Free Letters by Saul Bellow

twenty-second straight year on the same set. He’s trying to get on the Yiddish Courier .
    I know you’ll be tickled to hear that Passin is joining the F.O.R. (Fellowship of Reconciliation), a Christian Pacifist outfit, and has renounced Marxism in toto . I knew that he could play the “Christianized” role temporarily under the influence of Cora and his father-in-law, the terrible Doctor. But to see him undertake it in lieu of a political career surprises and disgusts. Somehow I think it could be all overlooked if it were done for political reasons. The real reasons turn his whole action cold and greasy.
    He got hold of Isaac and he too now touts some of Passin’s views without, I think, realizing how completely they were formed by wishes first and deliberation last.
    Ask him in your next letter. Anita sends her regards—
    To Oscar Tarcov
    [Postmarked Chicago, Ill., 5 December 1939]
    Dear Oscar:
    I hear you became offended by the mention of “cleared air” in the last and only letter I sent you. Perhaps I was, as they say around here, semantically maladroit. I think I can explain what I meant. I am anxious there should be no misunderstanding about such an innocuous phrase; it appears to me that it has swollen out of all proportion into an insult.
    You have no idea (or maybe you have now) what a condition our circle was in. Marriage kept me aside, apart, or more accurately involved me in a different way, so that I think I really saw what was coming off. You and Isaac and a few others were gummed into a very disagreeable relationship. By definition—social placing—the group was a friendly one. But there was very little friendship in it actually and more jealousy, covert rage, detestation and in fact a need to use one’s friends as one should use one’s enemies. For instance, there were evenings when there could be no doubt about the fact that you detested me. That was evident from the way in which you needled me.
    In the next scene of this tender little drama there occurred a polarization. I was shot into the [Sam] Freifeld camp; you and Isaac drew together into a new nucleus. And when that happened your interdependence intensified. What one did supplemented the others’ acts. So also with what one thought, one hoped, desired, wrote, admired, etc. To me that seemed ridiculously, childishly feeble. Two such creative (for that is what you hoped to be and even set yourselves up to be) individuals should not cleave together so closely. Well, so far as I could see you were stuck together in helplessness. Together you fulminated against the others, against yourselves, and if I looked ridiculous to you at some moments during that time, have a good goggle at yourself. You were stagnating and in no picturesque or admirable way.
    The attachment you two evolved for [Abe] Kaufman had a different reason than the one you found. I did not object to Kaufman at all but to the reason. It was very simple. He acted strong while you were weak. He was bold and adventurous and careless and you were really very timid. A lot of disagreeable buffoonery came off. It put you in no better odor than anyone else. I saw pathology not passionate friendship and of course immediately I became a boor. I hate the kind of worship you two worked up for an individual who was remarkable, yes, but as full of error as anybody else. In that deification you looked preposterous to me: taken in, self-deceived, hectically involved and reliant and, Jesus, the whole thing looked idiotic to me. It showed your helplessness up so baldly. It was pitiful.
    I made mistakes, of course. But with this qualification, I made mistakes, too . But I saw yours as easily as you saw mine and I could have told them to you on the spot, at any time. That night at Isaac’s when I would not produce humbug humility, I wasn’t prepared for it whereas you, you had staged the whole thing and therefore could turn your cheek in the best Dostoyevsky style. The whole thing was nasty. It