Dangling Man

by Saul Bellow

  Peculiar? In what way? Well, to begin with, there is something about his appearance, something wrong. His is a long, straight-nosed, firm face. He wears a little mustache, which makes him look older than he really is. His eyes are dark and full, rather too full, a little prominent, in fact. His hair is black. He does not have what people call an “open” look, but is restrained—at times, despite his amiability, forbidding. He is a person greatly concerned with keeping intact and free from encumbrance a sense of his own being, its importance. Yet he is not abnormally cold, nor is he egotistic. He keeps a tight hold because, as he himself explains, he is keenly intent on knowing what is happening to him. He wants to miss nothing.

  His wife does not remember him without a mustache, and he had just turned seventeen when they met. On his first visit to the Almstadts, he had smoked a cigar and talked loudly and fairly expertly (he was then a Communist) about the German Social Democracy and the slogan “United Front from Below.” Her father had taken him for twenty-five and had angrily ordered her not to invite grown men to the house. It amuses Mr. Almstadt to tell this story, now a family joke. He says: “I thought he was going to carry her away to Russia.”

  To turn now to Joseph’s dress (I am wearing his cast-off clothes), it adds to his appearance of maturity. His suits are dark and conservative. His shoes, it is true, are pointed and rather dandyish, but that is possibly intended as a counterbalance. A broader toe would give you a man in his middle thirties. As he is in most things, Joseph is conscious of a motive in his choice of clothes. It is his answer to those whose defiant principle it is to dress badly, to whom a crumpled suit is a badge of freedom. He wants to avoid the small conflicts of nonconformity so that he can give all his attention to defending his inner differences, the ones that really matter. Furthermore, he takes a sad or negative satisfaction in wearing what he calls “the uniform of the times.” In short, the less noteworthy the better, for his purposes. All the same, he manages to stand out.

  In things of this sort his friends sometimes find him ridiculous. And, yes, he says, he admits he is on “the funny side” in many ways. But that can’t be helped. The appearance and behavior of reflective men is seldom comparable to that of the less reflective, who unhesitatingly entrust all they stand for to their looks and gestures. What he is trying to do is not easy, and it is not unlikely that the more he succeeds, the more odd he may seem. Besides, he says, there is an element of the comic or fantastic in everyone. You can never bring that altogether under control.

  “An element of the comic or fantastic …” such phrases have a queer ring; and people who have begun by taking him for a clerk at Inter-American, a fairly nice chap, begin to look at him with changed eyes. But even his oldest friends, those who like John Pearl and Morris Abt have been close to him since boyhood, often find it hard to make him out. And, despite his anxiety to be understood, he cannot always help them.

  Joseph, since leaving school, has not stopped thinking of himself as a scholar, and he surrounds himself with books. Before he interested himself in the Enlightenment he made a study of the early ascetics and, earlier, of Romanticism and the child prodigy. Of course, he has to earn his living, but he tries to strike a balance between what he wants and what he is compelled to do, between the necessity and the wish. A compromise exists, but then men’s lives abound in such compromises. He is proud of the skill with which he manages both sides and—albeit somewhat mistakenly—likes to refer to himself as a Machiavellian. He keeps his roles successfully distinct and even goes out of his way to be an excellent employee, simply to prove that “visionaries” can be hardheaded.

  Everyone admits, however, that Joseph has a close grasp on himself, that he knows what he wants and how to go about getting it. In the last seven or eight years he has worked everything out in accordance with a general plan. Into this plan have gone his friends, his family, and his wife. He has taken a great deal of trouble with his wife, urging her to read books of his choosing, teaching her to admire what he believes admirable. To what degree he has succeeded he does not know.

