It's interesting to watch him exercise high-minded themes, not only for Partisan Review and The Times Literary Supplement, but for journals of general circulation like Holiday, Life and Esquire. Yes again, but by now the reader may be jiggling his foot on his knee. Something sounds phony about both the attack and Mr. Bellow's defense of himself, simply because no one who has read his novels could possibly be surprised that he would say such a thing. I had to submit when my dentist carried on about a dull play of Camus . . . A cultured woman in Moline, he suggests, would be obliged to keep her artistic interests under wraps.
Educated philistinism emerges as a new negative force here as in all countries.
There's always been a vein of snobbery in Mr. Bellow's work, just as there is in Evelyn Waugh's. Besides, Mr. Bellow balances his caustic comments with others that are graceful, almost self-effacing. The world owes him nothing. An essay requires its own inner consistency, but an essayist isn't obliged to be consistent from one item to the next. Even so, it's surprising to see Mr. Bellow seem to contradict himself on an important issue.