[PDF] Cultural Nationalism and Modern Manuscripts: Kingsley Amis, Saul

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Cultural Nationalism and Modern Manuscripts:

Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, Franz Kafka

Zachary Leader

In September1960, with the encouragement of the Standing Confer- enceofNationalandUniversityLibrarians(SCONUL),PhilipLarkinsent aquestionnaireto‘twenty“leadingwriters"",amongthemT.S.Eliot,E.M. Forster,andGrahamGreene,askingaboutthedispositionoftheirliterary manuscripts. 1 The results were to be reported back to SCONUL at its an- nual conference. The writers were asked three questions: (1) ‘Have you ever been asked for agiftof your manuscripts by a British library, an American library, or any other library?"; (2) ‘Have you ever been asked to sellyourmanuscriptstoaBritishlibrary,anAmericanlibrary,oranyother library?";(3)‘Wouldyoucaretoexpressanygeneralopiniononthisques- tion to the conference?" 2

The idea of the questionnaire was inspired by a

letter Larkin received from an American library asking him if he would donate his own papers. 3

The letter arrived sometime before10October

1958,whenLarkinwrotetotheTimesLiterarySupplementabout‘thegrow-

ing practice of American libraries of soliciting the gift of manuscripts or worksheets from living authors for study and preservation." In the letter, Larkin declares that ‘the time has come for British librarians to consider adopting a more positive policy." Larkin"s election to the Poetry Panel of

1. Andrew Motion,Philip Larkin: A Writer"s Life(London,1993), p.339; hereafter

abbreviatedPL.

2. Kingsley Amis, completed questionnaire,The Letters of Kingsley Amis, ed. Zachary

Leader (London,2000), pp.580-81. See also Amis, letter to Philip Larkin,24Sept.1960,The

Letters of Kingsley Amis, pp.578-80.

3. See Larkin, ‘A Neglected Responsibility: Contemporary Literary Manuscripts" (1979),

Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces1955-1982(London,1983), p.103; hereafter abbreviated ‘NR".

Critical Inquiry40(Autumn2013)

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the Arts Council in January1961led to just such a policy, a collaboration between the Arts Council and the British Museum in creating in1963the National Manuscripts Collection of Contemporary Poets (NMCCP), which made its first purchase in1964. 4 Larkin"s friend Kingsley Amis was among the twenty writers surveyed, andheansweredquestions1and2bysayingthatnoBritishlibraryhadever approachedhimeitherforagiftofhismanuscriptsortosellthem,butthat he had been approached by American libraries, had given a dozen or so items(correcteddraftsofpoems)tooneofthem,andmightwellsellother manuscripts ‘in the future" to another. The ‘general opinion" he wished to express to the conference was this: I will sell any of my manuscripts to the highest bidder, assuming such bidder to be of reputable standing, and I have no feeling one way or the other about such bidder"s country of origin. It seems to me no more incongruous that the Tate Gallery should have a large collection of Monets (say) than that Buffalo University should have a collection of Robert Graves manuscripts (say). I view with unconcern the drift

4. In1969the NMCCP became the NMCCW (National Manuscripts Collection of

Contemporary Writers) and began purchasing prose as well as verse manuscripts, beginning with the only two surviving folios of Stella Gibbon"sCold Comfort Farm(1932). For a variety of reasons, the Arts Council withdrew its support for the NMCCW in1979, thus ending its existence; see Jamie Andrews, ‘What Will Survive of Us Are Manuscripts: Collecting the Papers of Living British Writers",Journal of the History of Collections20, no.2(2008):259-71; hereafter abbreviated ‘WWS". In its twenty-plus years of operation, significant manuscript material of writers, magazines, and small presses was purchased for British institutions, dispelling the idea that British libraries were not interested in contemporary manuscripts. In2005the campaign for preserving contemporary British literary manuscripts was reinvigorated by the creation of two lobbying bodies: the Group for Literary Archives and Manuscripts (GLAM), made up mostly of archivists, curators, and librarians of literary collections, and the United Kingdom Literary Heritage Working Group (UKLH), spearheaded by writers such as Motion and Michael Holroyd, as well as prominent curators, academics, and publishers. These organizations campaign in the public press and with the government for the retention of modern literary manuscripts in Britain and for tightened export regulations and tax incentives to benefit living authors and British collections. They also provide advice to authors wishing to sell their archives or seeking guidance on the care of electronic archives. ZACHARYLEADER, professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton, is at work on a biography of Saul Bellow. He is the author, among other books, ofReading Blake"s Songs: Revision and Romantic Authorshipand The Life of Kingsley Amis(a finalist for the2008Pulitzer Prize in biography) and the editor, among other books, of Shelley"sThe Major Works, On Modern British Fiction,andThe Letters of Kingsley Amis.He is a fellow of the Royal Society of

Literature.

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of British manuscripts to America, where our language is spoken and our literature studied. 5 In an accompanying letter to Larkin he explains: ‘I"d have said “my work belongsnottoEngland,buttotheworld"ifIwereadifferenttypeofchap. (I use this last phrase so often these days that I"m beginning to wonder whether I may not actually be a different type of chap.)" 6 Nine years later, in1969, Amis sold one and a half boxes worth of man- uscriptmaterialtotheHarryRansomHumanitiesCenterinTexas,includ- ing two unpublished works (an essay assignment book, written at age eleven, and a copy of his failed Oxford BLitt thesis), typescript and holo- graph manuscripts of five novels, plus extensive notebook material for three other works. The most important of these items is the partial type- scriptofthefirstversionofLuckyJim,originallytitledDixonandChristine. The differences betweenDixon and ChristineandLucky Jimare striking, beginningwiththefactthatJim,disconcertingly,iscalledJulian,quitethe wrongname.IntheRansomCentercatalogue,themanuscriptisdescribed as containing numerous pencilled annotations ‘by Amis and others." But whenIwasabletoexamineaphotocopyofthemanuscript(easilyordered and quickly posted), I immediately recognised that almost all the annota- tions were in Larkin"s hand. Larkin"s crucial role in revisingLucky Jimhas longbeenrecognised,butitsextenthasbeenamatterofcontroversy.What theDixonandChristinetypescriptmakesclearishowLarkinimprovedthe novelnotjustinlargewaysbutinnumeroussmallways,withmanywarn- ings‘againstoverwrittenorartificialdialogue,asin“terriblyunnatural"or “This speech might come from a stage play TOO BAD to be produced" or simply“Horriblesmellofarse"(subsequently“HSofA")or“GRUESOME AROMAOFB"(presumably“BUM")."Othersuggestionsconcernpacing, asin‘“notgoingquicklyenough"or‘“toodetailedfortheirpurpose.""The best of these annotations reads: ‘“This speech makes metwist aboutwith boredom."" 7 Fifteen or so years after Amis sold theDixon and Christinemanuscript to the Ransom Center, he turned to America again, selling the remainder ofhispapers(483catalogueditems)andrightstoallfuturepapers(plusall books in his library, many annotated) to the Huntington Library in San Marino,California.TheAmisarchivehadbeenputupforsale,throughhis agent, Jonathan Clowes, by the London book dealer Bernard Quaritch, and the purchase was arranged by George Robert Minkoff, a dealer in the

