new Nadelman review

Consider Philadelphia in the 1980s in a new review of Eugene Nadelman by Michael Weingrad.

great days for literature

The novel is in the mail.

highly individual ghosts

"I don't do very much. Every once in a while I put Henderson [the Rain King] on me like a plumber's level. The bubble is usually in the wrong place, so I sigh and knock off for the day. But Sondra is a beautiful mother-to-be, and Greg gave me much pleasure last month, so my life is far from barren. Too many awful distractions, however, big gloomy houses, money, alimony problems, friends low in spirits, and ghosts, large numbers of highly individual ghosts."

~~ Saul Bellow to John Berryman, December 6, 1956

a little more?

"But I wonder whether I could get into Minnesota for the summer sessions with a creative writing course. For one term, two years ago, they paid me something like eight hundred. Do you think, now that I'm older, they'd give me a little more?"

~~ Saul Bellow to Herbert McCloskey, 1951

Eighty if I must.

"Anyway, it looks as though we'll be coming to New York to live. I don't know what rents are now, but I wouldn't like to pay much more than sixty or seventy. Eighty if I must. As for the size of the flat, that depend on the section we move into. In a neighborhood where I could find a room to write in, we wouldn't need six rooms. Four to six, let's say then. The bigger the better."

~~ Saul Bellow to Monroe Engel, April 30, 1950

Them as has, gets.

"We have a little money and I have applied for a Guggenheim, but I have been so often rejected by Guggenheim I have no right to look for anything but still another no. Isaac [Rosenfeld]'s is really the first case I know of a needy writer and a deserving one getting the prize. Ordinarily it goes to people who have enough of a reputation to have acquired money by means of it. Them as has, gets. The executors of a vast estate could never find it in their hearts to be disloyal to that grand principle."

~~ Saul Bellow to Melvin Tumin, 1948