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
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
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