5. Quoted in Leader,The Life of Kingsley Amis(London,2006), p.448.

6. Amis, letter to Larkin,24Sept.1960,The Letters of Kingsley Amis, pp.578-80.

7. Leader,The Life of Kingsley Amis,pp.268-69.

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United States. A dozen American libraries expressed interest, but only the Huntingtonbid,offering$90,000,ratheralowfigureforthetime.Accord- ing to Minkoff, the figure was low chiefly because the archive lacked the materialintheRansomCenter,theLuckyJimorDixonandChristineman- uscript in particular. The Ransom Center was the logical American buyer, but the Ransom Center had just purchased the Pforzheimer Library of Early English Literature (1,100first editions of works by the most influen- tial and representative English writers from the years1475to1700). It claimed not to have the money for a second big purchase. 8

There was also

the question of Amis"s reputation. The archive was offered at the lowest pointinAmis"slife,afterthepublicationoftheweakestofhisnovelsanda string of pot-boiling nonfiction works (anthologies, jokey books about drink). The period1980-85was for Amis one of great personal unhappi- nessandconsequentaggressiontowardsacademics,women,lefties,andall manneroffoolsandphonies;hisopinionswereaslikelytoalienateAmer- ican literary scholars as English ones. Unsurprisingly, several of the Huntington"s academic advisors and overseers voiced reservations about the purchase, partly on grounds of quality, partly because Amis was funny, so not serious, partly on political grounds,andpartlybecausehewasalive,hadnotyetstoodthetestoftime (an objection British librarians made to collecting modern literary manu- scriptsingeneral).TheHuntington"sprimeliteraturecollectionsarefrom earlier periods. It possesses half the titles printed in England before1641 and95per cent of all English plays and masques in one or more early editions. Its eighteenth-century holdings number over thirty thousand items. It has a Gutenberg Bible, the Ellesmere Chaucer, one of the finest collections of early editions of Shakespeare"s works in the world, and im- portant holograph manuscripts by many eighteenth- and nineteenth- century British authors. It also has significant modernist holdings (James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Wallace Stevens—none of whom Amis had much time for). 9

Did Amis really belong in such company?

Amis quickly accepted the Huntington offer, unwilling to wait for a betterprice,orfortheRansomtoreplenishitscoffers.ThehouseinKent- ish Town where he lived (with his ex-wife, Hilly, her third husband, Lord

8. Details of Minkoff"s negotiations with the Huntington and the Ransom Center come

from George Robert Minkoff, letter to Bernard Quaritch,5Apr.1984, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. Although a dozen institutions were interested in purchasing Amis"s papers, only the Huntington was prepared to make an offer. It did not quibble about the papers already held

by the Ransom: ‘all they want is to buy the letters [that is, to Amis, from Betjeman, Conquest, et

al.] and the manuscripts at the same time" (ibid.).

9. Details of the Huntington"s holdings come from ‘About the Huntington",

www.huntington.org/Information/about.html

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Kilmarnock, and their son, James) was too small and the neighbourhood tooscruffy:‘thereisn"tanyhallordiningroom,"hecomplainedtoLarkin,

‘and it"s getting a bit common round here."

10

The $90,000from the Hun-

tington would be used to purchase a larger house, in Primrose Hill, not as trendy as it is today, but more salubrious than Kentish Town. So one must fly to Los Angeles to examine the working papers, anno- tatedvolumes,pocketdiaries,engagementbooks,holographmanuscripts, correspondence,andephemeraofawriteroftenthoughtofasquintessen- tially English, a ‘little Englander", like Larkin himself. Here are located Amis"s several unpublished and unfinished novels, including a fair num- ber of unpublished poems. One of these poems, written between1980-85, makes clear the extent of Amis"s despair or depression at the time. I came across it in my capacity as Amis"s authorized biographer and the editor of his letters, in the course of working through his archive, and thought it strongenoughtopublish—thoughtAmishadsuppresseditbecauseitwas too personal rather than for aesthetic reasons. The Amis estate agreed, as did theTimes Literary Supplement, which published ‘Things Tell Less and Less" (the title is from the first line), on14May2004to widespread and approving notice. 11 One comes to a literary archive dreaming of discoveries like this, but also, if one is the editor of a writer"s correspondence or a biographer, to read the letters, or many of them, the author received: in Amis"s case, several hundred from Robert Conquest, Anthony Powell, John Betjeman, Larkin, and others. These letters help to supply the answers to niggling editorial puzzles: for example, the meaning of the frequently encountered abbreviationsP-W-RorI-W-I-C-S-L-M-S-KorB-H-Q(respectively,Pee Wee Russell, I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate and Bastard"s Headquarters,meaningGod"sHeavenor,moregenerally,wherethingsgo wrong, said in one letter to be located in France). 12

Once the Huntington

purchased Amis"s collection it set about obtaining ancillary collections,

10. Amis to Larkin,18June1984,inThe Letters of Kingsley Amis,p.975.

11. See, for example, John Ezard, ‘Newly Discovered Poem Reveals Unguarded Amis",

Guardian,15May2004,p.40; Henry Hardy, ‘Kingsley Amis and Depression",Times Literary Supplement,21May2004,p.15; and Christopher Hitchens, ‘Kingsley Amis and Depression",

Times Literary Supplement,28May2004,p.17.

12. The abbreviations were jokey tests, as well as friendship assertions. See Larkin to Amis,

28Dec.1945, Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull. On jazz pianist Joe Sullivan: ‘Sullivan"s

solo is very good and second only to I FANBandIGSMHL(“Work that one out"—“Work it yourself")." ‘I F A N B" is ‘I Found a New Baby" and ‘IGSMHL"is‘I"m Gonna Stomp Mr.

Henry Lee", both with piano solos by Sullivan.

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notably the archive of the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, Amis"s second wife, and of Eric Jacobs, his friend and first biographer. The Huntington was established as a research and educational institu- tion in1919by Henry E. Huntington, a key figure in the development of southern California, and his wife, Arabella. Like other great collectors of his era, Huntington bought in bulk, bought whole collections, and was nevermuchinterestedinthearchivesoflivingwriters.Today,accordingto Sara S. Hodson, the Huntington"s curator of literary manuscripts, the li- brary seems to have established a pattern of purchasing the archive of one major modern writer per decade. In the1970s, it purchased Stevens"s pa- pers; in the1980s, Kingsley Amis"s; in the1990s, Christopher Isherwood"s; inthe2000s,HilaryMantel"s. 13

