all my power. But hell is for our ancestors. For us, nothing so simple. I can give you no advice because I am so different from you for one thing, and because, for another, my own problems are by no means settled.
I am a strange dog, Oscar. Strange things occur in me that I cannot account for. Just now I am deeply in love, and I think I shall continue in love, because it is my salvation. You, on the other side, could not find salvation in love. You see how different we are? Even our capacities for love are different.
You’ll have to settle your problems by yourself. You’ll have to wrestle with your own devil because, though I am at present sitting on mine, he is kicking and undefeated.
However, I think you are on the right track. Stick to anthropology; I wish I could accept it wholly. It will bring you closer to truth perhaps, make you happier, perhaps. If you discover a province in it to make yours, you are sure at least to be freer. If any discipline can do it, it is anthropology. You will see what I mean if you read the Autobiography of a Papago Woman, Memoirs of the A.A.A. , a monograph published by the American Anthropological Association. You can doubtless find it in the periodical room. It was published only last year. When you read it you will see how many universes there are. That there are other lives, the color of clay, narrow as cave walls but still broad as rock and free and fierce as wolves.
Read it and write back.
Yours,
To Oscar Tarcov
[Postmarked Madison, Wisconsin, 7 December 1937]
Dear Oscar:
I’m tearing this off in cruel haste; it’s a shame to treat you this way. But this is the period preceding the period of paper-writing. I have several on my hands, more than I should perhaps have undertaken. The result is, of course, that I bear more than my normal load of fretting. I know I waste more time fuming and bustling than I spend in work. But I can’t break the habit.
Ever since he began his paper on the Absolute as conceived by Josiah Royce, Isaac has been intolerable. If they hand out laurels for sheer evasive-ness and careful and reserved ambiguities in the Philosophy Department, Isaac should get the juiciest they have on hand. If the paper is well received by [Max C.] Otto, Isaac will stay. If not he will return. In process of writing his paper he has suddenly discovered, however, that he gets along swimmingly without Chicago when he has something to do. One can predict even less for Isaac than for me.
I didn’t get around to pumping you about your feeling towards anthropology. If you want to volunteer some information I shall be glad to get it, because if it is necessary for me to unconvince you of something it is best for me to begin preparing now.
Yours,
After two semesters, Bellow abandoned graduate study, returned to Chicago, and married Anita Goshkin of Lafayette, Indiana, a daughter of immigrant Jews from the Crimea who was prominent in Northwestern radical circles—“straightforward, big-bosomed, and very assertive,” as Bellow’s high-school friend Herb Passin remembered her.
1939
To Oscar Tarcov
October [?], 1939 [Chicago]
Dear Oscar:
You are perfectly right. We should have had a talking-out before you went away. But to be perfectly frank too, I didn’t care, at the time that you left, to talk to you. I was neither angry nor disgusted, but “disaffected,” alienated to the point of indifference. I needed nothing from you and it was of small consequence to see you and talk to you. Whether you stayed or left was all one to me. In fact I felt the air was a little clearer after you had gone. Now I am being as open as I can, telling you how I felt and what I felt. I think you could make about the same confession. There are many reasons on both sides.
I haven’t the same attitude now, so you can put at least one salutary gain to your departure.
I’m glad you won’t have to come back to Chicago the way Isaac did, sour and sick but prepared to resume his
I am a strange dog, Oscar. Strange things occur in me that I cannot account for. Just now I am deeply in love, and I think I shall continue in love, because it is my salvation. You, on the other side, could not find salvation in love. You see how different we are? Even our capacities for love are different.
You’ll have to settle your problems by yourself. You’ll have to wrestle with your own devil because, though I am at present sitting on mine, he is kicking and undefeated.
However, I think you are on the right track. Stick to anthropology; I wish I could accept it wholly. It will bring you closer to truth perhaps, make you happier, perhaps. If you discover a province in it to make yours, you are sure at least to be freer. If any discipline can do it, it is anthropology. You will see what I mean if you read the Autobiography of a Papago Woman, Memoirs of the A.A.A. , a monograph published by the American Anthropological Association. You can doubtless find it in the periodical room. It was published only last year. When you read it you will see how many universes there are. That there are other lives, the color of clay, narrow as cave walls but still broad as rock and free and fierce as wolves.
Read it and write back.
Yours,
To Oscar Tarcov
[Postmarked Madison, Wisconsin, 7 December 1937]
Dear Oscar:
I’m tearing this off in cruel haste; it’s a shame to treat you this way. But this is the period preceding the period of paper-writing. I have several on my hands, more than I should perhaps have undertaken. The result is, of course, that I bear more than my normal load of fretting. I know I waste more time fuming and bustling than I spend in work. But I can’t break the habit.
Ever since he began his paper on the Absolute as conceived by Josiah Royce, Isaac has been intolerable. If they hand out laurels for sheer evasive-ness and careful and reserved ambiguities in the Philosophy Department, Isaac should get the juiciest they have on hand. If the paper is well received by [Max C.] Otto, Isaac will stay. If not he will return. In process of writing his paper he has suddenly discovered, however, that he gets along swimmingly without Chicago when he has something to do. One can predict even less for Isaac than for me.
I didn’t get around to pumping you about your feeling towards anthropology. If you want to volunteer some information I shall be glad to get it, because if it is necessary for me to unconvince you of something it is best for me to begin preparing now.
Yours,
After two semesters, Bellow abandoned graduate study, returned to Chicago, and married Anita Goshkin of Lafayette, Indiana, a daughter of immigrant Jews from the Crimea who was prominent in Northwestern radical circles—“straightforward, big-bosomed, and very assertive,” as Bellow’s high-school friend Herb Passin remembered her.
1939
To Oscar Tarcov
October [?], 1939 [Chicago]
Dear Oscar:
You are perfectly right. We should have had a talking-out before you went away. But to be perfectly frank too, I didn’t care, at the time that you left, to talk to you. I was neither angry nor disgusted, but “disaffected,” alienated to the point of indifference. I needed nothing from you and it was of small consequence to see you and talk to you. Whether you stayed or left was all one to me. In fact I felt the air was a little clearer after you had gone. Now I am being as open as I can, telling you how I felt and what I felt. I think you could make about the same confession. There are many reasons on both sides.
I haven’t the same attitude now, so you can put at least one salutary gain to your departure.
I’m glad you won’t have to come back to Chicago the way Isaac did, sour and sick but prepared to resume his
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