Saul Bellow
FROM THE LIFE OF AUGIE MARCH*
I am an American, Chicago born-Chicago, that sombre
city-and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will
make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; some–
times an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's
character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any
way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustic work on the
door or gloving the knuckles. I'm curious myself to know what kind
of knocks will come when I set up a bid. I dislike the stickiness of guile
you find even in the best intentioned records of lives. And everybody
knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression;
if
you hold
down one thing you hold down the adjoining. On the other hand, to
invite all knocks is a great gamble. You never can tell but what some
muscle strengthened grossly by unconscious bad habits and vices
may deliver the kind of knock that brings the door down and tears a
hole in the side of the house, a much more dangerous kind of knock
than the theosophist ones invited by the evening seance, for those are
presumably of another world, presumably from over the border of
death, by spirits and souls that have passed intact into the host of
chatty spooks. But these living knocks may bring to the front some–
thing less than comforting, so it's a daring decision to say, "Okay,
slam away, I'm ready." But that elementary confidence. Man! it
isn't too much to ask of myself at the age of forty, or near it. A
whole lot less than asking the Seraphim of Isaiah to unveil their eyes
before the awful presence. Only a willingness to entertain these
knocks.
My own parents were not much to me, though I cared for my
mother. She was simple-minded and what I learned from her was
*
This is the first chapter of a novel entitled "Life Among the Machiavellians."
