Quotations from Saul Bellow’s novels are taken from the Library of America editions, Novels 1944–1953, Novels 1956–1964, and Novels 1970–1982, edited by James Wood, and from Ravelstein (New York: Viking, 2000).
The following abbreviations are used throughout the notes that follow.
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
| Letters | Benjamin Taylor, ed., Saul Bellow: Letters, (New York: Viking, 2010) |
| Life of SB | Zachary Leader, The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) |
| There Is Simply | Saul Bellow, There Is Simply Too Much to Think About (New York: Viking, 2015) |
INTRODUCTION
11 “He was going to take on”: Alfred Kazin, New York Jew (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978).
12 “Instantly we know”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar (1837).
13 In Bellow’s descriptions: James Wood in The Irresponsible Self (New York: Picador, 2004).
15 “expansive, toothy smile”: Joseph Epstein, “Another Rare Visit with Noah Danzig,” Commentary (October 1990).
16 “He brought Harold back”: Interview with Joan Ullman.
17 “self-alienation, historical dislocation”: Jonathan Liu, review of Joshua Cohen’s Witz in Barnes and Noble Review (June 3, 2010).
18 “to memorize most of Genesis”: SB, “A Jewish Writer in America” (2011), in There is Simply.
19 “I would call the attitudes”: SB, introduction to Great Jewish Short Stories (New York: Dell, 1963), reprinted in There Is Simply.
19 Fiedler issued a call to arms: Leslie Fiedler, “What Can We Do About Fagin?” Commentary (May 1949) and “The Jewish Writer and the English Literary Tradition: A Symposium (Parts I and II),” Commentary (September and October, 1949).
19 “prayer shawls and phylacteries”: SB, introduction, Great Jewish Short Stories.
20 “The real secret”: Ibid.
20 “ ‘I have suffered’ ”: Susan Cheever, Note Found in a Bottle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999).
20 “Things around Saul”: Interview with Leon Wieseltier.
21 “I don’t consider myself”: SB to Leslie Fiedler, June 14, 1955, in Letters.
21 “A cold coming”: SB to Anne Sexton, n.d., in Letters.
22 “once told me that”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
22 “The individual in American fiction”: SB, “Some Notes on Recent American Fiction” (1963), in There Is Simply.
27 “He reminded many people”: Edward Rothstein, “Saul Bellow, Saul Bellow, Let Down Your Hair,” New York Times (April 9, 2005).
28 “At a most susceptible time”: SB interview with Chirantan Kulshrestha (1972), in Conversations with Saul Bellow, ed. Gloria L. Cronin and Ben Siegel (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 1994).
28 “I went across the street”: SB interview with Norman Manea, in Manea, Saul Bellow: Settling My Accounts Before I Go Away (Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 2013).
29 “in a state of high excitement”: Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984).
29 Az Got git pleytzes: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpl Tam un andere Dertseylungen (New York: CYCO, 1963).
29 “Shoulders are from God”: “Gimpel the Fool,” Partisan Review (May 1953).
30 “Sometimes he twinkles”: SB, “The Swamp of Prosperity” (1959), in There Is Simply.
30 “charm was like a moat”: Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979).
31 “I loved the depiction”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
31 “essay after essay”: SB, “The Nobel Lecture” (1976), in There Is Simply.
CHAPTER 1: MORRIE BELLOWS
37 “My father, spongy soul”: SB to Oscar Tarcov, 1937, Tarcov Family Collection, box 1, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
38 “Fuck Morrie”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
38 “He terrified me”: Interview with Daniel Bellow.
39 “ran to the partner’s”: Quoted in Life of SB.
39 “a furious man”: SB to Irving Halperin, n.d., quoted in ibid.
40 “Enough of this crap”: Morrie Bellows, quoted in ibid.
40 “freezes when he’s offended”: SB to Susan Glassman, January 1962, in Letters.
41 “He liked to abuse waiters”: Greg Bellow, quoted in Life of SB.
