Saul Bellow's Heart (23 page)

Such a ridiculous story reveals what extreme concern there must have been about the influence of Saul’s family. And,
ironically, a form of “kidnapping” akin to what Lesha and I had been accused of did occur. Over the next five years, Janis gradually broadened her control over every aspect of my father’s life. She spoke for him and, at times, substituted her own desires for those I believed to have been his. Soon Saul was represented by a new literary agent, a new lawyer, and new financial advisers. In the end Janis was installed as Saul’s literary executor, a new will was drafted, Lesha was removed as executor/trustee, and the inheritance Adam, Dan, and I were told to expect was, at a minimum, halved. We were excluded from any posthumous financial benefit from Saul’s literary estate. And the changes did not stop at financial and legal control. Eventually Janis was to become a mother and, most symbolically, to have the final say over where Saul would be buried.

Harriet Wasserman, Saul’s literary agent for more than twenty-five years and a daily presence in his life, was first to go. New literary agents were only too happy to court Saul Bellow. A young man from the Wylie Agency arrived in Vermont while I was visiting, quoting the poet Wordsworth at length, much to my father’s delight.

I cannot provide a better description of the end of Harriet’s tenure as Saul’s agent than hers in
Handsome Is
, her memoir. Harriet, who had delivered thousands of unpleasant messages on Saul’s behalf, knew how he hated delivering bad news in person. Indirect hints were dropped and her power quickly slipped away. Personnel from the Wylie Agency took over so many of her responsibilities, it was obvious Saul had already changed agents in all but name. Harriet rightly felt her years of loyalty warranted that Saul should deliver the bad news himself, and she doggedly pushed for a personal resolution. Saul
kept putting her off, perhaps because he was not necessarily 100 percent in favor of firing her. Harriet waited for the inevitable call. When it finally came, she asked if Saul wanted her to fire herself, shielding him from one last unpleasant confrontation. The changing of the guard continued as Saul’s lawyer, who had worked closely with Harriet, was replaced by Walter Pozen.

Janis nursed Saul back to health during two painful years of recuperation. By 1996, Saul had regained sufficient strength to attend Dan and Heather’s wedding in Miami. In private, Saul informed Lesha of the legal and financial changes he had made. Outraged, particularly by their potential effects on his sons, she argued bitterly with her uncle behind closed doors. But Lesha was also loyal to Saul and gave us few indications of the radical changes he had authorized. Even in death, our father left the telling of bad news to the lawyers for his estate.

My first clear glimpse of a very personal change came by accident when, at their home on a visit in 1997 or ’98, I took a phone message about an appointment for Janis from the fertility clinic at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I realized that Janis, and perhaps Saul, was intent on having a child. After telling Saul about the message, I expressed my surprise in light of our conversation during which he had disavowed having any more children. A clearly embarrassed Saul meekly said that he had asked Janis not to discuss the matter with him. I concluded that Janis was now intent on motherhood and Saul had no say other than asking her to keep the details to herself. Her desire to have a child was easy to understand, but at forty and with a husband over eighty, parenthood required a purposeful commitment. When that child, Rosie, arrived in 1999, her birth
caused a stir inside and outside of the family. Saul gave multiple and contradictory versions of her conception. Knowing what steps Janis had taken, I found his differing accounts highly amusing. Saul enjoyed watching Rosie play and laugh. But when I visited my waning father, I was struck by the irony of a house occupied by a little creature so full of life and an old man who was rapidly declining and often bedridden.

