Cartas e Recordações

by Saul Bellow, Salvato Telles de Menezes (Translator)

Saul Bellow escreveu, ao longo de toda a sua longa vida, cartas maravilhosamente perspicazes, impiedosas, ternurentas, ferozes, hilariantes e sábias. Entre as melhores estão algumas das que mandou aos seus companheiros de escrita - William Faulkner, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, entre outros. Esta é, na verdade, a autobiografia que Bellow nunca escreveu - que mostra as influências no trabalho de um homem e ilumina o seu duradouro legado: os romances e as histórias que lhe granjearam o Nobel e a admiração de leitores de todo o Mundo.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Autobiography, Writing, Criticism, Literary Fiction, History

404 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2010

About the author

Novels of Saul Bellow, Canadian-American writer, include Dangling Man in 1944 and Humboldt's Gift in 1975 and often concern an alienated individual within an indifferent society; he won the Nobel Prize of 1976 for literature.

People widely regard one most important Saul Bellow of the 20th century. Known for his rich prose, intellectual depth, and incisive character studies, Bellow explored themes of identity and the complexities of modern life with a distinct voice that fused philosophical insight and streetwise humor. Herzog , The Adventures of Augie March , and Mister Sammler’s Planet , his major works, earned critical acclaim and a lasting legacy.

Born in Lachine, Quebec, to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Saul Bellow at a young age moved with his family to Chicago, a city that shaped much worldview and a frequent backdrop in his fiction. He studied anthropology at the University of Chicago and later Northwestern, and his intellectual interests deeply informed him. Bellow briefly pursued graduate studies in anthropology, quickly turned, and first published.

Breakthrough of Saul Bellow came with The Adventures of Augie March , a sprawling, exuberance that in 1953 marked the national book award and a new direction in fiction. With energetic language and episodic structure, it introduced readers to a new kind of unapologetically intellectual yet deeply grounded hero in the realities of urban life. Over the following decades, Bellow produced a series of acclaimed that further cemented his reputation. In Herzog , considered his masterpiece in 1964, a psychological portrait of inner turmoil of a troubled academic unfolds through a series of unsent letters, while a semi-autobiographical reflection on art and fame gained the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1976, people awarded human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture of Saul Bellow. He only thrice gained the national book award for fiction and also received the medal of arts and the lifetime achievement of the library of Congress.

Beyond fiction, Saul Bellow, a passionate essayist, taught. He held academic positions at institutions, such as the University of Minnesota, Princeton, and Boston University, and people knew his sharp intellect and lively classroom presence. Despite his stature, Bellow cared about ordinary people and infused his work with humor, moral reflection, and a deep appreciation of contradictions of life.

People can see influence of Saul Bellow in the work of countless followers. His uniquely and universally resonant voice ably combined the comic, the profound, the intellectual, and the visceral. He continued into his later years to publish his final Ravelstein in 2000.

People continue to read work of Saul Bellow and to celebrate its wisdom, vitality, and fearless examination of humanity in a chaotic world.

Reviews

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this an extra star because I am neither a fan of Bellow, nor a reader of letters, and if you are both, certainly you couldn't go wrong with this. (In fact, if you're either or both, you can assume five stars.)

But even without an initial interest in the subject or form, I found this fairly absorbing. Bellow was a smart, entertaining, and supremely engaged man, and what I found most remarkable was how effected I was as those qualities faded, at the dimming of the light toward the end of this life.

Not being a reader of letters, I was unprepared for how thoroughly this one-sided, elliptical approach to conveying a life puts you right next to the writer, puts you inside him, despite the fact that he seemed so often to be aware that literary history was reading over his shoulder. It's a very personal experience, and unlike an epistolary novel, he's not making any effort to make sure you have all the facts. What you get are his feelings and thoughts about everything, and it's almost as if the physical man--the shell, the envelope--has been taken away and all that's left is what Bellow would have thought of as some yiddish word meaning "soul".

It was interesting to watch what age and success did to him toward the middle of his life, how he became somebody with an unconscious investment in the establishment, in property and respect, while still thinking of himself as being an outsider and shaker-up of things.

And then, of course, comes age, which not unexpectedly is horrible and sad. Despite the fact that he produced a last novel in, I think, his eighties, as well as a daughter at 84, his mind turned more and more inward, to the past, to memories, to his own childhood. (At least as represented here; he might have been living a full intellectual life that went unrecorded, but I read about the man who was drawn by his letters.)

