The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964

927 Pages·2015·29.83 MB·English

by  Zachary Leader

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2015 by Zachary Leader
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House
LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House, Ltd.,
Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Permissions acknowledgments can be found following the index.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leader, Zachary, author.
The life of Saul Bellow : to fame and fortune, 1915–1964 / by Zachary Leader.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-307-26883-9 (hardcover)—isbn 978-1-10187467-7 (eBook)
1. Bellow, Saul. 2. Novelists, American—20th century—Biography.
I. Title.
PS3503.E4488Z736 2015
813′.52—dc23
[B] 2014020092
Cover photograph courtesy of the Saul Bellow Literary Estate
Cover design by Carol Devine Carson
v3.1
To Alice
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Bellow and Biography
1. Russia/Abraham
2. Canada/Liza
3. Chicago/Maury
4. Tuley
5. Politics/Anthropology
6. Anita/Dangling
7. New York
8. Minneapolis
9. Paris
10. Princeton/Delmore
11. Augie/Bard/Sasha
12. Pyramid Lake
13. Betrayal
14. Susan/Herzog
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Notes
Index
Permissions Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Additional Illustrations
Other Books by This Author
List of Illustrations
1 Abraham Bellow
2 Liza and the children, Lachine, 1918
3 Lynne, Marge, Maury, and Joel
4 Eleanor Fox at eighteen
5 Front page, The Daily Northwestern, February 19, 1936
6 SB and Anita
7 The editorial board of Partisan Review
8 SB and Herbert McClosky on the Marine Tiger
9 “Kappy” and Celia Kaplan in a Paris nightclub 10 Sondra “Sasha” Tschacbasov
11 Bard College Literature Division
12 Pyramid Lake
13 SB and Jack Ludwig
14 Susan Glassman Bellow
Additional Illustrations
15 Moses Gordin, SB’s maternal grandfather 16 Shulamith Belo, SB’s paternal
grandmother 17 Sara Gordin, SB’s maternal grandmother 18 Houses in the
Jewish district, Druya 19 Jewish cemetery, Druya
20 Abraham Bellow, SB’s father
21 Liza Bellow, SB’s mother
22 Lachine Canal, Canada
23 130 Eighth Avenue, Lachine, Canada 24 Rue Napoleon, at the crossing with rue
St. Dominique, in the Jewish district of Montreal 25 The Bellow family,
Montreal, c. 1920
26 Royal Victoria Hospital
27 Sam and SB, c. 1924
28 SB and sister Jane
29 SB’s first home in Chicago, 2629 West Augusta Street, in Humboldt Park, 2014
30 Sam Freifeld, SB’s friend, early twenties 31 David Peltz, SB’s friend, late teens 32
Ethel and Ben Freifeld, Chicago, early 1940s 33 Sydney J. Harris
34 Oscar Tarcov at sixteen, 1935
35 Saul Bellow at fourteen, summer 1929
36 Isaac Rosenfeld
37 The wedding of Maury and Marge Bellows, 1934
38 Maury Bellows
39 Sam Bellows
40 University of Chicago
41 SB revisiting Goff House, 1957
42 Northwestern University, mid-1930s 43 Melville Herskovits, professor of
anthropology, Northwestern University, early 1930s 44 SB and Anita
45 Edith and Oscar Tarcov
46 Cora and Herb Passin
47 Vasiliki and Isaac Rosenfeld 48 SB, Anita, Kappy, New York, 1940
49 SB and Mel Tumin, Evanston, 1942
50 Daniel P. and Jule Mannix and their American bald eagle, Mexico, 1940
51 Trotsky assassinated, Mexico City, 1940
52 SB and Anita, Mexico, 1940
53 Lionel and Diana Trilling, in Riverside Park, near Columbia University, 1942
54 Alfred Kazin, New York, 1946
55 Heinrich Blücher and Hannah Arendt, 1960
56 New York intellectuals
57 David Bazelon, SB’s friend from Greenwich Village days 58 Clement Greenberg
and Barnett Newman at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, 1959
59 Harold Rosenberg
60 Arthur Lidov
61 Mitzi and Herb McClosky, c. 1943
62 SB and Greg (seven weeks old), August 25, 1944
63 Eleanor Clark, Robert Penn Warren, and their daughter, 1954
64 SB in Spain, 1947
65 Max Kampelman, SB’s lodger in Minneapolis 66 Bellow home, 58 Orlin
Avenue, Prospect Park, Minneapolis 67 Diarmuid Russell and Henry
Volkening, SB’s agents 68 Monroe Engel, SB’s editor at Viking, late 1950s 69
Sidney Hook, 1949
70 24 rue Marbeuf, site of the Bellows’ first Paris apartment 71 The cafés of Saint-
Germain, 1946
72 Kappy in his apartment at 132 boulevard du Montparnasse, 1940s 73 Paolo
Milano
74 SB in Salzburg, 1950
75 Schloss Leopoldskron, Salzburg, Austria 76 SB, Anita, and Greg in Rome, 1950
77 Joel Bellows’s Bar Mitzvah, 1952
78 Group photo at Yaddo, 1953
79 Theodore Roethke
80 Bernard Malamud, 1957
81 R. P. Blackmur, a model for Professor Sewall
82 Delmore Schwartz at the White Horse Tavern, 1959
83 John Berryman, 1966
84 Irving Howe, 1961
85 Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, London, 1954
86 Chanler Chapman, the model for Eugene Henderson 87 Fanny and Ralph
Ellison, c. 1960
88 Ted Hoffman and Greg Bellow, Tivoli, 1957
89 SB, Greg Bellow, Jesse Reichek, at Tivoli, Dutchess County, New York, 1957
90 Gore Vidal on the porch of Edgewater 91 Pyramid Lake Guest Ranch
92 Joan and Harry Drackert, proprietors of the Pyramid Lake Guest Ranch 93
Pascal “Pat” Covici, SB’s editor at Viking 94 Richard Stern, novelist,
professor of English, University of Chicago 95 Philip Roth, Martha’s
Vineyard 96 SB, guest lecturer in Richard Stern’s creative writing class 97
Sasha, SB, and Adam, Tivoli, c. 1957
98 SB and Adam, Chicago, 1957
99 Paul Meehl, professor of psychology, University of Minnesota 100 3139 East
Calhoun Parkway, Minneapolis 101 Ralph Ross, chair of humanities,
University of Minnesota, 1961
102 Greg Bellow and Joseph Warren Beach, Minneapolis 103 Bette Howland, c.
1956
104 Rosette Lamont
105 Susan and SB, Martha’s Vineyard, 1964
106 Susan Glassman Bellow
107 Penny and Tom McMahon, Keith Botsford, and SB, Puerto Rico, 1961
108 John U. Nef, founding chair of the Committee on Social Thought, University
of Chicago 109 Edward Shils, a friend and colleague at the Committee on
Social Thought 110 SB, 1964