Him with His Heart and Temper in His Pen

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Just as Herzog was overcome by the need explain, to have it out, to justify, to put in perspective, to clarify, to make amends, so, too, did his creator, Saul Bellow, share this need. Not only did Bellow write in every genre, but he also wrote innumerable, often belated apologetic letters. Unlike Herzog, who keep sane in an insane world wrote without sending to scholars long dead and alive, Bellow did write and send his more than 780 letters to those alive, his close childhood Humboldt neighborhood friends, fellow writers, four ex-wives, three sons, current and former lovers, students, publishers, agents, critics, and readers. In his letters written from age seventeen to eighty-eight, he kept up warm, steady correspondence, in particular, with Isaac Rosenfeld, Louis Sidran, and Mark Harris, all Trotskyites, intellectuals, former members of their Tuley High School debating club. Bellow later wrote on and off to fellow writers Alfred Kazin, Philip Roth, John Cheever, Bernard Malamud, Martin Amis, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, Delmore Schwartz, Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, Karl Shapiro, and John Berryman, all with whom he shared a colony of spirit, offering encouragement, experienced advice, and criticism. To John Berryman, he wrote, Your poems extended my life. To Philip Roth, he wrote, The exchange of letters did me lot of good. Of course, the so-called fabricators will be grinding their knives. They (meaning critics), have none ofthat ingenious, possibly childish love of literature you and I have. There aren't many people in the