Word: bellow
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Late in the novel, after Ravelstein's death, Chick himself nearly dies after eating a bad red snapper during a Caribbean vacation with his new wife Rosamund. Bellow readily acknowledges that this part of the novel was lifted pretty directly from his own life in 1994. "I was in St. Martin, and I went to a little French restaurant. I said, 'Do you have any local catch?' thinking that I'd outsmart the frozen-fish scene. But it didn't work, because it is the inland fish, the reef feeders, who get these poisons." Thanks to Freedman's quick thinking...
Death is on Bellow's mind often, he acknowledges, but not simply because he is 84. "I started thinking seriously about death when my mother died, when I was 17 years old." He left Chicago in 1993 "because so many of my friends had died, and wherever I went, I was reminded of them. So I thought, Well, I'll go to a place where I had no dead acquaintances or friends...
...author has nothing against the computer but resists using one. "Philip Roth pushes me more than anybody else. He says I'd find that I had a lot more free time." Bellow still works the old way, writing in longhand, typing that version, making corrections and then typing everything again. At the moment, he says, "I haven't got a subject. Writers who don't write are really very difficult creatures. I may not have to write anymore, you know," he adds with a smile. "I'm going...
...Bellow has somehow sailed past the rocks on which so many American writers have foundered: burnout, alcoholism, depression, suicide. The only sign of inner turbulence in his life is the fact of his having been married five times. He jokes, "If at first you don't succeed, try again," and then offers a more serious account: "The times were so disorderly, and everything was up in the air. As part of that, you tried to anchor yourself. You're looking for an anchor, and a very attractive woman is to be preferred, if available. But they're not always...
...Bellow is pleased by all the awards and recognition his work has received, but is not overly impressed with himself: "People used to kid me when I was a boy, and they would say, 'Ah, yes, you're going to have a Nobel Prize one day. You'll also be covered like a tree with bark.'" He refuses to romanticize his work: "I'm not a tortured writer. I had my days in my youth when I was a tortured writer. I decided that if torture is part of the job, I was going to quit...