Like most journalists, I’m a strict-constructionist when it comes to the First Amendment and detest censorship in any form. Like other bloggers, however, I face a dilemma when readers send stupid, mistaken, poorly written or hateful comments. The anonymity of the virtual realm invites cowardly, egocentric outbursts. Usually I post them, not out of respect for the writer and his thoughts but as an object lesson for more civilized readers. Such writers possess a certain anthropological interest, and it’s useful to learn more about them. A comment arrived last week about a post I had written in January devoted to the Library of America and its inclusion of a second volume of Saul Bellow’s work. I posted it, but with some uneasiness:
“Saul Bellow is the most overrated writer in the history of letters. Plus, he obviously hated black people. Other than that, I'm sure he's a great guy.”
Comment is pointless, except to say that the second sentence would have come as news to Ralph Ellison. Stanley Crouch, too, would be surprised. I dredge this up only because similar accusations, in a more public forum, have erupted in Bellow’s literary turf, Chicago. The novelist Richard Stern, a friend of Bellow’s and a Chicagoan who has often set his work in that city, proposed that some institution, perhaps a school or street, be named after Bellow, who died in 2005. He followed protocol and made the suggestion to his alderman, who declined because she had heard Bellow was a racist. Thanks to Dave Lull, here’s a story about the controversy in the Chicago Tribune, and Stern’s letter to his local paper, the Hyde Park Herald, in which he musters more tact and diplomacy than I possess.
We don’t expect politicians to be intelligent or well read. We do expect them to stand up for their constituencies. To honor Bellow, a Nobel Laureate and our greatest fiction writer after Faulkner, is to express pride in Chicago and Bellow’s devotion to the city. I suspect the alderman’s knowledge of Bellow hardly extends beyond his misunderstood comment to the New York Times in 1988, in the context of defending his friend Allan Bloom:
“Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read them.”
Bellow committed the sin of honesty and spoke out against the tidal wave of so-called “multiculturalism.” Not all cultures are equal in their contributions to world culture. Tolstoy is a rarity in Russia, as is Proust in France. Genius is always rare, and all humans share in its glory. In the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Christopher Hitchens writes of Bellow and the Zulu remark that it “seemed to many people to contradict the generosity of what he had offered about Africa in Henderson [the Rain King], and evidently must have struck Bellow himself in the same light, since six years later he wrote a much-less-noticed essay in praise of the novel of Zululand Chaka, by Thomas Mofolo. Life and politics might have had souring results, and so might personal experience, but to the end, he put his money on the life-affirming and on the will to live (as Henderson’s understanding of the benediction grun-tu-molani loosely translates), and he could never quite abandon his faith in that crucial eligibility to be noble.”
Bellow remains among the pinnacles of American culture, up there with Whitman and Twain. His worth is immune to shifts in political orthodoxies. So long as his books remain on the shelves of Chicago’s libraries, the absence of his name on a street sign is an inconsequential snub, one he would have laughed at.
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7 comments:
Chicago doesn't deserve to be honored by an association with Saul Bellow. American cities are filled with illiterates and have no business even speaking about such men as Bellow.
Hello Patrick,
An honest and dignified defense of Saul Bellow's supposedly racist quote.
I really don't have the faintest idea if Bellow was a racist. But I can say with the utmost conviction that there are some incredible literary works to have come out of the African and Asian continents. (Have never heard of anything specifically from Papau new Guinea...)
Perhaps Bellow wasn't familiar with authors such as Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, or Wole Soyinka. If he wasn't, then he was ignorant of a subject about which he made a rather bold comment. If he was familiar with these Africna writers, but found them not up to the level of a Tolstoy or a Proust, well that's certainly an acceptable opinion, but not necessarily one which could be classified as a truth.
I'm fairly well read concerning African literature. I studied it quite extensively in my university experience (which did not include any works by Bellow), and I can safely say that "Things Fall Apart" is one of the most powerful novels I've ever read. Bitek's "Song of Lawino" is a beautiful, beautiful, work. And should I mention the Koran, or the Old Testament? I'm quite certain they weren't developed by students of any European school. We won't even begin to speak of the volumes that 2,000 years of Chinese literature produced.
If Bellow wasn't taken out of context, and he indeed was making a sharp little quip to say that the world outside of the European sphere of influence has never produced any great writers, then I think he was grossly misinformed, and that ignorance could possibly betray a racist way of thought. But he couldn't possibly be suggesting such folly could he? I think the true meaning of what he was saying needs some clarification, and cannot be discerned from this mere quote.
Imagining all the formidable works over the centuries that have had nothing to do with the Europe that produced Proust and Trotsky, I certainly hope for his sake that the original message behind this oft-quoted sentence was something other than the impression which it gives.
Oh, and for the above poster (Pat Pending), you appear to be pretty damned illiterate yourself.
Perhaps if you had actually read the post you felt so compelled to respond to you would have noticed it's author faces "a dilemma when readers send stupid, mistaken, poorly written or hateful comments. The anonymity of the virtual realm invites cowardly, egocentric outbursts."
Then maybe you would have spared us your own perfectly stupid, and obviously mistaken comment.
Why is my comment illiterate? Give me a clear explanation. Who are Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, and Wole Soyinka? Are they commonly known? I have never seen their names in print. I have, however, seen Tolstoy's and Proust's names in print many times. Their works are easily obtainable and read by many thousands of people. Today, I finished Tolstoy's What is Art?. Have Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, or Wole Soyinka written anything comparable? What are the titles of their works?
Gregory,
You are right. In my posting, I personified the city of Chicago. That might be considered to be an illiterate fallacy.
It is no honor for a person to have a street in an American city named after him or her. Cities throughout the world are sites of decadence and blight, but American cities, such as Chicago, Washington, Newark, Detroit, Los Angeles, and many others, exhibit humanity at its worst.
"American cities are filled with illiterates and have no business even speaking about such men as Bellow."
This is a stupid and mistaken comment. If I could take you on a tour of the American cities where I've spent time you would eat your words. I see more people reading in the New York subway than I do in Paris or London.
It's also additionally inane that you say this in defense of Bellow, when the truth is that he wrote most of his works walking the streets of the very city you claim is full of illiterates. The same cities which hold countless other authors, critics, readers, and writers. Humanity at it's worst? What exactly are you referring to? Crime? Pollution? How about creativity and progress?
Where are you from anyway?
As for Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka et al... Google them yourself. Achebe's interview in The Paris Review is a good place to start. I can assure you the rest of the literary world isn't ignorant of these names.
Not to take anything from Tolstoy or Proust, of course. But perhaps Saul didnt know everything there was to know about non-European literature. And I'd take a guess that you yourself don't know much at all about the cities that you just dismissed with a wag of the finger.
Dear Gregory,
After reading your posting, I can't help but wish that I was in Milwaukee, Baltimore, New Orleans, or Camden. I could be browsing through the many thriving bookstores. Or, better yet, I could enjoy their busy local libraries, filled with avid readers (not homeless vagrants). There, I could immerse myself in the works of Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, and Wole Soyinka. I am glad to know that you live in such an American city.
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