41 “Who’s this guy Prowst?”: Morrie Bellows’s remark remembered by his daughter, Lynn Rotblatt, quoted in ibid.
42 “He sees none of us”: SB to Dean Borok, June 17, 1980, in Letters.
43 “You never looked this good”: Dean Borok to SB, 1992, quoted in Life of SB.
45 “He overpowered me”: SB interview with Philip Roth (1998–2000), in There Is Simply.
46 “The boldest comedians”: SB, “Wit Irony Fun Games” (2003), in ibid.
47 “He was focused”: Dave Peltz, quoted in Life of SB.
49 “speculative biography”: SB interview with Roth.
49 “wild time . . . stirred to the depths”: SB interview with Maggie Simmons (1979), in Conversations with Saul Bellow, ed. Gloria L. Cronin and Ben Siegel (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 1994).
49 “In American literature”: Irving Howe, “Strangers,” Yale Review (June 1977).
50 “the ‘good’ writing”: SB, “Dreiser and the Triumph of Art,” in There Is Simply.
51 “Augie reminds us”: Norman Podhoretz, review of The Adventures of Augie March, Commentary (October 1953).
51 “American Jewish style”: Howe, “Strangers.”
57 “You seem to have accepted”: SB to Philip Roth, January 7, 1984, in Letters.
57 a girl really named Fenchel: Raysh Weiss, personal communication.
60 “It’s Saul’s gift”: Lionel Trilling to Pascal Covici, 1953, quoted in James Atlas, Bellow (New York: Random House, 2000).
60 “I made many mistakes”: SB to Bernard Malamud, n.d., in Letters.
61 “disappointment with its human material”: SB, “The Sealed Treasure” (1960), in There Is Simply.
61 “The book made a hit”: Quoted in Atlas, Bellow. Leader gives a slightly different version of the letter (Atlas has corrected Abraham’s spelling).
61 “It’s just like my father”: SB to Sam Freifeld, October 19, 1953, in Letters.
62 “A few years ago”: SB to Sam Freifeld, November 30, 1953, in ibid.
CHAPTER 2: RALPH ELLISON
65 “You know I carry a knife”: Quoted in Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).
66 “Vos voln zey fun mir?”: Personal communication from Max Apple.
68 “It all began”: Ralph Ellison, introduction to the thirtieth-anniversary edition of Invisible Man, in John Callahan, ed., Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (New York: Random House, 1995).
69 “bent upon finding his way”: Ibid.
71 “being my animal self”: Norman Manea, Saul Bellow: Settling My Accounts Before I Go Away (Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 2013).
73 “a superb book”: SB, “Man Underground: On Ralph Ellison” (1952), in There Is Simply.
73 “having once a week sessions”: Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, Trading Twelves (New York: Modern Library, 2000).
74 “the first real novel”: Quoted in Rampersad, Ralph Ellison.
76 “the epitome of Negro”: Rampersad, Ralph Ellison.
77 “You cannot have an American experience”: Ralph Ellison, “Alain Locke” (1974), in Collected Essays.
77 “All us old-fashioned”: Ralph Ellison, “Indivisible Man” (1970), in Collected Essays.
77 “a black Jew”: Quoted in ibid. (the 1969 panel discussion occurred at Brown University).
78 “The World and the Jug” can be found in Ellison’s Collected Essays; Howe’s “Black Boys and Native Sons” is in his A World More Attractive (New York: Horizon, 1963).
79 “and my husband would sit”: Quoted in Rampersad, Ralph Ellison.
79 “beautiful”: SB to Ruth Miller, July 27, 1955, in Letters.
82 “I could have gone out with Philip”: Quoted in James Atlas, Bellow (New York: Random House, 2000).
83 “know which parts”: SB to Ralph Ellison, n.d., in Letters.
83 “emptying his lungs”: Quoted in Atlas, Bellow.
