While I am moved by all the coverage of the Pope's life, I was surprised and saddened to hear today of the dear of another great icon of Modernity, Saul Bellow. Maybe I'm not supposed to like him, because I'm the girl that always points out the inadequacies of dead white male writers, whose illustrious ranks Mr. Bellow now joins. But there is something compelling, something extraordinarily valid, in the old-fashioned belief that art, firmly rooted in humanity, in daily life, makes this confusing mess of a world vaguely bearable. That there is something that good, honest, even painful writing (or art or music or crochet or whatever) does, that all the theory in the world cannot compete with. I buy it, hook-line-n-sinker, in Bellow, in de Kooning, in Arthur Miller, and in the enduring work of other dead white guys.
Here is the quote the NY Times obit ended with:
"I've never seen the world before. Now I was seeing it, and it's a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchanting reality! And when the end came, I was told by the cleverest people I knew that it would all vanish. I'm not absolutely convinced of that. If you asked me if I believed in life after death, I would say I was an agnostic. There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, etc."
So rest in peace, etc.