  It should not be thought that Joseph, when he speaks of the “less reflective” or of his “element of the comic,” is being harsh. He is not severe toward the world. He calls himself a sworn upholder of tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. Theories of a wholly good or a wholly malevolent world strike him as foolish. Of those who believe in a wholly good world he says that they do not understand depravity. As for pessimists, the question he asks of them is, “Is that all they see, such people?” For him, the world is both, and therefore it is neither. Merely to make a judgment of that kind is, to representatives of either position, a satisfaction. Whereas, to him, judgment is second to wonder, to speculation on men, drugged and clear, jealous, ambitious, good, tempted, curious, each in his own time and with his customs and motives, and bearing the imprint of strangeness in the world. In a sense, everything is good because it exists. Or, good or not good, it exists, it is ineffable, and, for that reason, marvelous.

  But for all that, Joseph suffers from a feeling of strangeness, of not quite belonging to the world, of lying under a cloud and looking up at it. Now, he says, all human beings share this to some extent. The child feels that his parents are pretenders; his real father is elsewhere and will some day come to claim him. And for others the real world is not here at all and what is at hand is spurious and copied. Joseph’s feeling of strangeness sometimes takes the form almost of a conspiracy: not a conspiracy of evil, but one which contains the diversified splendors, the shifts, excitements, and also the common, neutral matter of an existence. Living from day to day under the shadow of such a conspiracy is trying. If it makes for wonder, it makes even more for uneasiness, and one clings to the nearest passers-by, to brothers, parents, friends, and wives.

  December 20

  Preparations for the holiday. I went out yesterday to do some shopping for Iva. Downtown there were bell ringers on every corner, in beards of soiled cotton and red Santa Claus costumes. For love of the poor, for dear charity, clang-clanging away in the din. Immense wreaths were mounted on buildings in the green, menacing air; the thousands upon thousands of shoppers ground through the stores and the streets under the smoky red façades and in the amplified roar of carols. The holly berries flashed on the tarred poles in thick drops. The jukeboxes in the taverns were playing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” Everyone prays for snow, and the thought of rain or sleet brings panic.

  Vanaker is restless these days. He keeps moving the furniture around his room. Marie complains more than ever. By changing the position of the bed he makes it hard for her to clean the room. The door is blocked. She doesn’t like to go in anyway. He doesn’t keep himself clean, she claims. Instead of sending his linen to the laundry, he airs it at the window. He hangs up his underwear at night and forgets to take it down in the morning. Mrs. Briggs tells me that he is engaged to marry a lady of sixty who insists that he be converted to the Catholic faith and that he goes every evening to the church of St. Thomas the Apostle for indoctrination. At the same time, I notice that he receives large quantities of mail from the Masonic Scottish Rite. It may be this conflict of principle that drives him to get up at two in the morning to change the position of his bed.

  We have two invitations to Christmas dinner, one from the Almstadts and another from my brother Amos. I am for refusing both.

  December 22

  An unusual explosion of temper this afternoon, when I was with Myron Adler. I behaved unaccountably, greatly surprising myself and, of course, bewildering Myron altogether. He had phoned me about a temporary job which would consist of asking people questions for a poll he is conducting. I hurried down to meet him at the Arrow for lunch. I arrived first, took a table toward the back, and immediately fell victim to depression. I had not visited the Arrow for a number of years. It was at one time a hangout for earnest eccentrics where, at almost any hour of the afternoon or evening, you could hear discussions of socialism, psychopathology, or the
fate of European Man. It was I who had suggested that we eat there; for some reason it had been the first place that came to my mind. Now it depressed me. Then, as I looked around at the steam tables and the posters of foundering ships and faces of Japanese, I suddenly saw Jimmy Burns sitting at a table with a man I did not know. Since the days when we had been Comrade Joe and Comrade Jim, we had seen each other no more than two, perhaps three, times. He looked changed; his forehead had grown higher and his expression more severe. I nodded to him, but got no recognition for my pains; he looked through me in the way which is, I suppose, officially prescribed for “renegades.”

  When Myron came in a few minutes later and started at once to talk about the job, I said impatiently, “Wait a second, now. Just hold on.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Something very special,” I said. “Wait till I tell you. You see that man in the brown suit over there? That’s Jimmy Burns. Ten years ago I was privileged to call him Comrade Jimmy.”