The year 2000 saw two publications: my father’s last novel,
Ravelstein
, and James Atlas’s biography,
Bellow
. Writing
Ravelstein
was to be the proof that Saul Bellow had recovered his physical strength and his intellect. Saul’s acknowledged portrait of Allan Bloom was generally well received, but he confirmed Allan’s homosexuality publicly and identified AIDS as the likely cause of his death. In the minds of many political conservatives for whom Allan had become an intellectual mainstay after writing
The Closing of the American Mind
, publication of these personal details was an act of betrayal. Quickly Saul became embroiled in a firestorm that revealed his failing mental powers. He repeatedly told me that Allan had requested an honest portrait, and Saul reiterated that point to reporters until he realized the interviews he granted were only aggravating the controversy he had stirred up. Saul’s memory and concentration had begun to weaken, and he could no longer parry reporters’ questions or present himself the way he wanted to. He cut off interviews for good.

Considering
Ravelstein
a betrayal ignores Saul’s basic approach to politics. Though he had supported many conservative social and cultural positions, Saul was never a true believer in the left or right. His sympathy with any position never extended
to loyalty to an entire belief system, as even a cursory reading of his novels or the Atlas biography reveals. Soon after
Ravelstein
’s publication, we had a conversation about the inconsistency between espousing individual liberty and trying to control what happens in the bedroom, which pleasantly reminded me of times long ago when he and I puzzled together over the ironic and contradictory behavior of human beings.

A few years earlier, when James Atlas had approached Saul about becoming his biographer, my father agreed to cooperate. Atlas had written a biography of Delmore Schwartz and Saul liked it. After several conversations, no doubt thinking he could control Atlas, Saul granted him access to the archive at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, where, for decades and with his usual absence of forethought, he had deposited boxes full of highly revealing documents. The biographer took his task seriously, and Saul became alarmed when friends and relatives began to complain about his pointed questions. It became clear that Mr. Atlas was going to put in details Saul did not want included, and they quarreled. By then my father could not withdraw the consent that ceded full control. All Saul could do was feign a lack of interest when the biography was published.

I refused to speak with Atlas about my father, but I wanted to protect my deceased mother from a dismissive portrait like that in the literary memoir that Ruth Miller, Saul’s former student, had published in 1991. I wrote a summary of her life for Atlas, and was pleased by the respect he showed for Anita. But the publication of
Bellow
in 2000 caused a stir in the family and among friends who complained that their statements were
taken out of context and placed in too negative a light. My father, angered and hurt, sought someone to blame, and made the biography into yet another measure of family loyalty. In his acknowledgments Atlas overstated a friendship with Adam and Dan but made no mention of me. I became a momentary hero with Saul for limiting my participation to a simple sketch of his first wife.

Bellow
affected me in ways I had not anticipated. As I read about events in a life I knew well, I began to seriously reconsider my public silence. Atlas’s apparent idealization of my father as a great writer likely prompted him to become Saul’s biographer. But speaking with detractors, ex-friends, and the few members of our family willing to cooperate seemed to have infected his once high opinion of my father with anger and disappointment that had crept into his biography. I began to wonder if my negative feelings about “old Saul” might infect the memoir I was considering.

I do not believe Saul understood that he was losing his short-term memory, but he knew something was wrong as he complained to my cousin Lesha about his
kopf
, Yiddish for head. My father also revealed a concern for his mental state in a 2000 letter to Philip Roth where, likely referring to the repetitions and gaps in his letters about the origins of his early novels, he thanked Roth for covering up for what he termed a breakdown.

By 2002 Saul’s mental deterioration, which was akin to islands of clarity in a dark sea of silence, was beginning to accelerate. I decided it was time for one more real conversation that
I feared might be our last. Irritated for decades that Saul took only a passing interest in my adult life, I decided to tell my father something about who I was in a way he’d understand. When asked about writing, he often employed a quote from Stendhal about developing literary characters by giving them what they lack—that is, creating them out of essential bits and pieces. I decided the best way to describe myself was to adopt a parallel explanation and said, “I took from my family what I needed.”

I began with Beebee’s observation that I created a family for myself everywhere I went by remaining loyal to people I cared about. I elaborated that with a kaleidoscopic childhood like mine, I had fashioned my identity out of the bits and pieces I found in my family. I ended with a tribute to how Saul’s warmth and vulnerability was central to my ability to love, to be a good person and father, and was the glue that kept the pieces of my personality in place.