83 “I have yet to see”: SB letter to Pascal Covici, n.d., in Letters.
83 “We’ve bought ourselves”: SB to Ralph Ellison, 1956, in Letters.
84 “Bellowview”: Quoted in Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow’s Heart (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
84 “Look at my tomatoes”: Rosette Lamont, “Bellow Observed: A Serial Portrait,” Saul Bellow Journal (Summer 1985; originally published in Mosaic, 1974).
85 “pays de merveilles”: SB to Theodore Weiss, n.d., in Letters.
85 “wear beards”: Quoted in Rampersad, Ralph Ellison.
85 “Kiss me”: Quoted in ibid.
85 “What’s a jungle bunny”: Quoted in ibid.
85 “Gore, I just don’t understand”: Interview with Daniel Bellow.
86 “I get a few hundred”: SB to Ellison, n.d., in Letters.
86 “like a nineteenth century”: Ellison, Trading Twelves.
86 “As writers are natural”: SB, preface to Ellison, Collected Essays.
86 “a writer’s block”: Quoted in Rampersad, Ralph Ellison.
87 “encouraged Ralph”: Quoted in ibid.
87 “powers of organization”: Quoted in ibid.
87 “Ralph had the bearing”: SB, preface to Ellison, Collected Essays.
88 “Ralph wouldn’t let them give”: Quoted in Rampersad, Ralph Ellison.
89 “the Negro stereotype”: Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity” (1953), in Collected Essays.
89 “He was always making and breaking families”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
93 “schmaltzed-up”: Philip Roth, interview with Joyce Carol Oates (1974), in Conversations with Philip Roth, ed. George Searles (Oxford: University of Mississippi, 1992).
94 “thrown millions of light years”: SB to Gertrude Buckman, August 2 1956, in Letters.
94 “I think and think about Isaac”: SB to John Berryman, December 1956, in ibid.
CHAPTER 3: ISAAC ROSENFELD AND CHANLER CHAPMAN
95 “Isaac had a round face”: SB, foreword to Isaac Rosenfeld, An Age of Enormity (New York: World, 1962).
97 “the Chicago Dostoevskyans”: Steven Zipperstein, Rosenfeld’s Lives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
97 “emotional hunger incapable of being sated”: Ibid.
98 “I will say to you”: Isaac Rosenfeld to Oscar Tarcov, November 1941, Isaac Rosenfeld Collection, box 1, folder 10, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
98 “simper[ing] self-consciously”: Isaac Rosenfeld, “The Precious Student at the University of Chicago,” The Beacon (1937).
98 “the renaissance of Isaac”: SB to Oscar Tarcov, September 29, 1937, Tarcov Family Collection, box 1, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.
98 “foaming rabbis rub electrical fish”: Quoted in Zipperstein, Rosenfeld’s Lives.
99 “An old Roman article of diet”: Quoted in ibid.
99 “ ‘Yet there lives the dearest freshness’ ”: Isaac Rosenfeld, Journal 1955–1956, Rosenfeld Collection, box 3, folder 4, Regenstein Library.
99 “pagan beauty”: Isaac Rosenfeld to Oscar Tarcov, n.d., Rosenfeld Collection, box 2, folder 1, ibid.
100 “I have been reading Moby-Dick”: Isaac Rosenfeld to Oscar Tarcov, March 28, 1941, Rosenfeld Collection, box 1, folder 10, ibid.
101 “It was still a shame”: David Bazelon, Nothing but a Fine Tooth Comb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970).
101 “Isaac was my friend”: D. J. R. Bruckner, “A Candid Talk with Saul Bellow,” The New York Times Magazine (April 15, 1984).
102 “became a fanatical Reichian”: Ibid.
103 “kosher fry beef”: Rosenfeld, “Adam and Eve on Delancey Street” (1949), in Isaac Rosenfeld, Preserving the Hunger, ed. Mark Shechner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988).
