Bellowing in Chicago

Of Interest to Activists Looking for a Nice Little Civic Cause:


Yesterday an article in the Chicago Tribune reported on the rejection of a request by former U of C english prof Richard Stern to the city of Chicago to name a street, a school, or a statue in honor of Saul Bellow. Stern and Bellow were friends when Bellow headed the Committee on Social Thought. Stern claims he received a letter from 4th Ward Alderman Toni Preckwinckle (requisitions of this kind must be made through the alderman in which the supplicant lives) that denied the request on the grounds that Saul Bellow had made some unseemly remarks about race in his works, particularly about the changing racial composition of Hyde Park and the Northwest side community he grew up in. This despite the fact that Balbo Drive is named after an Italian fascist.

"Who is the Proust of the Zulus? The Tolstoy of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read them."
-Saul Bellow, New York Times Magazine Interview

"I had read widely in the field, and immediately after the telephone interview I remembered that there was a Zulu novel after all: "Chaka" by Thomas Mofolo, published in the early 30's"
-Saul Bellow, in a New York Times Op-Ed apologia of the above comment. He works himself into a nice lather about the "Stalinist" "thought-police" and how "Righteousness and rage threaten the independence of our souls." Left: Italo Balbo.