Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [142]
“They can wait, Charles. You know I’m sort of impressed by you. You always complain that you’re isolated, then I come to Chicago and find you bang in the middle of things.” He flattered me. He knew how much I liked to be thought a Chicago expert. “Is Cantabile one of the ballplayers at your club?”
“I don’t think Langobardi would let him join. He doesn’t suffer minor hoodlums gladly.”
“Is that what Cantabile is?”
“I don’t know exactly what he is. He carries on like a Mafia Don. He’s some sort of silly-billy. He has a wife who’s getting a PhD.”
“You mean that smashing redhead with the platform shoes?”
“She’s not the one.”
“Wasn’t it grand how he gave that code knock on the door? And the pretty receptionist opened? Notice these glass cases with the pre-Columbian art and the collection of Japanese fans. I tell you, Charles, nobody actually knows this country. This is some country. The leading interpreters of America stink. They do nothing but swap educated formulas about it. You, yes you! Charles, should write about it, describe your life day by day and apply some of your ideas to it.”
“Thaxter, I told you how I took my little girls to see the beavers out in Colorado. All around the lake the Forestry Service posted natural-history placards about the beaver’s life cycle. The beavers didn’t know a damn thing about this. They just went on chewing and swimming and being beavers. But we human beavers are all shook up by descriptions of ourselves. It affects us to hear what we hear. From Kinsey or Masters or Eriksen. We read about identity crisis, alienation, etcetera, and it all affects us.”
“And you don’t want to contribute to the deformation of your fellow man with new inputs?—God, how I loathe the word “input.” But you yourself continually make high-level analyses. What about the piece for The Ark you sent me—I think it’s right here in my attaché case—in which you offer an economic interpretation of personal eccentricities. Let’s see, I’m sure I’ve got it here. You argue that there may be a connection at this particular stage of capitalism between the shrinking of investment opportunities and the quest for new roles or personality investments. You even quoted Schumpeter, Charlie. Yes, here it is: ‘These dramas may appear purely internal but they are perhaps economically determined . . . when people think they are being so subtly inventive or creative they merely reflect society’s general need for economic growth.’ “
“Put away that paper,” I said. “For God’s sake, don’t quote my big ideas at me. If there’s one thing I can’t take today, it’s that.”
It was really very easy for me to generate great thoughts of this sort. Instead of regretting this glib weakness with me, Thaxter envied it. He longed to be a member of the intelligentsia, to stand in the pantheon and to make a Major Statement like Albert Schweitzer or Arthur Koestler or Sartre or Wittgenstein. He didn’t see why I distrusted this. I was too grand; too snobbish, even, he said, sharply resentful. But there it was, I simply did not wish to be a leader of the world intelligentsia. Humboldt had pursued it with all his might. He believed in victorious analysis, he preferred “ideas” to poetry, he was prepared to give up the universe itself for the subworld of higher cultural values.
“Anyway,” said Thaxter, “you should go around Chicago like Restif de la Bretonne in the streets of Paris and write a chronicle. It would be sensational.”
“Thaxter, I want to talk to you about The Ark. You and I were going to give a new impulse to the mental life of the country and outdo the American Mercury and The Dial, or the Revista de Occidente, and so on. We discussed and planned it for years. I’ve spent a pot of money on it. I’ve paid all the bills for two and a half years. Now where is The Ark? I think you’re a great editor, a born editor, and I believe in you. We announced our magazine and people sent in material. We’ve been sitting on their manuscripts