104 “air of yeshiva purity”: Irving Howe quoted in Zipperstein, Rosenfeld’s Lives.
104 “I feel much more alive”: Isaac Rosenfeld to Oscar Tarcov, April 3, 1951, Rosenfeld Collection, box 1, folder 11, Regenstein Library.
104 “I feel 500,000 years older”: Isaac Rosenfeld to Oscar Tarcov, January 10, 1953, Rosenfeld Collection, box 1, folder 11, ibid.
104 “I have attacks of hatefulness”: Rosenfeld notebooks (n.d.), Rosenfeld Collection, box 2, folder 11, ibid.
104 “It’s awful, being alone in Chicago”: Rosenfeld notebooks (1955), Rosenfeld Collection, box 1, folder 11, ibid.
105 “He died in a seedy, furnished room”: SB, “On Isaac Rosenfeld,” Partisan Review (Winter 1956). In this essay Bellow remarked, “The victories he wanted were those of the heart. Ecstasy was what he pursued, and he paid the cost in suffering, a horrible and bloody cost.”
106 “I loved him, but we were rivals”: SB, preface to Rosenfeld, An Age of Enormity.
106 “tired of being envied”: SB to Oscar Tarcov, March 26, 1956, Tarcov Family Collection, box 1, Regenstein Library.
106 “Someday Saul”: Isaac Rosenfeld to Monroe Engel, quoted in Zipperstein, Rosenfeld’s Lives.
106 “It should have been Isaac”: Ibid.
107 “There are times”: SB to Henry Volkening, October 19, 1955, in Letters.
109 “I need it for some of the details”: SB to Samuel Goldberg, n.d., in Letters.
113 “tragic or near-tragic”: Daniel Middleton, “The Chanler Chapman Show,” About Town (Dutchess County, N.Y.) (n.d.).
113 “Politics takes physique”: John Jay Chapman, quoted in Edmund Wilson, “John Jay Chapman” (1937), in The Triple Thinkers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938).
113 “The case was simple”: Ibid.
114 “Who was this outrageous Ahab”: Middleton, “The Chanler Chapman Show.”
114 “a great big school”: Chanler Chapman, The Wrong Attitude (New York: Putnam, 1940).
115 “He seemed to know”: Middleton, “The Chanler Chapman Show.”
115 “I never had a better time”: Quoted in ibid.
115 “The two things I liked”: Chanler Chapman, “Eight Days in a Lifeboat,” Life magazine (September 28, 1942).
116 “Step in and enjoy”: Chanler Chapman, quoted in Middleton, “The Chanler Chapman Show.”
116 “I’m aware that it gets mixed up”: SB to Josephine Herbst, August 15, 1959, in Letters.
116 “Every ability was brought”: SB to Richard Stern, November 3, 1959, in ibid.
CHAPTER 4: SONDRA TSCHACBASOV AND JACK LUDWIG
118 “wallow[ed] with full art”: John Berryman to SB, n.d., quoted in Life of SB.
122 “point-blank if I was sleeping with Saul yet”: Sondra Tschacbasov quoted in ibid.
123 “What a relief from my whirling dervish”: Ibid.
124 “A bulky Winnipeg hockey body”: Keith Botsford quoted in Life of SB.
124 “butcher boy Yiddish”: SB quoted in ibid.
124 “this very round faced”: Sondra Tschacbasov quoted in ibid.
124 “Ludwig was very expansive”: Ibid.
125 “Saul was disapproving”: Ibid.
125 “He wanted to be Saul Bellow”: quoted in Life of SB.
126 “A young girl requires”: SB to John Berryman, n.d., in Letters.
126 “I looked into his eyes”: Sondra Tschacbasov quoted in Life of SB.
126 “Sasha is an absolutist”: SB to Keith Botsford, November 5, 1959, in Letters.
127 “sixteen hours a day”: SB to Pascal Covici, October 2, 1958, in ibid.
127 “Boring subjects delight her”: SB to Ralph Ellison, n.d., in ibid.
