Volume 27, Number 21 & 22 · January 22, 1981
Who Needs Enemies?
By James Wolcott
Saul Bellow, Drumlin Woodchuck
by Mark Harris
University of Georgia Press, 184 pp., $9.95
'Go, and never darken my towels again!' cried Groucho Marx, showing a pushy nuisance the door. In moments of agitation and dismay, Saul Bellow must have longed to issue the same order to his would-be biographer Mark Harris, for the evidence of Saul Bellow, Drumlin Woodchuck suggests that subtle hints (coughing, yawning, glancing at one's watch) wouldn't throw a persistent admirer like Harris off the scent—only rudeness would do. Harris, the author of Bang the Drum Slowly and several other baseball novels, began corresponding with Bellow in 1959 after Bellow had recommended a friend for a teaching job at San Francisco State, where Harris taught English literature. (He now teaches at Arizona State University.) In 1961, Harris visited Bellow at his house in New York's Hudson Valley; a few days later, they had dinner together in Manhattan.
Review, 1545 words
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