Saul Bellow
A SERMON BY DOCTOR PEP
In Bughouse Square, Chicago, before the brownstone length
of the Newberry Library, where he spends his days.
Before long winter will be over, dear friends. Easter isn't
far away. There is still hard ice protected by ashes in the corners but
it will wash out by the same process that laid the moraines of glaciers
over our great states. The old leaves are drying and skid-row is thin–
ning out as the dead-looking are resurrected off the sidewalks and sent
to be gandy-walkers in the little blue flowers of Montana, where the
birds chirp like the sound of scissors and snip the air into beautiful
streamers, and the butterflies drink up what is left of the porcupines
who passed on happy in their sleep.
I would go myself if I were younger and had all my limbs to go
with.
(Indicates his crutch.)
But many of you know the story of how
I ransomed my body with my leg after the Skokie Valley crash of
1923, having heard the talk I give on Man and the Machine, which
talk I do not aim to give this evening. But if I could do it, I would
take off for Montana or the Black Hills, just from the need to re–
fresh my heart on ground that hasn't been coated and cased and
under feet and wheels for as long as North Clark Street. However, I
am not eligible to be a section-hand. Natural selection has been rough
on me--this dog-white hair growing over my head and out of my
ears. I will have to be satisfied right here where I have done a long
winter of study and thought in the Newberry reading room, among
the nuns and antiquarians poring over walled cities and Celtic dreams.
Antiquarians and young girls getting up assignments for Teachers'
College-pale, hot-faced young girls whose laps were never meant
for notebooks. I feel for the young woman with her thick-stuffed
albatross briefcase which the word of a schoolboard will change ihto
