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 starting 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
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 starting 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
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