All the feuds among the mid-century intellectuals, who reviewed whom badly, who didn't deserve which award, while it all seemed at first petty, it's all ultimately revealed as vital, the product of people bumping up against each other and vigorously disagreeing. Then, after a time, it becomes about who fell down and did or didn't break a hip.

I'm still not a fan, of Bellow or letters, but reading his letters forced me to get to know him in a way I haven't experienced in biography or even really fiction; it was more like some science fiction empathy device, where experience and emotion is downloaded directly into your mind, as bits and pieces of a life flash by, too fast, leaving you in tears at the end, when you emerge and remember that it was somebody else's life, not yours.

[Pedro Alhinho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Das cartas escritas por Saul Bellow ao longo de décadas resulta uma espécie de autobiografia do escritor, com enfoque na produção literária e nos amores e desamores. Aguda crítica de homens e costumes.
Como em,
"Não é preciso muito tempo para tudo ser esquecido. A taxa de escândalos, como tudo o resto tem subido."
Ou em,
"Há historiadores de arte que explicam que há duzentos anos as pessoas aceitavam retratos desfavoraveis: verrugas, lábios leporinos, lanças, rugas e tudo o resto. Vê o que Goya fez aos Bourbon espanhóis. Não parece que se tenham importado, mas os nossos muito menos nobres contemporâneos querem aparecer sem defeitos. É um dos paradoxos da democracia."
Noutro plano, da recomendação de jovens autores que merecem ser apoiados, entre muitos que nao passaram à história, encontrámos em 1967, 53 anos antes do Nobel, uma cintilante afirmação da qualidade de Louise Gluck.

[Fred R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have either allowed him too much say-so over my thoughts, or too little. I would like to have done with him, having taken his measure according to my own poor mind, diagnosed strengths and weaknesses, but without him I am not sure I will maintain my faith.

The letters are gorgeous, of course, although the media surrounding their publication has made it quite clear to me that he will not be remembered. He was, unfortunately for him, unsuited to writing novels at a time when novels were exactly what a serious man must write. That said, nobody wrote better.

Evelyn Waugh once wrote:
"Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice - all the odious qualities - which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in so doing he enriches the world more than the generous and good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. That is the paradox of artistic achievement."

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humane, thoughtful, streetwise (hate that word but here it fits), curious, sincere, decent, honest and witty.

He'd have been a great guy to have had as a neighbor. Of how many great authors could this be said?

[Kate Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very interesting to read right after finishing his early novel, The Victim. He describes the process of trying to get the book into bookstores, which proves difficult. This was a time long before his reputation was so renowned, and there is something very touching about the vulnerability and uncertainty he shares with his friends in so many letters. There are stacks and stacks of letters to his friends. They are emotionally generous, honest, and often very funny. So much energy and love comes through in his writing. I thought it was really interesting to read these letters he wrote to friends where he discusses his reviews, kind of wrestles with them, he defends himself, because if he doesn't, who will? He has to have a huge ego to succeed. And he is blessed with a strong personality, and endowed with a tremendous heart. I loved reading his open declarations of love and affection for so many of his friends, especially male friends, which I found quite moving in places. I only read the first section of this massive trove of correspondence. This will be something I read in many pieces over time.

[Alex Kudera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prominent names that appear either as recipient or subject of letter(s): James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Joseph Epstein, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allan Bloom, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, William Kennedy, Leslie Fiedler, Stanley Elkin . . . and many more.

[James Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The attraction of literary letters is what's passed between writers. They're mines of information about individual craft and a writer's works. Saul Bellow wrote relatively few such letters. Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Martin Amis are among the handful of fellow authors Bellow wrote, meaning that by far most of these letters are to friends, family, and other acquaintances who don't share a literary life with him. That's the main reason this book is less compelling than I'd expected. Some of the letters to acquaintances who aren't writers are interesting in their own right. And some are less so. Compounding that, those nonliterary letters suffer from a lack of adequate notes on who the recipients are and the circumstances of the relationship with Bellow. Love letters, however, are always interesting. There are a few of those.

[Harold Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Herzog and Augie, I was really looking forward to this volume and made it my one and only request last Christmas. So far I'm disappointed. I've found some of the letters moderately interesting, but hardly luminous. Maybe I'm just not an academic, maybe I'm not big on the lives of authors, maybe it's just a matter of not being close enough to, or distant enough from, Bellow's time and culture. Suffice it to say that
I like the author less after what I've read, and have had a hard time
pushing on.