Thepresentdecadehasonlyjustbegun,and

the Huntington probably has its eye on Thom Gunn"s papers (Gunn hav- ing been grouped with Amis and Larkin as a Movement poet, also having livedformostofhisadultlifeinCalifornia).I"msurethelibraryalsocovets the papers of Conquest, close friend of Amis and Larkin, and another long-time resident in California. Hodson, like every other archivist or curator I"ve met, is horribly over- worked and claims to have little time for what she calls ‘acquisitional out- reach" (so busy is she fielding queries, providing reference assistance on site, overseeing processing, mounting exhibitions, giving talks). ‘A lot of archivistshaveafileofcollectorstheyregularlywriteto.Iseldomhavetime to do this, nor have I much time to cultivate potential donors." She has ‘every sympathy" with the efforts of the UKLH to keep British authors" papersinBritain.ButifaBritishwriterofstatureapproacheshershewon"t turn him or her away. In2000the Huntington hosted a conference on the modernBritishnovel,addressedbyIanMcEwan,MartinAmis,andMan- tel,aswellasahandfulofdistinguishedcriticsandscholars.TheHunting- ton had nothing to do with the choice of speakers (except nervously to suggest that Salman Rushdie, who attended, should not be listed on the programme). The conference was well attended, the weather was beauti- ful, there were lavish dinners and receptions, and when Hodson asked ManteliftheHuntingtoncouldpurchaseherpapers,shesaidyes.Presum- ablyHodsonalsoapproachedMcEwanandMartinAmis.TheHuntington didnotpursueorcultivateMantel,butwhensheappearedonitsdoorstep it made her an offer. 14

13. These and other details about the Huntington"s acquisition policies come from Sara S.

Hodson, interview by the author,7Aug.2008.

14. Mantel"s willingness to see her papers housed outside Britain is partly explained by the

article she produced for an expanded version of the Huntington conference proceedings, in which she writes, ‘When I speak or read abroad I am sometimes described as a British writer,

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Though Hodson thinks nationality an important consideration in the disposition of literary manuscripts, she lays greater stress on providing what she calls a ‘proper home", by which she means not just one in which archives are properly conserved and processed but which contains related collections.‘Nocollectionshouldbeorphaned",isherview,nor,inanideal world, should archives be split up. Were Martin Amis to take his father"s lineandofferhisarchivetothehighestbidderandweretheHuntingtonto makethehighestbid,itwouldqualifyasa‘properhome"inHodson"seyes, given the presence of the papers of Amis Senior and Elizabeth Jane How- ard. Were Gunn"s papers to be obtained by the library they would nestle comfortably next to those of Isherwood and Amis. A more difficult case is presented by the papers of Robert Conquest, a robust and still-publishing nonagenarian. Conquest is the son of a well-born Virginian father and an English mother, was brought up in England and France, and educated at Winchester,theUniversityofGrenoble,andMagdalenCollege,Oxford.In addition to being one of the world"s foremost historians of the Soviet Union, author ofThe Great Terror(1968) and many other studies of Rus- sian history and politics, he is a considerable poet, notably of light verse, andwasakeyMovementpolemicist,aseditoroftheinfluentialanthology New Lines(1956) and as literary editor of theSpectatorin the early1960s. Conquest"s letters to Amis and Larkin, close friends from the1950s on- wards, number in the hundreds and are often, among other things, hilar- ious, especially when they contain limericks. Conquest"s papers could find a ‘proper home" in several places: the Huntington, the Bodleian (which houses a number of his and Amis"s let- ters to Larkin), the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where Conquest has been a fellow for forty years (home now also of Donald Rumsfeld and CondoleezzaRice).TheHooverhasamatchlesscollectionofSovietbooks and documents, andthepolitical and historical component of the Conquest archive (including, for example, correspondence with Alexander Solzheni- tsyn, Andrey Sakharov, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Margaret Thatcher, for whom Conquestwrote the speech that earned her the soubriquet Iron Lady) would be right at home there. But the literary component would be ‘orphaned". And the reverse would be true if the archive went to the Hun- tington. Conquest will probably take an Amisian line, keeping the papers sometimes as an English writer. To me, the rst description is meaningless. "Britain" can be used as a geographical term, but it has nodenable cultural meaning. As for calling me "an English writer" - it is simply what I am not' (Hilary Mantel, 'No Passes or Documents Needed: The Writer at Home in Europe', inOn Modern British Fiction, ed. Leader [Oxford,

2002], p.94).

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together as an archive, but offering them to the highest reputable bidder, either in America or Britain. From a scholar"s or user"s perspective, it is hard to know which place would be best. The Huntington has many Anglophile readers, as well as a number of actual British ones. Its current director of research is English, his prede- cessorwasborninScotland.Therecentlyretireddirectoroftheartcollec- tions is English and previously ran the Courtauld Institute. But no one would mistake the Huntington for Britain. Sitting in the richly appointed Ahmanson Rare Book Library, readers of the correspondence of Kingsley Amis encounter descriptions of poverty and gloom in1950s Swansea or of titanic drinking sessions in smoky London pubs. Outside, except in dry, hot summers, the temperature is in the mid-70s, with a sky as blue as a Hockneyswimmingpool,thescentoforangeblossomintheair(theHun- tington has its own orange grove), and a view of the snow-capped San Gabrielmountainsinthedistance.Atnoon,therarebookroomclosesfor an hour and its readers stroll across the gardens, past the North Vista, edged with azaleas, palms, and seventeenth-century Italian sculpture, to a shadedoutdoorrestaurant.Amiswouldbarelyrecogniseaslunchthemeal most readers eat there; nobody drinks, nobody takes more than an hour, scholars leap up suddenly for strenuous walks through the gardens. He mightalsofindcertainofthemedievalists,theShakespeareans,themassed historians (of colonial America, the English Bible, early modern comedy, the commercialisation of contraception, and so forth) a trifle narrow— though narrowness, his letters attest, can be found everywhere. The oddness or incongruity of Amis"s archive being in southern Cali- fornia is reinforced by a common public perception of him as anti- American. The evidence for this anti-Americanism is easily harvested and funny, even to anAmerican. Here is Jake Richardson inJake"s Thing(1978): ‘everything horrible or foolish was worse if it was also American. Modern architect—modern American architect. Woman who never stops talking— American ditto. Zany comedian. Convert to Buddhism...." 15

Or take Patrick

Standish, fromDifficulties with Girls(1988), after seducing his deeply sincere and emotive neighbour, Wendy Porter-King (‘“You do feel...something?"" she asks Patrick, ‘“It would be so bleak if you felt nothing. That"s what scares women, you know""). As Patrick and Wendy lie in bed, the sun shines down on them through half-drawn curtains. Wendy clasps her arms round her drawn-up knees and says: ‘“The sky is blue and I feel gay."" Thenext para- graph reads: ‘She never knew how close she came from losing her front teeth for that. Taken off guard again, Patrick again spoke too quickly.

15. Kingsley Amis,Jake"s Thing(London,1978), p.153.

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“Are you an American?" “What a strange question, darling." “I know. I"m sorry. Anyway. Are you?"" This was a favourite insult of Patrick"s, we are then told, though ‘he always said he had nothing against real

Americans, most of them anyway."

