The depth of his potato love
Anita Brookner
MORE DIE OF HEARTBREAK by Saul Bellow
The Alison Press/Secker & Warburg, f10.95
Saul Bellow is fiction's outstanding au- thority on what he himself has called potato love, that helpless unreasoning vul- nerability towards members of one's own family, no matter how disappointing they turn out to be. Bellow's extended family, hampered by relatives operating on both sides of the law and not noticeably charm- ing with it, is particularly susceptible to this affliction. It enmeshes them in inordinate reminiscence, in long stretches of rumina- tive tenderness, in midnight telephone calls, even in modest self-recrimination. Jews in Chicago, recognisable by their ill-adapted, un-American shapes, they jug- gle with archaic concepts, ponder on plant morphology, Swedenborg, the nature of Eros, while all the time missing the vital connection, the simple stratagem that less evolved species seem able to command at will. Such a one was Herzog, in hapless flight from the present. Such a one is Benn Crader, professor of botany, 'a noble person of passion and integrity', brought down by his simple desire to become the husband of an attractive woman. Easy enough, you might think, but this is to reckon without the peculiar morphology of Benn himself. It is Benn's anxious con- versations with his nephew Kenneth which spell out the destiny, downfall, and resur- rection of this not very viable organism.
Uncle Benn, of the redundant con- sonant, was happy enough with his lichens, as was Kenneth with his seminars on Russian literature. They should have been left alone, but such self-sufficient creatures are attractive to women, particularly to women of an anxious, stylish turn of mind, eager to award themselves full honours, which include those of intellect by proxy. Actually Kenneth has a little daughter by a woman who refuses to marry him and prefers more invigorating types who knock her about. Kenneth's trips to Seattle to see this woman form one strand of a family odyssey, for Benn and Kenneth are forever taking planes — to Kyoto, to Miami, to Brazil — in order to do what any less gifted person might do without leaving the ground.
It is blameless Benn, already assaulted by a Della Bedell ('What am I supposed to do with my sexuality?') and a Caroline Bunge, who falls in love with Matilda Layamon, beautiful, rich, ambitious, but with alien shoulders, a fact brought into relief in Benn's uneasy consciousness when he sees a re-run of Psycho: Matilda and Tony Perkins have a lot in common. It is not only Matilda's shoulders that are wrong. Her father, referred to respectfully as 'Doctor', is much worse. Taking Benn over, making him into a fit husband for such a prize, is a father's work. This involves stunning Benn with the luxury of the Layamon apartment, descriptions of which are relayed cautiously to Kenneth. "You wouldn't believe the thickness of the bath towels", he said, with an intensity suitable for a confidence.' This is followed up with a satanic apercu of the bourgeois palazzo which could be their marital home and to which even the door key seems Venetian. There is a snag, however, and here we are back in Bellow territory. Readers will sigh with pleasure as the familiar scenario unfolds.
Years earlier Benn's father was swindled out of a piece of worthless real estate by Uncle Harold Vilitzer. Vilitzer, with his pacemaker and his Roman or Mafia hair- do, then sold the land: a huge skyscraper was erected on the spot and Vilitzer netted 18 million dollars from the sale. The price of Matilda's hand involves Benn suing his uncle for restitution of the money, or at least part of it. A further difficulty is that it is not Benn who wants the money: it is Doctor, who wants it rather badly. The ultimate difficulty is that Benn and Matilda are already married. Benn has forsaken his plant-like innocence for the snares of modern Eros.
Characters with dangerous names (Ama- dor Chetnik, Fishl Vilitzer) are wheeled on to further complicate Benn's existence. Uncle Harold, the party boss who did the original mischief, is a stricken man (re- member the pacemaker). Cousin Fishl must be allowed to win his father's approv- al before the old man dies. Matilda's father, a man with an expression of 'violent primness' is keen to push the deal, having the judge already in his pocket. Matilda's shoulders become an insuperable problem. Kenneth and Benn, communing by tele- phone in the middle of the night, soulful, wistful, and doomed, feel their innocence being siphoned out of them. Their collec- tive salvation cannot be revealed in this brief summary. Let it be said that these two, each with a foot in his mouth, make some kind of an adjustment. Only Bellow would let them get away with it.
Although less touching than Herzog of blessed memory, Benn is recognisably of the same race, even of the same plot. Certain American critics have called this book boring: the thought steals into one's mind as one reads the irresolute first chapter. But anything by Bellow is worth a dozen other novels, which begin to be seen for the humble artefacts they really are, as Benn throws off his observations (that absentmindedness allows you to be inno- cent while guilty, for example, or that more die of heartbreak than of radiation). Benn, describing the schlock designer mag- nificence of the Layamon apartment in his increasingly glum midnight calls, is a man with his instincts in the right place. Real values are being pursued here, and embraced even as they are being forcibly removed. This man knows.
This is not Bellow's best novel. Yet the range of his mind, his feeling, his experi- ence, and above all the depth of his potato love, raise him head and shoulders above our thinner English counterparts. Amer- ican fiction — Bellow, Roth, Heller, Up- dike — really does appear to be superior at the moment, and for a very good reason: real emotion is involved, and its trace is unmistakable. Allied to a technique that appears effortless, it inspires gratitude and respect.
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