“A novel, like a letter, should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of mortality and decay.”
With the above words, American writer and three-time National Book Award winner Saul Bellow introduces the intriguing connection between correspondence and literature. Letters between authors, as featured in a recent edition of the The New Yorker, take this correlation to a deeper level, showing us how authors write when they aren’t composing a piece of literary genius.
It’s like seeing your third-grade teacher outside of school ““ shocking to discover that they also have regular lives, no matter what influential novel they wrote (or in the case of a third-grade teacher, how strict they are about spelling tests).
Below, for a change, I’ve included excerpts from various authors’ correspondences. Beyond satisfying a pure curiosity about famous writers’ personal lives, perhaps their non-literary writing may also show us something about why or how they write literature.
From: “The Letters of Sylvia Beach”
Dear Hemingway,
Joyce would telephone to you if you had one. He asked me to ask you and Pauline to go to their house this evening at about nine. He hopes you will excuse the invitation coming at the last minute, but the party is quite impromptu, They only just now decided to have you. He hopes you are free.
Yours hastily
Sylvia
(Please excuse the scrawl)
From: The New Yorker
Dear Philip Roth:
Manuscripts around here shift and wander in huge piles, like the dunes. Yours turned up today, and I apologize to you for my disorder. It hurts me more. … My reaction to your story (“Expect the Vandals”) was on the positive side of the scale, strongly. … A great idea, but palpably Idea. I have a thing about Ideas in stories. Camus’s “The Plague” was an IDEA. Good or bad? Not so hot, in my opinion. With you the Idea gains ground fast, easily. It conquers. What of Moe?
Look, try Henry Volkening at 522 Fifth Ave. My agent. A very good one, too. Best of luck. And forgive my having the mss. so long. I should have read it at once. But I don’t live right.
Yrs,
Saul Bellow
From: “Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters 1917 – 1961″
To Maxwell Perkins:
Dear Max:
Enclosed is the story (“Wine of Wyoming”). I think you’ll like it. It is nearly 6000 words long. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not a good story or has too much French in it. Everybody that reads Scribners (Magazine) knows some French or knows somebody that knows some French. The French is necessary in this. I’ve never given you anything that wasn’t good have I? This is a 1st flight story I promise you.
Yours always
Ernest
From: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”
To: Maria Chekhova
I am in Florence and have exhausted myself running through museums and churches. I saw the Medici Venus and find that if she were dressed in modern clothing she would look ugly, especially around the waist. I am well. The sky is overcast, and Italy without sunshine is like a person in a mask. Keep well.
Your
Antonio
Each of these letters is a reminder of the important distinction between artists and their works. Yes, certain individuals had an incredible gift for putting together words, but they also had spouses, brothers, unruly sons and often, depressive tendencies. At the same time, there is no mistaking the letter of a writer from that of a politician, a movie star or a famous athlete. The way literary minds approach their everyday life can be, well, literary.
“The Written Word” runs every other Thursday. E-mail Bastien at jbastien@media.ucla.edu.