Auggie and others

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several solitaries of the highest genius

"'That's just it. There never was such a literary world,' I said. 'In the nineteenth century there were several solitaries of the highest genius—a Melville or a Poe had no literary life. It was the customhouse and the barroom for them. In Russia, Lenin and Stalin destroyed the literary world. Russia's situation now resembles ours—poets, in spite of everything against them, emerge from nowhere. Where did Whitman come from, and where did he get what he had? It was W. Whitman, an irrepressible individual, that had it and that did it.'"

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

life, Charlie, not literature

"Twenty years ago in the hands of the law, he had wrestled with the cops. They had forced him into a straight jacket. He had had diarrhea in the police wagon as they rushed him to Bellevue. They were trying to cope, to do something with a poet. What did the New York police know about poets! They knew drunks and muggers, they knew rapists, they knew women in labor and hopheads, but they were at sea with poets. Then he had called me from a phone booth in the hospital. And I had answered from the hot grimy flaking dressing room a the Belasco. And he had yelled, 'This is life, Charlie, not literature!' . . . [W]hen Humboldt cried, 'Life!' . . . [h]e only meant realistic, naturalistic life. As if art hid the truth and only the sufferings of the mad revealed it."

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

steak and vodka

"Tolsto[y] thought that people got into trouble because they ate steak and drank vodka and coffee and smoked cigars. Overcharged with calories and stimulants and doing no useful labor they fell into carnality and sins. At this point I always remembered that Hitler had been a vegetarian, so it wasn't necessarily the meat that was to blame."

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

ex-friends

"He had no old friends, only ex-friends. He could become terrible, going into reverse without warning. When this happened, it was like being caught in a tunnel by the Express. You could only cling to the walls, or lie between the rails, praying."

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

poetry and proles

"It's been a whole day of atonement."

"You've seen enough of the whatchamacallems? I learned some new words at the poker game from you."

"Which words?"

"Proles," he said, "Lumps. Lumpenproletariat. You gave us a little talk about Karl Marx."

"My lord, I did carry on, didn't I. Completely unbuttoned. What got into me?"

"You wanted to mix with riffraff and the criminal element. You went slumming, Charlie, and you had a great time playing cards with us dumbheads and social rejects."

"I see. I was insulting."

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow