“Only art penetrates what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides—the seeming realities of this world. There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive.” And without that other reality, Bellow notes, channeling thoughts set down by Proust, existence is reduced to a “terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.”20