  “Well?” said Myron.

  “I said hello to him, and he acted as if I simply wasn’t there.”

  “What of it?” said Myron.

  “Does that seem natural? I was once a close friend.”

  “Well?” said Myron.

  “Stop saying that, will you!” I said in exasperation.

  “I mean, do you want him to throw his arms around you?” asked Myron.

  “You don’t get the point. I despise him.”

  “Then I don’t get the point. I confess I don’t get it.”

  “No. Listen. He has no business ignoring me. This is always happening to me. You don’t understand it because you’re a person of no political experience. But I know what this means, and I’m going to go up to him and say hello whether he likes it or not.”

  “Don’t be a fool. What do you want to make trouble for?” said Myron.

  “Because I feel like making trouble. Does he know me or doesn’t he? He knows me perfectly well.” I was growing angrier by the minute. “I’m surprised that you shouldn’t be able to see it.”

  “I came here to talk to you about a job, not to see you throw a fit,” he said.

  “Oh, a fit. Do you think I care about him? It’s the principle of the thing. It seems to escape you. Simply because I am no longer a member of their party they have instructed him and boobs like him not to talk to me. Don’t you see what’s involved?”

  “No,” Myron said carelessly.

  “I’ll tell you what’s involved. I have a right to be spoken to. It’s the most elementary thing in the world. Simply that. I insist on it.”

  “Oh, Joseph,” said Myron.

  “No, really, listen to me. Forbid one man to talk to another, forbid him to communicate with someone else, and you’ve forbidden him to think, because, as a great many writers will tell you, thought is a kind of communication. And his party doesn’t want him to think, but to follow its discipline. So there you are. Because it’s supposed to be a revolutionary party. That’s what’s offending me. When a man obeys an order like that he’s helping to abolish freedom and begin tyranny.”

  “Come, come,” said Myron. “You’re making too much fuss over it.”

  “I should be making twice as much fuss,” I said. “It’s very important.”

  “But you’ve been through with them for years, haven’t you?” Myron asked. “Do you mean to say you’ve just discovered this now?”

  “I haven’t forgotten, that’s all. You see, I thought those people were different. I haven’t forgotten that I believed they were devoted to the service of some grand flapdoodle, the Race, le genre humain. Oh, yes, they were! By the time I got out, I realized that any hospital nurse did more with one bedpan for le genre humain than they did with their entire organization. It’s odd to think that there was a time when to hear that would have filled me with horror. What? Reformism?”

  “I’ve heard of that,” said Myron.

  “I should think so. Reformism! A terrible thing. About a month after we parted company, I sat down and wrote Jane Addams a letter of apology. She was still alive.”

  “Did you?” he said, looking at me curiously.

  “I never mailed it,” I said. “Maybe I should have. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I changed my mind about redoing the world from top to bottom à la Karl Marx and decided in favor of bandaging a few sores at a time. Of course, that was temporary, too. …”

  “Was it?” he said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You know that, Mike,” I said loudly.

  The man who was sitting with Burns turned around, but the latter still pretended not to see me. “That’s right,” I said. “Look the other way. Go on. That boy is mad, Myron. He’s never been sane. Everything has changed, he’s been left far behind, but he thinks it’s as it used to be. He still wears that proletarian bang on his earnest forehead and dreams of becoming an American Robespierre. The rest have compromised themselves to the ears, but he still believes in the revolution. Blood will run, the power will change hands, and then the state will wither away according to the in-ex-or-able logic of history. I’d gamble my shirt on it. I know his mind. Let me tell you something about him. Do you know what he used to have in his room? I went up with him one day, and there was a large-scale map of the city, with pins in it. So I said, ‘What’s this for, Jim?’ And then—I swear this is true—he started to explain that he was preparing a guide for street-fighting, the day of the insurrection. He had all the critical streets marked in code for cellars and roofs, the paving material, the number of newsstands at each corner that could be thrown into barricades (the Parisian kiosks, you remember). Even abandoned sewers for hiding arms. He traced them through City Hall records. At that time I didn’t know how crazy it was. The things we used to accept as natural—why, it’s unbelievable! And he’s still in that. I’ll bet he still has the map. He’s an addict. They’re all addicted people, Mike. Hey, Burns! Hey!” I called out.

