The Piano Player and Saul Bellow

Once I interviewed by telephone a prominent jazz pianist, one whose peerless technique and shrewd sense of marketing had earned him a sizeable following even beyond the hardcore jazz audience. He collected awards and made lots of money but his playing had never touched me. The recordings were shiny and remote, with more than a hint of exhibitionism, of virtuosity without purpose. Before the interview I had heard scuttlebutt from musicians and music writers that the pianist was impossible, an ego-monster of the first order, and the man I interviewed confirmed the dirt-relishing gossip. He was insulting and condescending, a sink hole of relentless self. When I misspoke, making a minute faux pas, his instinct was not merely to correct my mistake but to make certain I recognized the depths of my idiocy. He ignored questions that displeased him and answered others with monosyllables. It was the most memorably unpleasant interview in all my time as a journalist, counting several jailhouse visits with convicted murderer-rapists. They, though incapable of telling the truth, were courteous.

KPLU-FM in Seattle bills itself as the home of “NPR News and All That Jazz,” and its play list is exceptional. Last week I had to call my oldest son in New York City after an announcer played Howlin’ Wolf’s “Rockin’ Daddy” followed by the 1957 Riverside recording by Monk and Coltrane of “Ruby My Dear.” Over the weekend, inevitably, the station played a recent performance by the pianist I had interviewed more than 20 years ago. I mentally winced when I heard his name but as a form of spiritual discipline, or something, I listened to the entire recording. Call it smooth and empty, buffed to a gleam with the rag of narcissism.

The same day I read “A Genius for Grief: Memories of Saul Bellow,” published by the Cleveland-born novelist Herbert Gold in The Republic of Letters (reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses, where I read it). Those already familiar with Bellow’s life and work will find few revelations about the novelist who dominated American fiction for half a century. After Faulkner, he is our best and the best of his books are always a pleasure to revisit. Gold reports a familiar story about his friend -- early generosity, encouragement and loyalty, followed by coldness, touchy vanity and baffling slights. Bellow was difficult, and Gold believes Bellow’s gifts as a writer were inextricably entwined with his flaws of temperament. After a partial reconciliation late in Bellow’s life, Gold writes:

“It made me fear my own old age to look into those great dark eyes and see the laughter in retreat.”

That’s an acute observation and echoes my own fears when I meet an abusively self-centered senior citizen. Is such nastiness an inevitable result of longevity? Gold writes:

“The flaws seemed to be magnified by the fineness of the achievement.”

There’s the rub. The artist and man dwell symbiotically, non-identical Siamese twins, a package deal. What I know of Bellow’s occasionally insufferable behavior does nothing to alter my love for the best of his fiction. How self-defeatingly priggish of me to repudiate Seize the Day, Herzog and Mr. Sammler’s Planet because I don’t approve of the author’s character. I owe Bellow only a reader’s gratitude, not a moral report card.

In the case of the pianist, it’s different: His music is tiresome and he’s an asshole.