Lawrence Besserman, Dina Binstock, Dean Borok, Emily Budick, Shirley Cohen, Jay Corcoran, Gloria L. Cronin, H. M. Daleski, Philip Davis, Carol Denbo, Barbara Dickstein, Morris Dickstein, Jane Dietrich, Peggy Eisenstein, Paul Ekman, Esther Elster, Anne Feibleman, Catherine J. Fitzpatrick, Judith Flanders, Kappy Flanders, June Fox, Liz Frank, Rani Friedlander, Abraham Fuks, David Gooblar, Grey Gowrie, Selina Hastings, the Hellmuths (Mary, John, Alison, Spencer, and Molly), Christopher Hitchens, Jacob Howland, Lewis Hyde, Nicole Jackson, Eric Jacobson, Neil Jarmonville, Leslie Kaplan, Sheila Kay, Shirley Kaufman, Edmund Keeley, Mark Lambert, Scott Latham, Roz Leader, Zoe Leader, Alexandra Lidov, John Lloyd, Peter Manning, Bobby Markels, Anita Maximilian, Carolyn McGrath, Edward Mendelson, Michael Mewshaw, David Mikics, Elèna Mortara, Janet Nippel, Richard O’Brien, Doris Palca, Thomas Passin, Matt Phillips, Arnold Rampersad, Michael Roberts, Mary Rynerson, Rosemarie Sanchez-Fraser, Dr. Rachel Schultz, Sasha Schwartz, Tim Seldes, Adam Shils, Elaine and English Showalter, Margalit Steinberg, Christopher Turner, Patricia Vidgerman, Annie Dubouillon Walter, Ann Weinstein, Jacob Weis berg, Catherine Wells-Cole, Rose Wild, Hana Wirth-Nesher, Nancy Bass Wyden, Steven J. Zipperstein.

  Finally, I thank my wife, Alice Leader, the dedicatee of this volume, my sons, Nick and Max Leader, and their partners, Nicole Jackson and Zoe Smith. Like many friends and colleagues, they have heard rather a lot about Saul Bellow in recent years.

  A Note on Sources

  Unless specified, all unpublished or manuscript material by Saul Bellow, including letters, is to be found among the Saul Bellow Papers in the Special Collections Research Center of the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, cited within the text and notes as Regenstein. I have been given unrestricted access to all 350 boxes of the Bellow Papers, including previously restricted materials contained in some 81 boxes.

  The cataloging of the Bellow Papers raises problems for scholars and researchers. From 1960 onward, in a series of gifts and deposits, Bellow sent his papers (including notebooks, galley proofs, unpublished speeches and essays, hand-corrected manuscripts, typewritten drafts, letters, and miscellaneous items pertaining to his life and work, including interviews, profiles, photographs, tax returns, legal and financial documents, and reviews of his novels, stories, essays, and plays) to the Regenstein. Before 1968, writers were eligible to receive a tax deduction for such gifts; when the law involving cultural property changed in reaction to enormous deductions obtained by visual artists, Bellow’s gifts became deposits, held but not owned by the library, an arrangement agreed to in the hope that the new law would be reversed and deposits could then become donations. After Bellow’s death in 2005, at the age of eighty-nine, the executors of his literary estate decided that his papers should be kept together at the Regenstein. As a result of this decision, roughly 150 boxes of materials joined the two hundred boxes already housed in Special Collections. The Papers are yet to be formally organized or indexed by the University of Chicago Library, in part for financial reasons, in part because the library had been understandably reluctant to process deposits, which, unlike donations, were owned by the author or the author’s estate.

  The Regenstein is now in the process of raising money to process the Bellow Papers properly. The present “Scope Note” to the Papers offers guidance to only part of the collection and is organized by deposit or gift. In the case of correspondence, letters from longtime friends and associates are scattered in dozens of deposits or gifts with separate inventories. In the case of manuscript material there are related problems. Bellow was a demon reviser, he rarely dated manuscripts, and the inventories make only a few shrewd attempts at ordering drafts. Daniel Fuchs, the author of Saul Bellow: Vision and Revision (1984), the best study of Bellow’s composing process, gives reference names and numbers to the manuscripts he discusses but does so from outdated inventories. Fuchs’s study is an invaluable resource for students of Bellow’s writing but it is very difficult, at times impossible, to identify the draft versions he cites, not only for researchers but for the collection’s efficient and professional archivists. Given the partial nature of the current inventories, together with the high likelihood of the collection being rationalized and properly processed in the near future, I have decided against providing folder, box, and deposit or gift numbers and names for unpublished correspondence or draft material, though I give dates and estimated dates for individual items.

