BELLOW, SAUL. Typed letter signed ("Saul") to "Dear Ted" (possibly Ted Hubler, a professor of English at Princeton), n.p., 15 October 1953. One page, 4to, single-spaced, with a 12-word marginal insertion in Bellow's hand, a slight marginal fold tear . "LITERATURE GETS FUCKED UP WITH PIETIES" A fine lengthy letter to a good friend, reacting to reviews of his picturesque third novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953), finished while Bellow was a Creative Writing Fellow at Princeton in 1952-1953. "...I simply can't get over all this nonsense about a novel ! Doesn't it seem elementary that a novel is intended to give pleasure. The higher authorities look down their noses at pleasure and imagination. I call their attitude 'low seriousness,' a deadly thing...I keep saying, 'It's a novel, friends.' It gets me nowhere and I'm thinking of quitting soon. It's almost as if you had no right to impose on serious people, asking of their time and offering them nothing but frivolousness. I understand that [Lionel] Trilling, who was more or less in favor of my book at first, now tells people that it's 'wrong' from a moral or ideological point of view. Imagine saying this about a book like Gil Blas ! (of the same family, I mean; Augie is a very little brother). Who cares! This is looking the gift horse not in the teeth, merely, but clear down to the bung... "The critics of today were the parsons of yesterday and American literature is the most moralistic in the world. Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne were at it in the last century and the people who fill the magazines today, less interestingly, are in the same business as the Transcendentalists, telling their fellow Americans how real and earnest life is. This is what happens when you don't have a competent priestly caste. Literature gets fucked up with pieties..."
BELLOW, SAUL. Typed letter signed ("Saul") to "Dear Ted" (possibly Ted Hubler, a professor of English at Princeton), n.p., 15 October 1953. One page, 4to, single-spaced, with a 12-word marginal insertion in Bellow's hand, a slight marginal fold tear . "LITERATURE GETS FUCKED UP WITH PIETIES" A fine lengthy letter to a good friend, reacting to reviews of his picturesque third novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953), finished while Bellow was a Creative Writing Fellow at Princeton in 1952-1953. "...I simply can't get over all this nonsense about a novel ! Doesn't it seem elementary that a novel is intended to give pleasure. The higher authorities look down their noses at pleasure and imagination. I call their attitude 'low seriousness,' a deadly thing...I keep saying, 'It's a novel, friends.' It gets me nowhere and I'm thinking of quitting soon. It's almost as if you had no right to impose on serious people, asking of their time and offering them nothing but frivolousness. I understand that [Lionel] Trilling, who was more or less in favor of my book at first, now tells people that it's 'wrong' from a moral or ideological point of view. Imagine saying this about a book like Gil Blas ! (of the same family, I mean; Augie is a very little brother). Who cares! This is looking the gift horse not in the teeth, merely, but clear down to the bung... "The critics of today were the parsons of yesterday and American literature is the most moralistic in the world. Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne were at it in the last century and the people who fill the magazines today, less interestingly, are in the same business as the Transcendentalists, telling their fellow Americans how real and earnest life is. This is what happens when you don't have a competent priestly caste. Literature gets fucked up with pieties..."
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