16 The impression given by such passages—the common public perception— ismisleading.LikePatrick,AmishadnothingagainstmostrealAmericans, was no more negative about them than about most Englishmen. Amis visited America twice, in1958-59and1967-68, teaching for a year at PrincetonUniversityandatermatVanderbiltUniversity.Atonepointhe even considered moving his family to America permanently. In hisMem- oirs(1991), he says that he knew instantly upon arrival in New York that ‘thiswasmysecondcountryandalwayswouldbe."Americawasthelandof jazz, science fiction, the movies, of pleasure and plenty. Deprivation may havebeentoLarkinwhatdaffodilsweretoWilliamWordsworth,butAmis wanted no part of it. 17 Of New York he has written: ‘anyone who makes a business of hating it or being superior to it...isacreep, and...anyone who walks up Fifth Avenue (say) on a sunny morning without feeling his spirits lift is an asshole." ‘Asshole", here (as opposed to the English ‘arse- hole"), is itself a tribute. 18 There is nothing like this in the work of Larkin, who was a much more consistentculturalnationalistthanAmisandwhosetwenty-fiveyearcam- paign for the preservation of British literary manuscripts in Britain raises interestingquestionsabouttherelativeweightingofnationalistandschol- arly concerns. What Larkin says about the campaign, in his1979essay ‘A Neglected Responsibility" is perfectly reasonable and on the surface re- spectful towards American scholars and libraries. ‘I certainly don"t mean to imply that American libraries are not responsible custodians of manu- scripts, or that they are not better off in them than in private hands." He quotes Geoffrey Gorer writing toThe Timesin protest ‘against the use of the word “saved" when what was meant was “retained in England."" In Gorer"swords:‘itisinaccurateaswellasdiscourteoustosuggestthatthese papers and paintings would have been in any peril if they went to their American purchasers" (‘NR", p.101). Larkin wants English literary manu- scriptsinEnglandbecause‘Ithinktheyaremorelikelytobestudiedthere, and studied with greater understanding. I think they are more likely to grow there by the addition of further related collections from his family

16. Kingsley Amis,Difficulties with Girls(London,1988), pp.119,120,158.

17. See Larkin, ‘A Interview with theObserver"(1979), interview by Miriam Gross,Required

Writing,p.47.

18. Kingsley Amis,Memoirs(Harmondsworth,1992), pp.194,197.

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and friends; I think above all that a country"s writers are one of its most precious assets, and that if British librarians resign the collection and care oftheirmanuscriptstothelibrariansofothercountriestheyarelettingone of their most rewarding responsibilities slide irretrievably away" (‘NR", p.

101). Larkin thus calls on his fellow librarians to counter ‘that irresistible

gravitational westward pull, to end up deep in the heart of one of those institutions for which Mr. Gorer has so much respect, as indeed we all have" (‘NR", p.106). A suspicion that there might be a hint of irony here is aroused by jokey comments in the correspondence: ‘I am glad that you are prepared to accept the printing copy ofJillon behalf of the Bodleian Library", Larkin writes to Bodley"s librarian in1964: ‘It is, I am afraid, not a very exciting document, but it may do some visiting American out of a research proj- ect". 19 Or,tenyearslater,totheliteraryeditoroftheSundayTimes:‘Idon"t thinkIcanmanageaHardyarticle:foronething,Ihavejustmovedhouse, which will strike me dumb for about five years, and for another the Hardy industry is so productive nowadays that probably anything I said would simply be repeating the lucubrations of some logorrhoeic Middle-

Westerner."

20 Then there"s Larkin"s poem ‘Posterity" (1968), the draft of which decorated the programme of the UKLH"s2006conference, ‘Manu- scripts Matter." In the poem, Larkin imagines his posthumous reputation in the hands of ‘Jake Balokowsky, my biographer." His papers, including the manuscript of the poem we are reading, reside in Jake"s ‘air- conditionedcellatKennedy"(‘cell"meansoffice,possiblycarrelorcubicle, asinalibrary).Jakeisboredandfedupwithboth‘“theresearchline""and ‘“this old fart"", ‘“one of those old-typenaturalfouled-up guys."" On a break, he and a colleague ‘make for the Coke dispenser", where Jake con- fessesthathewantstoworkonprotesttheatre(‘“somethinghappening""), perhaps in Tel Aviv, though his wife"s parents—‘he makes the money sign"—think he should get tenure first. 21
When Larkin"s collectionHigh Windowswas offered to the American publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Robert Giroux wrote back saying he was keen to publish but wondered if Larkin would think again about in- cluding ‘Posterity". To quote from Andrew Motion"s biography of Larkin:

19. Quoted in Judith Priestman, ‘Philip Larkin and the Bodleian Library",Bodleian Library

Record14(Oct.1991):39.

20. Larkin to J. W. Lambert,24July1974, MS Eng. C.2308, fol.52, Bodleian Library,

Oxford.

21. Larkin, ‘Posterity",High Windows(London,1974), p.27. See Larkin, letter to Monica

Jones,30June1968,Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica,ed. Thwaite (London,2000), p.387, on the

poem: ‘It gets in Yanks, yids, wives, kids, Coca Cola, Protest and the Theatre—pretty good lists

of hates, eh?"

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‘The American accent used in the poem struck [Giroux] as awkward, and the references to “Tel Aviv", “Myra"s folks" and making “the money sign" seemed anti-Semitic." Larkin"s general view of American publishers was that they were all ‘“Neanderthal blockheads""; he refused to budge and

Giroux eventually gave way (PL,p.436).

22
Giroux was not the only reader made uneasy by the poem. To the Irish poetRichardMurphy,Larkinwrote:‘I"msorryifJakeBalokowskyseemed an unfair portrait. As you see, the idea of the poem was imagining the ironical situation in which one"s posthumous reputation was entrusted to somebody as utterly unlike oneself as could be. It was only after the poem hadbeenpublishedthatIsawthatJake,wantingtodoonethingbuthaving todosomethingelse,wasreallynotsounlikeme,andindeedhadprobably unconsciously been drawn to my work for this reason, which explains his bitter resentment of it." 23
That Larkin was, indeed, ‘one of those old-type naturalfouled-upguys",thereisnoreasontodoubt,atleastfromthepoem (it is wilful to think Jake"s subject is not Larkin); 24
though in many ways ‘utterlyunlike"Larkin,Jakegothissubjectdeadtorights;whether‘Poster- ity" extends Jake any sympathy, however, as Larkin does in the letter to Murphy,isdoubtful.AfterGirouxcapitulated,LarkinwrotetohisEnglish publisher, Charles Monteith, saying he felt like ‘George III or Lord North" (PL,p.436). 25
There is comic resignation here, defeat even, implying the futility of resistance to America and American influence; but the compar- ison is also serious. Larkin"s nationalism extended to Britain"s imperial past. In ‘Homage to a Government", written at the end of the1960s, when HaroldWilsonwasinpower,hedeploresthewithdrawalofBritishsoldiers from abroad merely because ‘we want the money for ourselves at home /

Instead of working."

26

22. The exchange with Giroux was mediated by Charles Monteith, Larkin"s editor at Faber

and Faber.

23. Quoted in John Osborne,Larkin, Ideology, and Critical Violence: A Case of Wrongful

Conviction(Houndmills, UK,2008), p.211.

24. Note the first-person singular pronoun: ‘I suppose what Jake is trying to say is that I am

one of those old-type natural fouled-up guys you read about in Freshman"s Psych." (Larkin to Charles Monteith,16Apr.1974,Selected Letters of Philip Larkin,1940-1985,ed. Anthony Thwaite [London,1992], p.503).

