Dangling Man

by Saul Bellow

Today, the code of the athlete, of the tough boy—an American inheritance, I believe, from the English gentleman—that curious mixture of

Do you have emotions? Strangle them. To a degree, everyone obeys this code.

If you have difficulties, grapple with them silently, goes one of their commandments.

In my present state of demoralization, it has become necessary for me to keep a journal—that is, to talk to myself—and I do not feel guilty of self-indulgence in the least.

Books do not hold me. After two or three pages or, as it sometimes happens, paragraphs, I simply cannot go on.

do all the delightful things I will be unable to do in the Army. About a year ago, I ambitiously began several essays, mainly biographical, on the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

But the seven months’ delay is only one of the sources of my harassment. Again, I sometimes think of it as the backdrop against which I can be seen swinging.

afraid of running into an acquaintance who will express surprise at seeing me and ask questions.

I do not want to become too familiar a sight in any of them, friendly with sandwich men, waitresses, and cashiers, and compelled to invent lies for their benefit.

The more open we are to these enjoyments, the happier we are; but if these changing phenomena unfold themselves and we take no interest in them, if we are insensible to such fair solicitations, then

Her eyes are large, and they wear a knowing look, but since there is nothing to be knowing about they only convey her foolishness. She powders herself thickly, and her lips are painted in the shape that has become

It was undeniably to my interest to do this. Because I was involved with them; because, whether I liked it or not, they were my generation, my society, my world. We were figures in the same plot, eternally fixed together. I was aware, also, that their existence, just as it was, made mine possible.

The worlds we sought were never those we saw; the worlds we bargained for were never the worlds we got.

Of course, he has to earn his living, but he tries to strike a balance between what he wants and what he is compelled to do, between the necessity and the wish. A compromise exists,

But for all that, Joseph suffers from a feeling of strangeness, of not quite belonging to the world, of lying under a cloud and looking up at it. Now, he says, all human beings share this to some extent.

Living from day to day under the shadow of such a conspiracy is trying. If it makes for wonder, it makes even more for uneasiness, and one clings to the nearest passers-by, to brothers, parents, friends, and wives.

business

No, really, listen to me. Forbid one man to talk to another, forbid him to communicate with someone else, and you’ve forbidden him to think, because, as a great many writers will tell you, thought is a kind of communication. And his party doesn’t want him to think, but to

Dolly, my sister-in-law, is a pretty woman, still slender, large-bosomed, but attractively so, dark, with fine hair combed upward in a way designed to make the most of her neck. She has a very graceful neck; I have always admired it. It is one of the traits my fifteen-year-old niece Etta has inherited. To me it has always been one of the exquisite characteristics of femininity;

the beneficiaries of that slaughter and yet we have small pity for the victims. This has not come with the war, we were ready before the war ever started; it only seems more apparent now.

more for us, if we, not they, had been the victims. I do not like to think what we are governed by. I do not like to think about it. It is not easy work, and it is not safe.

But I would rather be a victim than a beneficiary.

And then there are our plans, idealizations. These are dangerous, too. They can consume us like parasites, eat us, drink us, and leave us lifelessly prostrate. And yet we are always inviting the parasite, as if we were eager to be drained and eaten.

The fear lies in us like a cloud. It makes an inner climate of darkness. And occasionally there is a storm and hate and wounding rain out of us.

When the Italian General Bergonzoli (I think it was Bergonzoli) was captured in Libya, he would not discuss military matters or the strategy that led to his defeat, but said, “Please! I am not a soldier. I am primarily a poet!” Who does not recognize the advantage of the artist, these days?

“No, I just sit at home all day and do nothing.” Q: “Nothing?” A: “Absolutely nothing.”

stage.

Only, in my opinion, our rages are deceptive; we are too ignorant and spiritually poor to know that we fall on the “enemy” from confused motives of love and loneliness. Perhaps, also, self-contempt. But for the most part, loneliness.

I feel I am a sort of human grenade whose pin has been withdrawn. I know I am going to explode and I am continually anticipating the time, with a prayerful despair crying “Boom!” but always prematurely.

It’s enough to make one pray for change, merely change, any change, to make one worship experience-in-itself.

pure freedom.

sound

It wants me to stop living this way. It’s prodding me to the point

“We’re not going to argue about that. But you have impossible aims. Everybody else is dangling,

It is our humanity that we are responsible for it, our dignity, our freedom.

nevertheless managed to become Joseph. Do you follow that?”

weariness of life. It’s our inability to be free.” “And you’re afraid it may happen to you?

“Ideally, how would you like to regard the war, then?” “I would like to see it as an incident.”

I carried out my threat and walked in the park in my spring coat, and suffered for it. It was a slaty, windy day with specks of snow sliding through the trees.

“Before they do business with you there, they make you fill out a long, long form. They want to know everything . . . where you’re employed. If I say I’m not working, they’ll laugh me out of the place. ‘What? Not working? Anybody can get a job these days.’ No, I won’t go. Why don’t you cash it downtown?”

“Don’t make fun of me, Iva. Things have changed. You’ve become the breadwinner, and whether you know it or not you resent the fact that I stay at home while you go to work every morning. So you think up things for me to do. You want me to earn my keep.”

I sat down at a desk in a corner, near one of the portieres, and wrote on a sheet of stationery: “I hereby request to be taken at the earliest possible moment into the armed services.”

I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled. Hurray for regular hours! And for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation!