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CORRESPONDENCE
the novel that fails. Why do solemn
people distrust unsolemn, or inter·
mittently serious, novels anyway?
There is an attack to
be
written on
Herzog,
for occasional failures
of
taste and language, but Richard
Poirier's condescending, w
0
rId–
weary tone, together with his con·
fusion between the personal and
the literary, have not done the
job. In "Bellows to Herzog" Poirier
is in the situation of an anti-sub–
marine ship commander I
knew
early in World War II who, having
made a perfect slow run on a sub–
marine and released his depth.
charges, was so bemused by
his
technique that he forgot to
in·
crease .speed in order to get away
from the destructive pattern, thus
opening seams and gently sinking
his own ship.
JOHN MCCORMICK
MR. POIRIER REPLIES:
The only obvious reason why Mr.
McCormick sees ' things in my reo
view that aren't there and can't
make out the things that are is
that he had to read it under water.
Maybe that's also where he dis–
covered a "debate over
Herzog
conducted in terms of the author's
private life." No such debate has
occured in anything I've read, and
I've probably read everything in
print about this novel. I've also
read my own review and there's
nothing of the sort there either, no
mention of Bellow's private life or
of his "public personality," no hint,
even, that the novel might
be
a
roman
a
clef.
Mr. McCormick isn't
simply inaccurate; for someone who
picked this argument, he's extra·
ordinarily uninformed and impre–
cise. It's almost as if he
wants
to