25. See also Larkin to Monteith,8Jan.1974,Selected Letters of Philip Larkin,1940-1985,

p.497.

26. Larkin, ‘Homage to a Government" (1969),High Windows,p.29. Archie Burnett quotes

Larkin to Monica Jones,30June1968: ‘I long to write a political poem—the withdrawal of troops east of Suez started me, now I see someone boasting that in a few years" time we shall be spending “more on Education than ‘Defence""—this shocks meto the core, & I seriously feel thatwithin our lifetimewe shall see England under the heel of the conquerer—or whatusedto be England" (Archie Burnett, editorial note in Larkin,The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin,ed.

Burnett [London,2012], p.461).

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Larkin has written poems of great power and subtlety, but that"s no reason to approve his prejudices, just as the power and subtlety of Harold Pinter"s plays hardly excuses the crudity of his poems and pronounce- ments about America and Americans, even for opponents of the Iraq War. 27
Pinter"s archive was purchased by the British Library for £1.1mil- lion, with the aid of a grant of £216,000from the National Heritage Me- morialFund.Asthefund"sdirector,CaroleSouter,putitinapressrelease: ‘This National Heritage Memorial grant is particularly special as it is the first time we have helped save works and papers of a living artist. This unique collection is now safe for future generations to enjoy and learn from." Presumably by ‘safe" she means ‘safe in Britain" or ‘saved for the nation", as the headline to the British Library press release puts it. 28
This seemsalessimportantreasontoapplaudthepurchasethanthefactthatit brings together Pinter"s entire archive in a single location, uniting play- scripts already on loan to the library with150boxes of new materials. In thiscase,italsomattersthatthelocationisLondon,wherePinterwasborn and has lived all his life, as actor, director, and playwright. London is not onlyasubjectinhisplays,butitsstageortheatricalworldisthegroundout of which the plays grew, even when conceived in resistance to its conven- tions or commercial constraints. More problematic, from a user"s or scholar"s perspective, is the British Library"s2008purchase of a large collection of Ted Hughes papers, com- prising two hundred files and boxes of manuscripts, letters, journals, per- sonal diaries, and ephemera. This collection was purchased for £500,000, witha£200,000grantfromtheShawFund.IteffectivelysplitstheHughes archive between London and Atlanta, where Emory University houses186 boxes and103oversized folders of Hughes papers, plus the6,000volumes ofHughes"slibrary,manyofthemannotated.TheEmorycollectioncovers what its website describes as ‘the entire spectrum of Hughes" personal life

27. See Harold Pinter, ‘American Football" and ‘God Bless America",War(London,2003), p.

[11], [93]. At a launch for the book at the National Theatre, Pinter declared: ‘The US is really beyond

reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany." He added that he hadn"t ‘heard anything about the US population saying: “We can"t do this, we are Americans." Nobody gives a

damn" (Angelique Chrisafis and Imogen Tilden, ‘Pinter Blasts “Nazi America" and “deluded idiot"

Blair",Guardian,11June2003, www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jun/11/books.arts).

28. Andrews, curator of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, implicitly

distances himself from the British Library"s Press Release when he deplores ‘national chest- beating at the “loss" of literary papers to American libraries, and increasingly hysterical speculation as to the disposition of literary manuscripts and archives not already incorporated in collections" (‘WWS", p.259).

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andcareer." 29
Inadditiontomanuscripts,journals,photographs,scrapbooks, soundrecordings,andcollectedprintedmaterials,itcontainsextensivecorre- spondence with Seamus Heaney, Al Alvarez, Stephen Spender, and others. AmongrelatedcollectionsatEmoryarethoseofHeaney,OlwynHughes,Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Edna O"Brien, and thepoetandcriticDanielWeissbrot,whocofoundedwithHughesthejournal Modern Poetry in Translation. The Hughes papers are hardly ‘orphaned" in

Atlanta.

In the press release for the British Library purchase, entitled ‘Saved for the Nation: British Library Acquires Major Ted Hughes Archive", the poet"s widow, Carol Hughes, pronounces the library ‘anideal home for such an important archive, a place where it can be properly conserved and made available for scholars in a way that will prove an invaluable aid to the understanding of his work. Ted was a man of these islands—their land- scapes, rivers, and wild places—and it is fitting that papers covering such an important part of his creative life should be deposited with such a prestigious institution here in Britain." 30

That Hughes was very much ‘a

manoftheseislands—theirlandscapes,rivers,andwildplaces",isperfectly true;butLondonisn"tmuchlikeDevonorYorkshire.Iflocationisimpor- tant, why not sell the papers to the University of Exeter, which in2007 acquired the archive of the Arvon Foundation? Hughes was closely asso- ciated with the Arvon Foundation, and the University of Exeter also pos- sesses some Hughes and Sylvia Plath papers. 31

Whether Emory was able to

bid on the papers or had a bid rejected, it will not say. When asked this question, the interim director of Emory"s Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library, Naomi L. Nelson, replied: ‘I"d rather not comment too much on any negotiations Emory may have participated in, but I can confirm that Emory was contacted when the recent group of Hughes pa- pers were on offer. You may be pleased to hear that the institutions that holdthebulkoftheTedHughesandSylviaPlathpapersareapplyingfora collaborative grant to provide better access to the collections for scholars.

29. ‘Ted Hughes Papers and Related Collections", marbl.library.emory.edu/collection

-overview/featured-collections/ted-hughes-papers-and-related-collections

30. ‘Saved for the Nation: British Library Acquires Major Ted Hughes Archive",14Oct.

2008, pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/Saved-for-the-nation-British-Library-acquires

-major-Ted-Hughes-archive-364.aspx. It describes the purchase as ‘saved for the nation with generous support from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Friends of the British Library, and a £200,000grant from the Shaw Fund towards the purchase price of £500,000. The acquisition includes funding to catalogue and preserve the collection, which is expected to be fully accessible by the end of2009" (ibid.).

31. Thanks in part to the NMCCW, which in1975saw off strong interest from the New

York Public Library, purchasing two collections of drafts of Hughes"sCave Birds, which were subsequently sold on to the Exeter University Library at50per cent of the purchase price.