When I finished, Saul praised me and the identity I had forged. But he touched me most deeply by referring to the times I called him in despair over the deaths of those I loved—Anita, Beebee, and George Sarant. “When you call me in that state,” he said, “I can see the goodness in your soul.” Who could ask more of an aging father? Had those been his last words to me, we would have been spared the greatest pain that ever came between us.

When my daughter Juliet and Charlie Schulman announced their engagement and set a wedding date in New York, Saul was genuinely excited. He continually referred to the date as if trying to make sure it was fixed in his mind. I took his insistence
on “moving heaven and earth to get there” as a reflection of his desire to attend. Arrangements seemed to be on track, when Saul called Juliet a few weeks before the wedding. Offering no explanation, he said, “You must forgive me, but I cannot come to your wedding.” Juliet and I had a heart-wrenching conversation about how Saul could inflict so much pain by making commitments and failing to fulfill them. For the first time, Juliet understood why I had erected the self-protective barriers between my father and myself that she had often observed and pointed out to me.

Saul did not call me until Adam warned him that not speaking directly to me would make matters worse. Saul called and simply announced he would not be at the wedding, again offering no explanation. I told Saul he was hurting me and my child, that this was unforgivable from a father and grandfather. When he pleaded innocence, I said, “Damn your soul,” which was about the worst thing I could say to a man I knew to be preoccupied with its long-term fate.

A few days later Saul called back and laid the responsibility on his doctor, who forbade travel. But in his belated medical excuse, I recognized a familiar pattern of hiding behind someone else when he had done something hurtful. Adam tried to intercede, but by then Saul had his back up and refused to discuss it. Both brothers offered to go to Boston to help Saul, Janis, and Rosie come to New York. Adam even called Will, Saul’s assistant, asking if there was any constructive way for him to intervene. Will said no, confirming my impression that Saul had dug in his heels and would not budge.

Saul’s absence cast a shadow over an otherwise joyous day
for Juliet. But when there was not even a phone call to the bride and groom wishing them well, I knew that Saul was angry at being challenged by all three sons. Three weeks later, Saul traveled to Cincinnati, assisted by Dan, to see his sister Jane, and at Christmas he went to Toronto with Janis and Rosie. Clearly he was able to travel. I concluded he did not attend because, surrounded by those who knew him well, he could not hide memory losses and did not want to be embarrassed in public. Tragically, he had begun to ask after his brothers, only to be pained by the news of their deaths once again. Several times Saul decided to call his old friend Sam Freifeld, whose ex-wife had to repeat the news that Sam had passed away. My father grieved anew and complained that he hadn’t been informed that his old friend had died, when of course he had.

But Saul did not level with me, or with Juliet, about why he did not attend, though it is likely that he was unable to face his own deterioration. After the wedding. I did not speak with Saul for eighteen months. I did not wish to see him, talk to him, or hear about him. My anger was so great and my suspicions were so high after he went to Cincinnati that I occasionally wondered if not coming to my daughter’s wedding was his way of getting even for my absence from celebratory events in his honor. After some months, Saul asked Adam why he had not heard from me. My brother answered that it was because he had not attended Juliet’s wedding. Saul began to repeat his medical rationale, but Adam said that he was just answering his question and did not want to discuss Saul’s reasons.

Two letters I wrote during that 2003 rupture that were never answered convey the depth of my anger and despair, but they
also reveal my awareness of the chronic sad state of affairs between us that had existed for decades.

(January 2003)

Dear Pop,

Your inability to move beyond your own needs, no matter what the obstacles to attending Juliet’s wedding, has rent the fragile fabric that holds this family together.

The damage is to my family feeling and thus takes the form of my loss of interest in your welfare and in softening the burdens of your old age. I find within myself no desire for contact—to visit, to speak to you, or to hear family reports.