A Natural Curiosity :: Saul Bellow and 9/11

Saul Bellow and 9/11

I don’t know what Saul Bellow said about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Very likely I wouldn’t agree with it. Bellow was politically quite conservative, something I didn’t know until I had read most of his work. But in Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck, his friend and would-be biographer Mark Harris quotes him as saying something worth thinking about today.

Harris had just driven from Vermont to visit Bellow at his house in Tivoli, New York.

I remember best of all ... standing at a window with Bellow and feeling fearful of the silence, the solitude of his surroundings, and remarking, “I’d be nervous. Do you own a gun?”

“No,” he beautifully replied, “why should somebody die because I’m nervous?”

September 11 was a terrifying day in New York City, and in Washington, DC, and in the skies over Pennsylvania. But it was no more terrifying than the nights of “shock and awe” endured by the people of Baghdad. Because we were afraid—and because that fear was whipped up and exploited—hundreds more innocent people died for every person who was killed on 9/11. They too should be remembered.

Comments:

Just when I thought I would gag if I had to read one more word about the 10th anniversary of 9/11… This may be the only intelligent thing I’ve read on the subject! Beautiful, and entirely true.

Posted by Lyn on 09/12 at 08:08 AM

Thank you! Harris goes on to say this:

“In Bellow, only crazy people carry guns, shooting a cat in the attic, shooting through the telephone directory on a music stand. Henderson, recovering from craziness, gives up hunting—‘it seemed a strange way to relate to nature.’ ‘But I couldn’t see what good it would do me to fire a gun,’ says Charlie Citrine. ‘As if I could shoot my way out of my perplexities—the chief perplexity being my character!’ Through all Bellow’s work violence is pointless, mad, associated with futility and brainlessness.”

Posted by geoff on 09/12 at 07:02 PM