LETTERS
EDITORS:
Though I hesitate to seek space in your pages, I have a responsibil–
ity to correct a gratuitous slur in Jack Ludwig's recent review of James
Atlas's biography of Delmore Schwartz, a book which has earned much
praise from other critics. Mr. Ludwig spends almost a page recounting
an incident when Delmore Schwartz and I and our wives were living in
a series of contiguous small houses, along with a neIghbor whose
mattress once caught on fire. When it was put out in front of the
Schwartzs' house, it burned an oblong aperture into the winter snow.
Mr. Atlas chronicles, and Mr. Ludwig repeats, that I referred
to
the spot
as "Delmore's grave."
This is quite true; but I must confess that I had forgotten the
incident and the expression until I read about them in Mr. Atlas's
manuscript. It is therefore an unwarranted conjecture for Mr. Ludwig
to suggest that Mr. Atlas got the story from me, and it is a
testimonial to the biographer's conscientiousness that he had dug it up
independently.
Mi.
Ludwig has every right not to be amused by the
remark, though it sounds more luridly prophetic in retrospect than
when "it was lightly uttered. All I can say is that, if the opening had
appeared on our lawn and Delmore had called it my grave, I should not
have felt disturbed.
Two or three years before the Atlas book, the
Harvard Advocate
planned a memorial issue dedicated to Delmore Schwartz, which got
caught up in a change of plans and never came out. I had written a
brief reminiscence for it, and Mr. Atlas saw the unpublished manu–
script, from which he cited a few details with full acknowledgment.
Later I had occasion to publish this sketch in
Canto
(spring 1978) and
it will be republished in a forthcbming collection of my essays. Any
reader seriously interested in Delmore Schwartz and acquainted with
the odds that complicated his existence, I believe, will not find my
impression of him unsympathetic.
Sincerely yours,
HARRY LEVIN
