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before him, turns into a theoretician. I have always had a weakness for autodidacts and amateur philosophers and scientists, and enjoy observing the democratic diffusion of high culture.”) Reviews negative; closes after twenty-eight performances. In October, Pascal Covici, trusted editor at Viking after Engel’s departure, dies of heart attack. Bellow donates Tivoli house to Bard College.
     
    1965 Catharine Carver now Bellow’s editor at Viking. “A Wen,” one-act play, appears in Esquire . Awarded National Book Award for Herzog ; accepting it, says: “Without the common world the novelist is nothing but a curiosity and will find himself in a glass case along some dull museum corridor of the future.” Mayor Richard J. Daley confers five-hundred-dollar prize on behalf of Society of Midland Authors. (Bellow later remarks: “Art is not the mayor’s dish. Indeed, why should it be? I much prefer his neglect to the kind of interest Stalin took in poetry.”) In June, attends White House festival of the arts, boycotted by Edmund Wilson, Robert Lowell and others. In the East Room, reads aloud from Herzog ; John Hersey reads from Hiroshima ; Dwight Macdonald circulates antiwar petition among festival participants. (President Johnson says afterward: “They insult me by comin’, they insult me by stayin’ away.”) Bellow spends second summer on Martha’, Vineyard. Receives Formentor Prize. “Orange Soufflé,” another one-act play, in Esquire .
     
    1966 Lengthy Paris Review interview, conducted by Gordon Lloyd Harper. Dramatized version of Seize the Day , directed by Herbert Berghof and starring Mike Nichols as Tommy Wilhelm, performed in workshop at Theatre of Ideas. Bellow accepts assignment from Life to write profile of Robert F. Kennedy, then candidate for Senate from New York; abandons project after discouraging week in Kennedy’s entourage. Delivers ill-received keynote at PEN Congress in New York: “We have at present a large literary community and something we can call, faute de mieux , a literary culture, in my opinion a very bad one.” Meets Margaret Staats. Evening of one-acts, Under the Weather , premieres at Fortune Theatre, London, to generally favorable reviews. Delmore Schwartz dies in July. Under the Weather on Broadway in October at Cort Theater, starring Shelley Winters; reviews savage; closes in less than two weeks. Separates from wife Susan. Begins work on novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet. Upon departure of Catharine Carver, Denver Lindley becomes his editor at Viking.
     
    1967 Travels to Middle East to cover Six-Day War for Newsday . (“Many of the dead are barefooted, having thrown off their shoes in flight. Only a few have helmets. Some wear the headdress. After leaving Gaza, I saw no live Egyptians except for a group of captured snipers lying bound and blindfolded in a truck. The tent dwellers had run off. Their shelters of old sacking and tatters of plastic were unoccupied, with only a few dogs sniffing about and the flies, of course, in great prosperity.”) Balance of summer at East Hampton, New York, where Saul Steinberg and Harold Rosenberg are among his friends. Delivers “Skepticism and the Depth of Life” at various American colleges and universities.
     
    1968 Spring in Oaxaca with Maggie Staats; summer in East Hampton. In September at Villa Serbelloni, Rockefeller Foundation retreat at Lake Como, where he befriends young poet Louise Glück. Childhood friend Louis Sidran dies of cancer. Mosby’s Memoirs , collection of stories, published in October. Divorce from Susan. Aaron Asher succeeds Denver Lindley as Bellow’s editor at Viking. In London, confers with George Weidenfeld, his British publisher. Chance meeting with Graham Greene. Death of John Steinbeck in December.
     
    1969 In January, Josephine Herbst dies. Bellow enters treatment with Heinz Kohut, Chicago-based founder of influential “self-psychology” school of psychoanalysis. Returns in June to Villa Serbelloni,