127 “She took the kid”: SB to Josephine Herbst, January 31, 1959, in ibid.
127 “Sondra too is much better”: SB to Pascal Covici, February 19, 1959, in ibid.
129 “I sometimes long for Adam”: SB to Jonas Schwartz, October 19, 1960, in ibid.
129 “It was impossible to recognize”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
130 “I have good grounds”: SB to Pascal Covici, November 10, 1959, in Letters.
130 “old Tschacbasov . . . was a repulsive”: SB to Stanley Elkin, July 22, 1992, in ibid.
130 “Anyway she walked into the living room”: SB to Pascal Covici, November 1, 1959, in ibid.
131 pained by Brent’s mistakes: Interview with Jonathan Brent.
133 “The profile is that of a witty”: Rosette Lamont, “Bellow Observed: A Serial Portrait,” Saul Bellow Journal (Summer 1985; originally published in Mosaic, 1974).
134 “wonderful sense of peace”: Rosette Lamont, “The Confessions of Moses Herzog,” Massachusetts Review (Spring–Summer 1965).
134 “If I hadn’t gone off”: SB to Marshall Best, March 16, 1960, in Letters.
135 “I haven’t got the sharpest eyes”: SB to Jack Ludwig. n.d., in ibid.
136 “siege of self-justification”: Jack Ludwig, “The Wayward Reader,” Holiday (February 1965).
136 “ingenious, shrewd, supersubtle”: SB to Alfred Kazin, January 28, 1965, in Letters.
137 “The letters of the heroine”: SB to Sondra Tschacbasov, n.d., in ibid.
137 “I threw one leg up”: Jack Ludwig, Above Ground (New York: Little, Brown, 1968).
139 “The tragedies of my life”: Sondra Tschacbasov quoted in Life of SB.
139 “Saul was hurt”: Quoted in ibid.
140 “the depressed sense”: SB to Susan Glassman, January 23, 1961, in Letters.
141 “He used to work up a sweat”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
141 wonderful: Interview with Maggie Staats Simmons.
141 “I miss you so much”: Maggie Staats to SB, April 5, 1966, in Letters.
142 “Unwillingness, reluctance to recognize”: SB, journals (1966), quoted in James Atlas, Bellow (New York: Random House, 2000).
143 “He kept making and breaking families”: Interview with Adam Bellow.
CHAPTER 5: EDWARD SHILS
145 “chump” and a “sentimentalist”: SB to Philip Roth, January 1, 1998, in Letters.
146 “I love Edward”: SB quoted in James Atlas, Bellow (New York: Random House, 2000).
146 “I refuse to let him use”: Quoted in ibid.
146 “unlanced boil”: Quoted in ibid.
146 “I have no wish”: Quoted in ibid.
149 “How could one have any respect”: Edward Shils, A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2006).
149 “I thought they were rather foolish”: Ibid.
150 “Do you know any intelligent”: SB quoted in Joseph Epstein, “My Friend Edward,” introduction to Edward Shils, Portraits: A Gallery of Intellectuals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
150 “did his homework”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
150 “a pronunciation system”: Epstein, “My Friend Edward.”
150 “Joseph, note those three”: Ibid.
151 “Mr. Fairlie, you wrote some”: Ibid.
152 “he is a man who often laughs”: Ibid.
153 “the emancipation of the individual”: Edward Shils, “Totalitarians and Antinomians,” in Political Passages, ed. John Bunzell (New York: Free Press, 1988).
154 “embracing the black students”: Edward Shils, “The Political University and Academic Freedom,” Minerva (October 1970).
155 Dostoevsky had taught him something: Interview with Stanley Crouch.
155 “the wisest artwork”: John Berryman to his mother, n.d., quoted in Atlas, Bellow.
156 “Sammler isn’t even a novel”: SB to Daniel Fuchs, April 10, 1974, in Letters.