  “Shut up, Joseph! For God’s sake. What are you doing? Everybody’s looking at you.”

  Burns glanced briefly in my direction and then resumed his conversation with the other man, who, however, turned again to examine me.

  “What do you know about that! Burns won’t give me a tumble. I can’t arouse him. I’m just gone. Like that.” I snapped my fingers. “I’m a contemptible petty-bourgeois renegade; could anything be worse? That idiot! Hey, addict!” I shouted.

  “Have you gone mad? Come on.” Myron pushed back the table. “I’m going to get you out of here before you start a fight. I think you would start a fight. Where’s your coat, which is it? Why, you’re a madman! Come back here!” But I was already out of his reach. I halted squarely before Burns.

  “I said hello to you before, didn’t you notice?”

  He made no reply.

  “Don’t you know me? It seems to me that I know you very well. Answer me, don’t you know who I am?”

  “Yes, I know you,” Burns said in a low voice.

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure. I’m coming, Myron.” I pulled my arm away from him, and we strode out.

  I was aware that this had made a bad impression on Myron, but cared to do little to rectify it beyond explaining in a few short words that I had not been myself lately. But I did not say this until we had come to our second course in another restaurant. I became very quiet. I did not, and still do not, know where this outbreak came from. I suspect that it originated in sheer dishevelment of mind. But how could I explain this to Myron without becoming entangled in a long description of the state I was in and its causes? I would make him squirm and I myself would squander my feelings in self-pity.

  We talked about the job, and he promised to recommend me to his superiors. He hoped, he said (he had sounded more positive on the phone), that I would get it. Myron likes me, I know he does. But he has worked hard to reach his present position and, realist that he is, it cannot have taken
him long to decide that he could not afford to be responsible for me. I might prove unreliable, raise a cry about “the principle of the thing,” and with one quirk or impulse, undo him, I could not blame him after what had just happened.

  But still, I could not condemn myself altogether for it. It was wrong to make a scene but, after all, it was not so wrong to be indignant at Burns. To have invented a letter to Jane Addams was, however, clearly wrong. Why on earth had I done that? I had a point to make, yes; but I should have thought of a better way. For a moment, in the interest of elementary honesty, I thought of confessing. But if I told him that and no more (and I did not want to say more), he would become even more confused and distrustful. And why bother?

  And so I said, as we were about to separate, “Mike, if you have anyone else in mind for that job, feel free to suggest him. I can’t tell how long I’ll be around. They may notify me any day, and then I’d be forced to walk out in the middle of things. That wouldn’t do. But thanks for thinking of me. …”

  “Oh, now, Joseph, look. …”

  “Never mind, Mike. And I really do mean that.”

  “I’ll put your name up. And, Joseph, we ought to get together. I want to talk to you. One of these days.”

  “Well, all right. But the fact is, I’m not fit company. I’m all up in the air. And forget about the job.” And I walked away quickly, certain that I had lifted a burden from him and, by so doing, had acquitted myself decently.

  Later, thinking these incidents over, I felt less inclined to shoulder all the blame. It seemed to me that Myron might have been somewhat less worried about the spectacle I had made of myself and the attention I had drawn to him and more concerned about the cause of my outburst. If he had thought about it, he would have seen that there were reasons for my behavior, reasons that might well prove disquieting to a friend. And, moreover, he might have found that what I was driving at was not without importance. For the insolence of Burns figured the whole betrayal of an undertaking to which I had once devoted myself, and my chagrin—though it seemed to find its object in Burns—was actually aimed at those who had perverted it.