  The Regenstein is the location of almost all letters to Bellow quoted from in the biography. The exceptions are several letters from Barley Alison, in the possession of her niece, Rosie Alison; from Susan Glassman Bellow, in the possession of Daniel Bellow; and from Ralph Ross, in the possession of Philip Siegelman. Sondra (Sasha) Bellow gave me a copy of her unpublished memoir, “What’s in a Name?” Daniel Bellow provided me with access to his mother’s unpublished essay, “Mugging the Muse.” Richard M. Cook provided me with unpublished entries in Alfred Kazin’s journals, located in the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library. Published letters by Saul Bellow are from Benjamin Taylor, ed.,
Saul Bellow: Letters (New York: Viking, 2010), which “includes about two fifths of Saul Bellow’s known output of letters” (p. 553). On occasion, passages omitted by Taylor are restored from the original letter. Accents omitted by Bellow in original letters, many written by hand, have been added, and misspelled proper names cor rected. Taylor lists the locations for Bellow letters not located in the Regenstein (pp. 553–56). The fullest annotated bibliography of works by and about Bellow remains Gloria L. Cronin and Blaine H. Hall, Saul Bellow: An Annotated Bibliography, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 1987), available electronically at http://www.saulbellow.org/bibliography. The Saul Bellow Journal, eds. Gloria L. Cronin and Victoria Aarons, has been in publication since 1981 and currently appears twice annually. It publishes updated “Selected Annotated Bibliographies,” edited by Gloria L. Cronin and Robert Means, and is available electronically on EBSCO. There have been three previous biographical studies of Saul Bellow: Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck (1980) by Mark Harris, Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination (1991) by Ruth Miller, and Bellow: A Biography (2000) by James Atlas. Harris’s book is a memoir, as much about his problems trying to write Bellow’s biography as about Bellow himself. Miller’s book mostly reads the life through the fiction. Only Atlas’s book is a full-scale biography. As is clear from text and notes, I am indebted to the work of all three of my predecessors, but especially to that of James Atlas. Although I do not always agree with Atlas about Bellow’s life and works, I wholly share his sense that the “biographical forays” of my predecessors have “paved the way for my own.”

  Texts of Bellow’s works cited in the notes refer to the editions used by the author. A list of Editions Cited, including details of original publication, can be found at the head of the notes. After an initial note, quotations from Bellow’s fiction and other sources are cited within the text by page numbers.

  Unless otherwise specified in text or notes, the phrase “in an interview” means an interview with Zachary Leader. All unattributed quotations in the biography come from the following interviews:

  Ada Aharoni, 23 May 2010 (Nesher, Israel); Rosie Alison, 1 December 2007 (London); Aharon Appelfeld, 21 May 2010 (Jerusalem); Linda Asher, 9 January 2009 (New York); John Barnardo, 2 August 2010 (Boston); Wolf Baronov, 23 July 2008 (Chicago); Adam Bellow, 23, 27 March, 20 May 2008 (New York); Alexandra Bellow, 5 February, 1, 3 April 2008 (Chicago); Daniel Bellow, 11, 15 May 2008 (Great Barrington, MA); Gregory Bellow, 20 August, 30 December 2008 (Redwood City and San Francisco, CA); Janis Freedman Bellow, 5, 6, 7 August 2010 (Brattleboro, VT); Juliet Bellow, 20 December 2008 (San Francisco); Lily Bellow, 27 March 2008 (New York); Rachel Bellow, 7 August 2010 (Cambridge, MA); Sondra “Sasha” Bellow, 30 July 2007, 22, 23 March 2008 (New York); Bambi Bellows, 19 January 2008 (Chicago); Joel Bellows, 19 April, 28 June 2008 (Chicago); Kyle Bellows, 24 April 2008 (Chicago); Keith Botsford, 13, 14, 15 March 2008 (Cahuita, Costa Rica); Nathalie Botsford, 12 May 2008 (Boston); Polly Botsford, 5 November 2009 (London); Leon Botstein, 26 July 2007 (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY); Jack Cella, 8 April 2008 (Chicago); Art and Lynda Copeland, 6 August 2007 (Brattleboro, VT); Esther Corbin, 10 July 2007 (Homewood, IL); Paul Dolan, 18 May 2008 (New York); Wendy Doniger, 1 February 2008 (Chicago); Judith Dunford, 10 January 2009 (New York); Brenda and Monroe Engel, 3 August 2007 (Block Island, RI); Eileen Finletter, 18 May 2008 (New York); Joseph and Marguerite Frank, 19 August 2008 (Stanford, CA); Harvey and Sonia Freedman, 6 August 2010; Wendy Freedman, 7 August 2008 (Pasadena, CA); Susan Freifeld, 13 August 2007, 19 February 2008 (Chicago); Paul Friedrich, 11 February 2008 (Chicago); David and Simon Gameroff, Leonard and Shelley Lewkowict, 18 September 2009 (Montreal); Fran Gendlin, 17 May 2008 (New York); Herbert Gold, 18 August 2008 (San Francisco); Sydney Goldstein, 29 December 2008 (San Francisco); Eugene Goodheart, 2 August 2007 (Cambridge and Watertown, MA); Jana Gordin, 30 May 2008 (telephone); Mikhail Gordin, 30 May 2010 (Holon, Israel); Naum and Jana Gordin, 4 August 2010 (Brookline, MA); Ethel Grene, 4 September 2010 (Wilmette, IL); John Gross, 26 October 2007 (London); Christopher Hitchens, 19 February 2008 (Washington, DC); Doris and Marshall Holleb, 3 March 2008 (Chicago), Bette Howland, 2 July 2008 (Longansport, IN); Chantal and John Hunt, 18 September 2008 (Lyons, France); William Hunt, 3 August 2010 (Westport, MA); Beema Kamlani, 6 January 2009 (New York); Max Kampelman, 23 May 2008 (Washington, DC); Harold Kaplan, 6 May 2008, 28 March 2009 (Paris); Roger Kaplan, 23 May 2008 (Washington, DC); Leon Kass, 25 April 2008 (Chicago); Stanley Katz, 26 March 2008 (Princeton, NJ); Eugene Kennedy, 16 April 2008 (Chicago); Jascha Kessler, 20 July 2007 (Los Angeles); Bettyane and Dan Kevles, 4 August 2010 (Centerville, Cape Cod, MA); Joan and Jonathan Kleinbard, 20 February 2008 (Philadelphia); George Kliger, 26 June 2008 (Minneapolis); Amos Kollek, 29 May 2010 (Jerusalem); Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, 19 February 2008 (Washington, DC); Arlette Landes, 22 May 2008 (Bethesda, MD); Will Lautzenheiser, 12 May 2008 (Brookline, MA); Ralph Lerner, 25 February 2008 (Chicago); Paul Levy, 30 April 2010 (Oxford); Frank Maltese, 7 August 2007 (Brattleboro, VT); Norman Manea, 9 January 2009 (New York); Sabina Mazursky, 25 May 2010 (Tel Aviv); Mitzi McClosky, 17 August 2008 (Berkeley, CA); Susan Missner, 29 July 2009 (Chicago); Vivien Missner, 11 July 2009 (Skokie, IL); John Nathan, 16 September 2014 (telephone); Evelyn Nef, 5 August 2007 (Great Barrington, MA); Amos Oz, 27 May 2010 (Tel Aviv); Jean Passin and Miriam Tarcov, 8 December 2009 (Phoenix); Sid Passin, 25 March 2008 (New York); David Peltz, 9, 15 February 2008 (Chicago); Robert Pippin, 31 January 2008 (Chicago); Norman Podhoretz, 23 March 2008 (New York); Walter Pozen, 22 January 2008, 25, 30 January 2014 (Brattleboro, VT, and New York, telephone); Antoinette Ralian, 29 October 2012 (telephone); James Redfield, 14, 21 January 2008 (Chicago); Laure Reichek, 15 August 2008 (Petaluma, CA); Christopher Ricks, 11 July 2010 (London); Carol Alane Rollings, 29 May 2008 (Chicago); Tom Rosenthal, 3 November 2009 (London); Mark Rotblatt, 14 February 2008 (Chicago); Philip Roth, 20 March 2008 (New York); Floyd Salas, 28 November 2008 (Berkeley, CA); James Salter, 10 August 2010 (Bridgehampton, NY); Joan Schwartz, 25 March 2008 (New York); Ellen and Philip Siegelman, 16 August 2008 (Berkeley, CA); John Silber, 13 May 2008 (Boston); Diane Silverman, 29 January 2008 (Chicago); Eleanor Fox Simmons, 9 July 2007 (Chicago); Maggie Staats Simmons, 20, 21 May 2008 (New York); Herbert Sinaiko, 6 February 2008 (Chicago); Barbara Probst Solomon, 30 July 2007 (New York); Carol and Jay Stern, 8 September 2010 (Chicago); Richard Stern, 8 January, 29 May 2008 (Chicago); Miriam Tarcov, 7, 8 December 2009 (Tucson, AZ); Nathan Tarcov, 24, 31 January and 28 February 2008 (Chicago); Sylvia Tumin, 25 July 2007 (Princeton, NJ); Bella and Mischa Ullman, 30 May 2010 (Hod Hasharon, Israel); Patty Unterman, 18 August 2008 (Berkeley, CA); George and Sarah Walden, 21 November 2009 (London); Chris Walsh, 12 May 2008 (Boston); Judith Freifeld Ward, 19 February 2008 (Washington, DC); Rebecca Warren, 14 September 2010 (New York); Lord Weidenfeld, 14 December 2007 (London); Renée Weiss, 25 July 2007 (Stonebridge, NJ); Leon Wieseltier, 19 February 2008 (Washington, DC); Barbara Wiesenfeld, 7 August 2008 (Santa Monica, CA); George Wislocki, 10 June 2008 (telephone); Ruth Wisse, 1 August 2007 (Cambridge, MA); James Wood, 13 May 2008 (Cambridge, MA); Michael Wu, 5 June 2008 (Chicago); Andrew Wylie, 15 September 2010 (New York); A. B. Yehoshua, 24 May 2010 (Haifa, Israel).