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ThesepartnersincludeEmory,theBritishLibrary,SmithCollege,theUni- versityofExeter,IndianaUniversity.Itisunfortunatewhencollectionsare divided, but technology offers us some opportunities to bring materials together again." 32
The British Library ought not to be criticised for landing the Hughes papers—just as the Huntington ought not to be criticised for landing Mantel"s.Butiswhatisbest‘forthenation"bestforscholarship,and,more generally, does the current campaign to preserve modern British literary manuscripts pay sufficient attention to historical realities? Larkin himself acknowledgestheserealitiesintheopeningpagesof‘ANeglectedRespon- sibility". What he calls ‘the modern literary manuscript situation" is that during the last forty or fifty years, and more particularly during the last twenty years, the papers of the major British writers have been intensively collected not by British but by American libraries. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in so far as future studies of these writers, and definitive editions of their works, depend on direct access to their papers, these studies and these editions are most likely to be undertaken by American scholars in American universities....A meeting of British national and university librarians to discuss mod- ern literary manuscripts resembles an annual convention of stable- door lockers. [‘NR", p.100] The policy of not acquiring modern literary manuscripts was mostly ac- knowledged by British librarians in the breach. In1911, when the British MuseumacceptedThomasHardy"sdonationofautographmanuscriptsof Tess of the D"UrbervillesandThe Dynasts, its acquisitions committee em- phasizedthat‘manuscriptsoflivingauthorsarenotasawholeacceptedby theMuseum"(quotedin‘WWS",p.261).Larkin"sconcernsin‘ANeglected Responsibility"weretakenupin1967byT.C.Skeat,keeperofmanuscripts at the British Museum: ‘hitherto the collection of such [modern literary] manuscripts has lacked direction and purpose, and has relied overmuch on the charity of donors....Such a haphazard approach is no longer feasible" (quoted in ‘WWS", p.261). More recently, in an editorial ‘Leader" inNews from the Royal Society of Literature(2004), Motion, at the time poet laureate, took up the cause: ‘Season by season, we open our newspa- perstodiscoverthatyetanotherarchivehasbeenshippedoverseas,usually acrosstheAtlantic".This‘monotonousanddepressing"patternneedstobe stopped; it is ‘high time that all interested parties—which means most of us—cried NO MORE" (quoted in ‘WWS", p.260). In2005, the House of

32. Naomi L. Nelson, email to the author,26Nov.2008.

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Lordsdebatedamotionaskingthegovernmentto‘stemthebraindrainto American universities of the literary papers of living British authors" (quoted in ‘WWS", p.260). How did Emory come to purchase its Hughes papers, the bulk of the archive? Larkin"s Jake would make the money sign. And where did the money come from? From Jake"s Coke dispenser in the Kennedy. The li- brary at Emory University is named after Robert W. Woodruff, president of Coca Cola from1923to1954, who in1979gave the university $105mil- lion. In1980, Emory was able to lure the Goldsmith"s Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, the biographer Richard Ellmann, to At- lanta to become the first Robert W. Woodruff professor. Money was not theonlyfactor;itmatteredthatEllmannwassixty-fivebutwantedtokeep working,whichhecoulddoinanAmericanuniversitybutnotinaBritish one; that he had an invalided wife and could not afford to live in Oxford and care for her on his pension; and that his son Stephen was working in Atlanta, clerking for a judge on the Court of Appeals. It was Ellmann who persuaded the university president to begin collecting manuscripts and archives in earnest, as a way of attracting researchers from around the world to Emory. 33
Ellmann was Goldsmith"s Professor of English Literature for fourteen years. An American, the son of Jewish-Romanian immigrants, he grew up in the Midwest and taught for many years at Northwestern University, whereSaulBellowwasanundergraduateinthe1930s.Formuchofthetime Ellmann taught at Northwestern, Bellow taught at the University of Chi- cago. The two men were friends and admired each other"s writing. Ell- mannisanAmericanscholarwholivedandtaughthappilyformanyyears in Britain, retained his American identity (never taking British or dual citizenship), yet enriched our understanding of the works and the lives of writers—Yeats, Joyce, Oscar Wilde—whom Larkin and others would de- scribe as ‘utterly unlike" him. Ellmann"s refusal to accept differences in nationality or background as insuperablebarrierstounderstandingmadehimunlikeLarkin.Whetherit made him like Bellow is less clear. In his last year at Northwestern, Bellow asked the chair of the English department, William Frank Bryan, whether

33. These and succeeding details about Ellmann come from Eric Betts, ‘Schuchard"s Living

Legacy",The Emory Wheel,10Nov.2008(this is the Emory University student newspaper); John Kelly, ‘Ellmann, Richard (1918-1987)",Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39805; and Maud Ellmann, interview by author,20Nov. 2008.

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heshoulddoaPhDinEnglish.‘You"vegotaverygoodrecord",Bryantold him,‘butIwouldn"trecommendthatyoustudyEnglish.Youweren"tborn to it." No Jew could really grasp the tradition of English literature, Bryan explained. ‘No Jew would ever have the rightfeelingfor it." 34

Bellow went

off to study anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and to nurse a lifelong grudge—a mild one, like Larkin"s anti-Americanism—against both the English and English professors, including Jewish ones. Hence his disparaging remarks about Lionel Trilling and Harry Levin, the first Jews to receive tenure from Ivy League English departments. Bellow called Levin‘aHarvardkike"andallbutaccusedtheAnglophileTrillingoftrying topass. 35
AccordingtoAlfredKazin,inhismemoir,NewYorkJew(1978),a typically abrasive title, ‘thebarrier" between himself and Trilling was the latter"s ‘fondness for the words “scarcely," “modulation," “our educated classes."" ‘Bellow"s success in these pages", begins Trilling"s positive review ofThe Adventures of Augie March(1953),quoted by Kazin, ‘may be judged from the familiarity of the matter upon which he exercises his talents." Bellow could never get over what Kazin characterises as Trilling"s ‘nerve- less compromised accents." 36
These accents owed much to Trilling"s reverence for Henry James, a reverence shared by other Jewish literary intellectuals and professors of English in the1950s, including Philip Rahv, editor ofPartisan Review, whichprintedBellow"sfirststoriesandchampionedhimas‘theredeeming novelistofhisperiod";CliftonFadiman,aradioandtelevisionpersonality, as well as an influential editor and critic; and Leon Edel, biographer and editor of Henry James and eventual holder of the Henry James Professor- ship at New York University. 37

Bellow"s feelings about James were woven

34. This quotation comes from the first tape of an eight-hour interview Bellow gave in1987

to Sigmund Koch, a University Professor (as Bellow himself would become) at Boston University. Koch, a psychologist, had been funded by the Ford Foundation to conduct a series of videotaped interviews with artists and authors. Between1983and1988, as part of the Boston University Aesthetics Research Project, he conducted seventeen eight- to ten-hour interviews with, among other authors, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, and Richard Wilbur, as well as Bellow; see buprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com:1701/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?ct ?facet&fctN?facet_genre&fctV?Videorecording&rfnGrp?1&rfnGrpCounter?1&dscnt?1& scp.scps?scope%3A%28ALMA_BOSU1%29%2Cscope%3A%28BU_OAI%29%2Cprimo _central_multiple_fe&frbg?&tab?default_tab&dstmp?1369755643293&srt?rank&ct?search& mode?Basic&dum?true&indx?1&tb?t&vl%28freeText0%29?Koch%2C%20Sigmund&vid ?BU&fn?search

35. See James Atlas,Bellow: A Biography(London,2000), p.342n (on Harry Levin) and

p.228(on Trilling).

