Leon Wieseltier on Saul Bellow

While I'm at it with the New York Times Book Review, check out this elegant portrait of Saul Bellow in Wieseltier's review of Bellow's recently reviewed book of letters.

One marvels for many reasons at the man who wrote these letters, but for no reason more than that he was a free man. I do not refer merely to his rebelliousness and his restlessness, to his “jail-breaking spirit.” He is beset by cares and obligations; his friends die and die and die; he makes a slop (until, in 1989, he marries Janis Freedman) of his private life; but nothing ever robs him of the free and unfettered use of his powers. “A language is a spiritual mansion from which no one can evict us,” and in that palace Bellow was sovereign.

In it is also contained a favorite Bellow quote: To fall into despair is just a high-class way of turning into a dope.