156 “Where that book has intellectual content”: Norman Manea, Saul Bellow: Settling My Accounts Before I Go Away (Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 2013).
159 “You’re a fucking square”: Quoted in Andrew Gordon, “Mr. Sammler’s Planet,” in A Political Companion to Saul Bellow, ed. Gloria L. Cronin and Lee Trepanier (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013).
159 “So I left the platform” . . . “denounced by Salas”: SB to Mark Harris, October 22, 1968, in Letters.
161 “hip, which would return”: Norman Mailer, “The White Negro,” Dissent (Fall 1957).
162 “It is thought that Negroes”: SB, “Man Underground,” Commentary (June 1952), reprinted in There Is Simply.
162 “blacks, according to this view”: Edward Shils, “Learning and Liberalism,” in The Selected Papers of Edward Shils, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
164 “that superior Krautess”: SB to Leon Wieseltier, January 18, 1978, in Letters.
167 “liberals would sooner see”: Shils, “Totalitarians and Antinomians.”
CHAPTER 6: DELMORE SCHWARTZ
169 “The proud and regal”: Lou Reed, The Blue Mask (1982).
170 “Dwight [Macdonald] cheated”: John Berryman, Dream Songs (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
174 “the eye of a Mongol horseman”: Robert Lowell, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” in History (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973).
175 “a development Delmore”: James Atlas, Delmore Schwartz (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
175 “Philip has scruples”: Quoted in ibid.
175 “Just before eating”: Delmore Schwartz, Portrait of Delmore (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986).
175 “curious hop”: William Barrett, The Truants (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1983).
176 “my strange delightful buddy”: SB to Sam Freifeld, April 1954, in Letters.
176 “About Delmore”: SB to James Laughlin, October 22, 1957, in ibid.
182 “I watch her”: Quoted in James Atlas, Bellow (New York: Random House, 2000).
183 “the idea of art”: Manny Farber, “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” (1962), in Farber on Film, ed. Robert Polito (New York: Library of America, 2009).
184 “the continuity, harmony”: Ibid.
185 “in which the hero”: Delmore Schwartz and James Laughlin, Selected Letters, ed. Robert Phillips (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993).
CHAPTER 7: ALEXANDRA IONESCU TULCEA BELLOW
189 “Well, I haven’t read”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
191 “Yup, yup”: Harriet Wasserman, Handsome Is (New York: Fromm, 1997).
191 “They had something”: Dumitru Bagdasar, quoted in Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow, “Asclepios Versus Hades in Romania,” Revista 22 (August 23 and August 31, 2004).
191 “You could have had a penthouse”: Quoted in ibid.
192 “Do you think Hades”: Quoted in ibid.
192 “a princely personality”: Ibid.
194 “A room thirteen floors”: D. J. R. Bruckner, “A Candid Talk with Saul Bellow,” The New York Times Magazine (April 15, 1984). According to Alexandra, she bought both apartments for the couple.
195 “It was loud as can be”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
195 “You cannot believe how oblivious”: Bruckner, “A Candid Talk with Saul Bellow.”
196 “It was magical”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
196 “How was Stockholm?” . . . “Meshuga!”: Quoted in Wasserman, Handsome Is.
196 “I was drunk”: Interview with Daniel Bellow.
197 “very dramatic”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
198 “When the Russians”: SB, To Jerusalem and Back (New York: Viking, 1976).
198 “There’s no doubt”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
CHAPTER 8: ALLAN BLOOM
210 “it seemed plausible”: Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
212 “In the present exhaustion”: Ibid.
212 “are somehow premonitory”: Ibid.
215 “He needed to renew”: Interview with Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea Bellow.
216 “Where a woman’s warmest sympathies”: SB to Maggie Staats, September 16, 1984, in Letters.
216 “He couldn’t squash her”: Interview with Leon Wieseltier.
218 “The Poles’ resistance”: Mircea Eliade, quoted in Norman Manea, The Fifth Impossibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).