36. Alfred Kazin,New York Jew(New York,1978), p.47.

37. See Jonathan Freedman,The Temple of Culture: Assimilation and Anti-Semitism in

Literary Anglo-America(Oxford,2000), p.186, and, more generally, chapter5, ‘Henry James among the Jews" (pp.155-209); for Leon Edel, in particular, see Michael Anesko,Monopolizing

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into his feelings about the American literary establishment, which he thought of as WASP, resistant both to his fiction and to the entry of Jews andotheraliensintoEnglishdepartmentposts.Thesefeelingswereestab- lished early and never quite relinquished, for all his celebrity and acclaim. BellowwasthemostdecoratedwriterinAmericanhistory,winner,among other awards, of the Nobel Prize for Literature, three National Book Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for the Novel, and the title Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, awarded by the French Republic. He did not, however, achieve national recognition until his third novel,The Adventures of Augie March. Prior to Augiehe laboured under the anxiety-inducing burden of what he called ‘letter-perfect"writing,a‘Flaubertianstandard."‘Notabadstandard,tobe sure", he later admitted, but restricting: ‘because of the circumstances of mylifeandbecauseofmyupbringinginChicagoasasonofimmigrants.I could not, with such an instrument as I developed in the first two books, express a variety of things I knew intimately." 38
AugieMarchwaswrittenindefiancenotonlyofa‘Flaubertianstandard" but of Jamesian indirection and self-consciousness, as is clear from its opening sentence: ‘I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that som- bercity—andgoatthingsasIhavetaughtmyself,free-style,andwillmake the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted." 39

This proud

patriotic declaration—about James"s great subject, ‘the whole American question" 40
—is itself anti-Jamesian in its directness. Also anti-Jamesian is the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship(Stanford, Calif.,2012), pp.158-91. In addition to writing favourably about James inPartisan Review, Rahv editedThe Great Short Novels of Henry James(New York,1944); the next year, Fadiman edited the Modern LibrarySelected Stories of Henry James. After a long period failing to find a university post, Edel was appointed visiting professor of English at NYU in1950; three years later, in1953,hewas made associate professor, a permanent post. Bellow was living and teaching on the East Coast from1950to1953, first at Princeton University, then at Bard College. The praise of Bellow as ‘the redeeming novelist of his period" comes from Elizabeth Hardwick, review ofThe Victimby

Bellow,Partisan Review15(Jan.1948):114.

38. Bellow ‘The Art of Fiction: Saul Bellow", interview with Gordon Lloyd Harper,

Conversations with Saul Bellow,ed. Gloria L. Cronin and Ben Siegel (Jackson, Miss.,1994), p.63. In later life Bellow would refer to his first two novels,Dangling ManandThe Victim, as ‘formal requirements", like an MA and PhD (Bellow, ‘A Talk with Saul Bellow: On His Work and Himself", interview with Michiko Kakutani,Conversations with Saul Bellow,p.184).

39. Saul Bellow,The Adventures of Augie March(1953), inSaul Bellow: Novels1944-1953,ed.

James Wood (New York,2003), p.383.

40. Percy Lubbock, ‘Henry James, O. M.: The Man and the Artist",The Times,29Feb.1916,

p.9: ‘Through all his long residence in Europe, his relations with America were closer and more constant than may perhaps have been generally understood; and the whole American question, in whatever aspect, was one in which he was always eager to keep himself instructed." Lubbock was James"s friend and editor. Or see Philip Rahv, ‘Henry James"s America", review ofThe

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thesentence"smixtureofregisters:vernacular(‘free-style",‘goat"),biblical (‘Askanditshallbegivenyou;seek,andyeshallfind;knockanditshallbe opened unto you" [Matthew7.7]). At the end of the opening paragraph, after a reference to Heraclitus, Augie tells us that ‘there isn"t any way to disguisethenatureoftheknocksbyacousticalworkonthedoororgloving the knuckles." 41
The knock is a knock: crude, hard, loud. The knock as novel, this novel, is, in addition, jangling, jumbled. The opening recalls a momentinJames"sTheAmericanScene(1905),oneseveraltimesalludedto by Bellow. Returning to New York, after long absence in Europe, James is taken by Jewish friends to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a setting marked by ‘the whole hard glitter of Israel." The Cafe Royal, with its many Yiddish-speaking authors and performers, is described by James as one of the‘torture-roomsofthelivingidiom."‘Whocanevertell",heasks,‘inany conditions,...whatthegeniusofIsraelmay,ormaynot,reallybe“upto?"" Thescarequotesaround‘upto"suggesttwounequallyoffensivemeanings: ‘good enough for" or ‘equal to", which is merely patronizing, and ‘conniv- ing". 42
Edel"s discussion of this passage is couched in (Kazin would say compromised by) the ‘nerveless accents" of Trilling or James: ‘His view of theJewsinthemasshadalwaysbeendistant;hehadrepeatedthecliche´sby which their national distinctness was marked in the English novel". 43
The Adventures of Augie Marchwon the National Book Award for the best novel of1954. Among the judges was Edel, the first volume of whose five-volume biography of James had also come out in1953. The other judges were Mary McCarthy, Arthur Mizener, Gerald Sykes, and David Dempsey. Unusually, the judges declared publicly that their decision had American Novels and Tales of Henry Jamesby F. O. Matthiessen,New York Times Book Review,

2Mar.1947,p.4: ‘for a writer who, as the legend goes, was enamored of old-world privilege and

by no means aglow with belligerent fervor in dealing with the national ideals, the work collected in this volume is astonishing in that it shows us to what an extent James was able to express creatively the meaning and quality of American life."

41. Bellow,The Adventures of Augie March,p.383.

42. Henry James,The American Scene(1905; London,1907), pp.132,139,135. To James, the

Lower East Side was marked by ‘a sense...ofgreat swarming....There is no swarming like that of Israel when once Israel has got a start...multiplication of everything, was the dominant note, at the bottom of some vast sallow aquarium in which innumerable fish, of overdeveloped probiscus, were to bump together" (p.131). In discussingThe American Scene, Jonathan Freedman argues that ‘for all [James"s] worrying about the threat posed by Jews to the English language, there is a countervailing and envious sense of the vitality of Yiddish culture" (Freedman,The Temple of Culture,p.121). For Bellow"s references toThe American Scene, see, for example, Bellow, ‘The Jefferson Lectures" (1977) and ‘My Paris"(1983),It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future(Harmondsworth,1994), pp.151-52,234.

43. Leon Edel,The Life of Henry James,2vols. (Harmondsworth,1977),2:599. This two-

volume edition is described in the publisher"s blurb as ‘a “definitive" edition" (1:i).

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been unanimous, a measure undertaken to counter rumours, spread by McCarthy, at the time the theatre critic ofPartisan Review, that Edel had arguedagainstBellow.Edeldeniedtheserumours,explainingthatatafirst meeting of the judges McCarthy had been so convinced that the prize shouldgotoBellowthatshedeclaredtherewasnoreasonforthemtomeet again. The other judges disagreed and, as Edel puts it, ‘“Mary construed our procedural discussion as hostility to Saul"s book"". Bellow believed McCarthy"s account. When next he met Edel, he snubbed him. 44

Months

later,hepublishedashortstory,‘TheGonzagaManuscripts"(1954),witha premise much like James"s ‘The Aspern Papers" (1888), drawn from mate- rial originally intended forThe Adventures of Augie March. ‘The Gonzaga Manuscripts" concerns the attempts of an ardent young Midwesterner, Clarence Feiler, to recover the lost poems of Manuel Gon- zaga, ‘“one of the most original of modern Spanish poets, and in the class of Juan Ramo´n Jime´nez, Lorca, and Machado."" 45

The poems, he has been

told by a Spanish Republican refugee, are reputed to be somewhere in Madrid,perhapsmislaid,perhapshiddenorsuppressedforfearofpolitical repercussions. Feiler"s motives in searching for the manuscripts are pre- sented as wholly admirable, unlike those of the nameless narrator of ‘The Aspern Papers". What he desires is ‘to do a decent and necessary thing, namely, bring the testimony of a great man before the world" (‘GM", p.

