BELLOWS TO HERZOG
271
to the Waste Land outlook and foregoing the mostly unconvincing
rhetoric which he offers as an alternative. That is why his comic style in
Herzog,
even more than in
H enderson
or
Augie,
is less like Nathanael
West's than like that of West's brother-in-law, S.
J.
Perelman. Both
Perelman and Bellow raise the question of "seriousness" by piling up
trivial detail, by their mock submission to the cheery hope of redemption
that people find in the ownership of certain "things," in certain styles,
in
certain totemic phrases: "I am thirty-eight years old," begins one of
Perelman's sketches, "have curly brown hair and blue eyes, own a
uke and a yellow roadster, and am considered a snappy dresser in my
crowd. But the thing I want most in the world for my birthday is a free
subscription
to
Oral Hygiene,
published by Merwin B. Massol, 1005
Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa." And in another piece, to the remark of
a West Indian maid, "You mus' be crazy," he allows the reply" 'But
aren't we all?' I reminded her with a charming smile.
CC'est la maladie du
temps-the
sickness of the times-don't you think?
Fin-de-siecle
and lost
generation in
~
way.' " Compare to the first Herzog's purchases of summer
garb
or Ramona's dedication
to
shrimp Arnaud, New Orleans style;
compare
to the second a lot of Herzog's intellectualizing; and for an
equivalent
to
Perelman's high "theatric" mode see Madeline's bitch
performance when she makes her switches "into the slightly British diction
[Herzog] had learned to recognize as a sure sign of trouble." Bellow has
greatly increased the range of such comedy, from the clutter of "things,"
a post-Depression comedy, to the clutter of ideas and culture, a comedy
after affluence. But he is still anxious to stay within that comedy. He
doesn't dare ask any questions about it or about the characters from
whom it emerges. That's why the comparison to Perelman is an apt one.
And
I mean no criticism of Perelman, whose intentions are not those of a
novelist, particularly of novelist-as-thinker. I mean to say that Bellow's
failure to ask tough questions about where he
himself
wants to be taken
leriously, a failure that ruined his recent play,
The Last Analysis,
doesn't
allow me
to
take him seriously when he chooses to talk about Herzog's
struggle for self-development or when, after the scene in court, he allows
reference to "the unbearable intensity of these ideas." In question are
such ideas as:
"If
the old God exists he must be a murderer. But the one
true
God
is death." Sophomoric tag-lines don't deserve the status of
'~deas."
Whatever they are they're really as comfortable as old shoes,
especially when you can so believe in their "unbearable intensity" that
you
can lie down. And
it
is from that position that the story is told.
