July 22, 2013 Issue

Saul Bellow forged a brilliant style. But in the process, according to Greg Bellow’s Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir, he sacrificed a son. Was it worth it? James Wood’s absorbing “Sins of the Father,” in this week’s issue, says yes. Wood writes, “In two or three generations, that story will have faded from memory, outlived by what it enabled.” Wood’s verdict is too harsh. It’s true that most future readers of such masterpieces as The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet will not likely bother to go behind the books to Bellow’s personal history. But those few who do will find the son’s memoir. It’s now part of the record. As Janet Malcolm said in respect of Angelica Garnett’s Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood, “But Angelica’s cry, her hurt child’s protest, her disappointed woman’s bitterness will leave their trace, like a stain that won’t come out of a treasured Persian carpet and eventually becomes part of its beauty” (“A House of One’s Own,” in Malcolm’s great Forty-one False Starts).

Postscript: My two favorite sentences in this week’s issue: (1) “Overhead, banner planes towed news of extraordinary holiday mattress deals, while bored-looking lifeguards, with no one to save, lounged in their chairs” (John Seabrook, “The Beach Builders”); (2) “But the literary assessments are so wrongheaded as to give the book a migraine of unreliability” (James Wood, “Sins of the Father”).  

Second Postscript: I was pleased to find a piece by Christine Smallwood in this week’s issue. Her “The In-Between World,” a review of the Dardennes’ great The Kid with a Bike (The New York Review of Books, May 10, 2012), was one of last year’s highlights. I look forward to seeing more of her work in the magazine.