114).TheapproachFeilertakestohismissionisalsoadmirable,againquite

unlike that of James"s narrator. ‘Once more Clarence told himself that therewasawrongwaytogoaboutobtainingthepoems,awaycontraryto their spirit" (‘GM", p.128). The right way is the direct way. ‘“You know what I"ve come for?"" says Clarence. ‘“Yes, I do know. But let"s not start talking about business right away. You"ve never been in Segovia before, I assume"", answers his host, whom he thinks may have the manuscripts (‘GM",p.137).InTheAspernPapers,thenarratorconfesses:‘“Icanarriveat thepapersonlybyputtingheroffherguard,andIcanputheroffherguard onlybyingratiatingdiplomaticpractices.Hypocrisy,duplicityaremyonly chance."" 46
In A. S. Byatt"sPossession: A Romance(1990), in part an updat- ing of the James story, the unscrupulous American manuscript hunter Professor Martin Cropper, of Robert Dale University in New Mexico, is prepared to steal and to desecrate graves in order to acquire documents

44. Atlas,Bellow,p.210.

45. Saul Bellow, ‘The Gonzaga Manuscripts", ‘Mosby"s Memoirs" and Other Stories(1968;

Harmondsworth,1977), p.122; hereafter abbreviated ‘GM". Bellow chose not to include ‘The Gonzaga Manuscripts" in Bellow,Collected Stories(New York,2001).

46. Henry James,The Aspern Papers(1888), ‘The Aspern Papers" and Other Stories,ed. S.

Gorley Putt (Harmondsworth,1976), p.17.

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related to the fictional English poet Henry Randolph Ash. Hisopposite number, James Blackadder, honest and British, believes that ‘British writings should stay in Britain and be studied by the British", a view shared by his creator. ‘I don"t want to be too nationalist", Byatt told the Guardian,‘butitisbetterifwriters"papersstayinBritain." 47

InBellow"s

story, in contrast, dishonesty and duplicity are qualities that mark the well-born Spanish executors and informants Feiler approaches. What also marks them are ignorance and prejudice, of and about both liter- ature and America. Feiler travels to Madrid and takes a room in a pension overlooking the Retiro,thecity"slargestpark.‘“Haveyoucometostudysomething?""asks hislandlady.‘“There"sagreatdealheretointerestpeoplefromacountryas newasyours""(‘GM",p.115).‘“Ihopeyouwon"tmindifItellastoryabout Americans and the size of things in Spain"", begins Gonzaga"s literary ex- ecutor, a suave member of the Cortes, ‘with his irony and his fine Spanish manners" (‘GM", pp.126,125). At dinner with the executor, Feiler sits next to‘anItalianMonsignore"and‘aGermangentleman"(allEuropeisimpli- cated in Bellow"s scorn). When asked ‘was American really a sort of Eng- lish",Feilerreplies,‘I"veseenpeoplecryinitandsoforth,justaselsewhere" (‘GM", p.127). The executor makes it perfectly clear that he thinks Feiler incapableofcomprehendingGonzaga"spoemand,inresponse,Feilerfeels ‘an ugly hatred" grow and knot in his breast: ‘He wanted to hit him, to strangle him, to trample him, to pick him up and hurl him at the wall" (‘GM", pp.127-28). When asked, yet again, why Gonzaga interests him so much, he replies: ‘“Why shouldn"t I be interested in him? You may some- day be interested in an American poet"" (‘GM", p.134). This exchange is with the nephew of the woman, an equivalent to James"s Juliana Bordereau (lover of the famous American poet Jeffrey As- pern, now deceased), to whom the poems are addressed. The nephew, Feiler has been told, works for the Banco Espanol but is nonetheless a ‘“cultivated person"" (‘GM", p.133). His startled, laughing reply to Feiler"s remark about being interested in American poets is, ‘“I? No!"" (‘GM", p.

134). He has no interest in poets of any kind. Nor has the well-mannered

executor or anyone else Feiler meets in Spain. What the Spanish are inter- ested in is money, the material prosperity they mock and envy in Ameri- cans. ‘“There"s plenty of poetry already, for everyone"", the executor tells Feiler. ‘“Homer, Dante, Caldero´n, Shakespeare. Have you noticed how

47. Quoted in Tanya Gold, ‘Shortcuts: How Much for Your Notes?"Guardian,24Oct.2005,

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/0ct/24/andrewmotion.fiction/print. See A. S. Byatt,Possession:

A Romance(London,1990), p.10.

Critical Inquiry / Autumn2013 179This content downloaded from 128.252.067.066 on July 25, 2016 23:07:05 PM

All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

much difference it makes?"" The cultivated banker did not even know Gonzagawasapoet.‘“Manuel?Thesoldier?Thelittlefellow?Theonethat washerloverinnineteentwenty-eight?""(‘GM",p.140).AfterBellow"sfirst visittoSpain,inthesummerof1947,hereturnedfuriousatthecondescen- sion of Spanish intellectuals. ‘Who do they think they are? They haven"t done anything worthwhile in the arts since the sixteenth century." 48
Also infuriating was having to listen to talk about ‘“American emptiness"", ‘“unhistorical Americans who live only in the future"", the atom bomb. 49
Someofthistalkfounditswayinto‘TheGonzagaManuscripts".InFeiler"s pension in Madrid, he meets an Englishwoman depressed by the weather.

It has been raining continuously:

‘You people may be to blame for that."

‘Whopeople? Which people?"

‘It could be because of the atom bomb," she said. ‘The weather has never been normal since the atom thing started." Lateronthewomancomplainsthat‘“youAmericansarefillingtheairwith Carbon Fourteen, which is very dangerous."" To which Feiler replies: ‘“I don"t know about it. I am not all Americans. You are not all the English. You didn"t lick the Armada, I didn"t open the West. You are not Winston Churchill and I am not the Pentagon" (‘GM", pp.117-18). From1960onwards, in a series of gifts and deposits, Bellow sent his papers (including letters, notes, galley proofs, unpublished speeches and essays, hand-corrected manuscripts, and typewritten drafts) to the Uni- versity of Chicago"s Special Collections, located in the Joseph Regenstein Library.Before1968,Bellowwaseligibletoreceiveataxdeductionforsuch gifts; when the laws involving cultural property changed, in reaction to enormous deductions obtained by visual artists, gifts became deposits, held but not owned by the library, an arrangement agreed to in the hope that the new law would be reversed and deposits could then become do- nations. When lobbying efforts failed