  Notes

  EDITIONS OF SAUL BELLOW’S WORKS CITED (INCLUDING FIRST PUBLICATION DETAILS)

  Novels

  Dangling Man (New York: Vanguard, 1944); Library of America, 2003 (in Saul Bellow: Novels 1944–1953).

  The Victim (New York: Vanguard, 1947); Library of America, 2003 (in Saul Bellow: Novels 1944–1953).

  The Adventures of Augie March (New York: Viking, 1953); Library of America, 2003 (in Saul Bellow: Novels 1944–1953).

  Seize the Day (New York: Viking, 1956); Library of America, 2007 (in Saul Bellow: Novels 1956–1964).

  Henderson the Rain King (New York: Viking, 1959); Library of America, 2007 (in Saul Bellow: Novels 1956–1964).

  Herzog (New York: Viking, 1964); Library of America, 2007 (in Saul Bellow: Novels 1956–1964
).

  Mr. Sammler’s Planet (New York: Viking, 1970); Penguin, 1972.

  Humboldt’s Gift (New York: Viking, 1975); Penguin, 1977.

  The Dean’s December (New York: Harper, 1982); Penguin, 1998.

  More Die of Heartbreak (New York: Morrow, 1987); Penguin, 2004.

  A Theft (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989); Penguin, 2002 (in Saul Bellow, Collected Stories).

  The Bellarosa Connection (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989); Penguin, 2002 (in Saul Bellow, Collected Stories).

  The Actual (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997); Penguin, 1998.

  Ravelstein (New York: Viking, 2000).

  Collected Stories

  Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories (New York: Viking, 1968); Penguin 1996 (excluding stories reprinted in Collected Stories, Penguin, 2002).

  Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (New York: HarperCollins, 1984); Penguin, 2002 (in Collected Stories, which contains all the stories in this volume).

  Something to Remember Me By: Three Tales (New York: Penguin, 1990); Penguin, 2002 (in Collected Stories, which contains all three stories in this volume).

  Collected Stories (New York: Viking, 2001); Penguin, 2002.

  Nonfiction

  To Jerusalem and Back (New York: Viking, 1976); Penguin, 1998.

  It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future: A Nonfiction Collection (New York: Viking Penguin, 1994); Penguin, 1995.

  Saul Bellow: Letters, ed. Benjamin Taylor (New York: Viking Penguin, 2010).

  There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction, ed. Benjamin Taylor (New York: Viking Penguin, 2015).

  Plays

  The Wrecker, in New World Writing, No. 6 (New York: New American Library, 1954); reprinted in Seize the Day (New York: Viking, 1956).

  The Last Analysis (New York: Viking, 1965); Viking Compass, 1969.