I'll keep on nibbling at the letters, and will keep an open mind, in hopes that I've been having a bad phase and that saturation in the letters will enlighten me. Still, based on other reviews I expected engrossing correspondence to die for, not correspondence that would force me to stifle yawns.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful. A much more complex picture of the man than we have gotten from anecdotes and even biographies. Every page offers the same vibrancy and delight to be found in Bellow's fiction. My one quibble is that I would have liked more than the fairly meager amount of annotation. Sometimes people aren't identified or events referred to aren't explained. I took James Atlas's biography out of the library to read alongside. That helped with some IDs, but Atlas manages to see every act of Bellow's in the worst possible light, which led to a sour feeling. I wanted to keep soaring with the letters. Benjamin Taylor, the editor, has done a wise and loving culling.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these letters in small sips and after nearly two years have finally come to the bottom of the cup. His genius is as evident in his letters as in his novels and his wonderful--sometimes hateful--arrogance shines throughout. I revere his honesty (though it can sting hard) and he pulls no punches, God bless him. I wish there was more.

[Joseph Durham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saul Bellow Letters is enchanting and illuminating. I choose to experience Bellow the man before reading his novels. It was a good choice. As you read his correspondence, you see how deeply and passionately that writing was his art. By reading these letters you learn that one should read an author’s work as it is, simply experience it, nothing else. I was surprised how seldom current events appeared or intervened in his letters. Again an expression of the focus on his craft. It is also noteworthy that Bellow read other people’s works continually as well. Literature was his life from beginning to end.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

great!!

[Myles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic way to kill off all your characters? Outlive them.

[Blog on Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite his Canadian origins (and Russian heritage), Saul Bellow was widely viewed as one of the leading voices on the American condition. His novels were among the top of his generation as well as the stuff of many awards including the Nobel Prize in literature. “Letters,” painstakingly assembled by Benjamin Taylor and spanning seventy years of documents, covers the long life and times of the prolific writer and clearly serves as the autobiography Bellow never wrote.
In it, there resides a remarkable treasure trove of history, relationships with family, lovers and friends, and most distinguishing, the author’s relentless interactions with his fellow writers – everyone from Faulkner and Cheever to the (then) younger generation of Philip Roth and Martin Amis. The letters, many of which were written far from his Chicago base, as Bellow was constantly moving from city to city, lecturing and teaching in addition to writing, cover a wide range of emotions, reflections and in-the-moment demeanor. (Taylor tapped hundreds of sources, from the deceased author’s descendants – sometimes for a single letter – to various collections and was even the beneficiary of a public call by the New York Review of Books.)
Bellow’s mood swings from wistful joy to grinding angst to philosophical ennui in ways that seem at times mercurial yet always filled with detailed yet oft-times interpretative reflections on the events of his day. Beyond his relationship with the literati, “Letters” bares witness to Bellow’s growing involvement in a broader society as he intermingles with politicians to Hollywood movers and shakers, still seemingly finding the time to recount every detail through these traveling missives. In one revealing glimpse, this self-described “scrapper” reflects on his task, exclaiming how hard he has to work “just to keep the record straight.”
Even his relationship to the letters themselves changes and evolves over the decades. Late in life, he writes to Stanley Elkin, “I lost the habit of writing long personal letters – a sad fact I only now begin to understand. It wasn’t that I ran out of friendships altogether. But habits changed. No more romantic outpourings.” Later, recounting an encounter with Issac Rosenfeld he says the writer told him, “‘I threw away all your letters.’ And he made it clear he meant to shock me, implying that I would feel this to be a great loss of literary history. I felt nothing of the sort,” says Bellow. “I was rid of future embarrassment.”
Hardly. Bellow’s manuscripts, photographs, ephemera and more are archived at the University of Chicago. The ambitions and hard working nature of his life are chronicled for all to explore. “Letters” is the first-hand personal guidepost of a journey through the literary history of the 20th Century. As the chronicle of a far reaching life and with it, the raw emotions, sophisticated writing and abundant personal intimacy, it is the furthest thing from a ‘future embarrassment.’

