Literary daybook, Dec. 12

Real and imaginary events of interest to readers.

Published December 12, 2002 8:00PM (EST)

Today in fiction

On Dec. 12, Marion Crane takes a shower.
-- "Psycho" (1960)
By Joseph Stefano, writer; Alfred Hitchcock, director

From "The Book of Fictional Days"
Know when something that did not really happen
occurred? Send it to fictiondays@yahoo.com.

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Today in Literary History
On this day in 1976 Saul Bellow delivered his speech in acceptance of the Nobel Prize. At this point, Bellow had written only 15 of his 29 (and still counting) books, but among these are his major prize-winners -- "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953), "Henderson the Rain King" (1959), "Herzog" (1964), "Mr. Sammler's Planet" (1970) and "Humboldt's Gift" (1975). These were proof enough, said the Academy, of Bellow's "exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion." His characters are antiheroes more or less lost in a ramshackle world, but they keep their chin up even as they stick their neck out, and are funny. In his acceptance speech, Bellow seemed to make an appeal on their behalf, urging modern writers to stick to the human comedy, and build their novels as if "a sort of latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes shelter" from the dehumanizing storm.

Bellow's trip to Stockholm seemed to embody the "human comedy" view, and leave a trail of one-liners in its wake. One of the numbing questions put by the never-ending interviewers concerned what he might do with the prize money: "At this rate, my heirs will get it in a day or two." One of his sons, Adam Bellow, was asked another chestnut about what it was like to have such a dad: "... like stepping on a rake -- it comes up and smashes you in the teeth once in a while." (Adam would have T-shirts printed for the family to wear in Stockholm: "Nobel Savage.") One of the many public functions was a formal dinner given by his University of Chicago colleagues: "After years of the most arduous mental labor," his speech began, "I stand before you in the costume of a headwaiter." One of those colleagues, the sociologist Edward Shils, forecast great renown: "So, you join the august company of Halldór Laxness and Carl Spitteler ..." One of the rituals in Christmastime Stockholm was to be awakened by the "Lucia" ceremony, a group of white-robed, cranberry-crowned young women arriving with songs, coffee and buns: "They came bearing bad coffee and some buns which they set down on my bathrobe so that I couldn't reach it." One ambivalent summary of his accomplishment: "All I started out to do was show up my brothers. I didn't have to go this far."

Two more are worth note, taking Bellow's five wives and notorious philandering into account. "If I win I'll buy you a mink coat," Bellow told girlfriend Fran Gendlin, "if you promise to make love to me in it." If made, this bargain may or may not have been possible to keep. Bellow's messy divorce from wife No. 3 suggests not, and provides this answer to the earlier question about what would be done with the prize money: "A lot of lawyers in Chicago got more out of the Nobel than I did. And they weren't my lawyers."

-- Steve King

To find out more about "Today in Literary History," contact Steve King.


By the Salon Books Editors



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