[Bowdoin]

Reader in group - Over the winter break, on a road trip that took me and my wife from the southern tip of Florida to Chicago, I read Saul Bellow's recently published letters. They were perfect for digesting in bite-sizes on planes, in hotel lobbies, at highway rest stops, and even at breakfast when there were (rare) lulls in conversation. Bellow, of course, is the great American novelist of the second half of the twentieth-century, author of such comic masterpieces as The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, and Herzog. It comes as no surprise that the author of Herzog, a novel in which the cuckolded protagonist writes desperate and hilarious letters to people like Heidegger, Spinoza, and President Eisenhower, is a gifted letter-writer himself. Written to childhood chums, wives (he had five), girlfriends (many more), publishers, agents, and fellow writers (including John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and Martin Amis), the letters span Bellow's entire life, from his early days as a down-and-out aspiring writer to his later years as a Nobel Prize-winning public man. Like his novels, the letters are honest, devastatingly perceptive, and above all funny. After the breakup of one of his marriages, he writes, for example: "The trip to Puerto Rico has had to be called off for psychiatric reasons. Illness in the family. Someone near to me. Myself." What comes through most powerfully in these letters is Bellow's belief in himself as a writer, his dedication to the craft of writing, language, and the imagination, his eternal youthfulness, and his unfailing humanism. As an example of the latter, let me quote one more letter: "I am against falling into despair because of superficial observations . . . Actually, I've never stopped looking for the real thing; and often I find the real thing. To fall into despair is just a high-class way of turning into a dope. I choose to laugh at myself no less than others."

[Stuart]

Saul Bellow was a genius at what he did. I don't think his literary skills were supreme, but his intellect and drive to succeed turned his works of art into world class creations. That most of Bellow's novels are ignored today tells me more about fashion than it does about the quality of his work, which was superb.

In these letters, we get to see Bellow's intellect, passion and will to succeed in full bloom and then, as he ages, in sad decline. These letters provide a fantastic window into the life of a great artist, flaws and all. Unlike most people (and maybe most artists), Bellow writes letters to just about everyone with hardly any emotional filter. It's all there, Bellow's warmth, incisive declarations about the the human condition, and his emotional ugliness.

The tendency is for great artists to be great jerks. It may also be true that the tendency is for all people to be jerks, but I'm not willing to go there. I'll just stick to artists. Saul Bellow was, as these letters indicate, a first class jerk and narcissist. He behaves badly with just about everyone, and makes excuses for his bad behavior time and time again. It's no wonder that Bellow ran through so many wives. It is a bit of a wonder just why many of his friends stuck with him. I'm guessing that Bellow's charm, wit and fame outweighed the slights and insults.

These letters are one of the best views of a writer's life in the twentieth century that you'll find. It's a male-centric view, yes. It's a non-p.c. view as well. But it is full in its emotional and intellectual scope.

[Dan Dubois · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant anthology, very complete, shows a struggling Belllow scrabbling to make ends meet, praising, vilifying, crabbing about colleagues, wives, editors, his father, award committees, exposes his scheming to cobble together enough money to live on in the early years. His account of the writing 'Augie March', his confidence about the novel's possibilities, his scheming to find a publisher and venue and sense of vindication at its success are especially affecting.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epic novel of written correspondence, except the whole thing is true. Letters is a revealing walk through Bellow's long life that offers many insights into the often herculean struggles a writer must go through to realize his art.

[Joana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Only some of us have had the sense to realize that the man we bring forth has no richness compared with the man who really exists, thickened, fed and fattened by all the facts about him, all of his history."

[Nita]

Intrigued courtesy http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/boo...

[Andrea]

recommended by "you must read this!" on NPR Mar 2011

[Velvetink]

ebook [Saul_Bellow]_Saul_Bellow_Letters epub (BookFi.org)

[Ryan McIlvain · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sort of autobiography through letters. Wonderful. Wonderfully frank and vulnerable, cantankerous, witty, hurtful, loving—all of life is here, and in such choice words.

[Kunal Jalali · Rating 5 out of 5]

At once discerning and occasionally revealing the other shades of this mercurial author. As a reader, we tend to see the more humane face of Moses Herzog.

[Tyrone Swanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

We used to write letters!

[Gringoire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading into the mind of a controversial, wonderful author. Many links to other literary ventures. Worth reading.

[Tim Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like somebody who took holy orders about forty years before young Nietzsche showed that God was dead.

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful material! Leads us back to the novels and stories.

[David Elizardi]

I gave to Mike Christmas 2010