Letters Read Online Free

Elderly Rob Rexler becomes young Robby stroking Cousin Albert’s close rows of wavy hair, as Albert fiercely pushes the hand away. “These observations, Rexler was to learn, were his whole life—his being—and love was what produced them.”
    A sentence of fiction like that is art of the highest order. Bellow’s letters are the other side of the tapestry, hitherto unseen: tangled, knotty, loose threads hanging, reverse of the radiant design. He called his novels and stories “letters-in-general of an occult personality.” The letters-in-particular here collected reveal the combats, the delights, the longings—the will, the heroic self-tasking—that gave birth to such lasting things.
    —Benjamin Taylor

CHRONOLOGY
     
    1912-13 Abram Belo forced to flee Russia following trial in which he is convicted of conducting business on false papers. (“In Petersburg Pa had made a handsome living. He dealt in produce and traveled widely. He was the largest importer of Egyptian onions and Spanish fruit.”) Immigrates to Lachine, Quebec, a village on the Saint Lawrence River. Wife Lescha (Liza) Gordin Belo and their three children—Zelda (Jane), born 1906; Movscha (Moishe, Maurice), born 1908; and Schmule (Samuel), born 1911—follow once he is settled. Abram variously works as a baker, junk dealer and small-scale importer of dry goods. Family name is changed to Bellows.
     
    1915 A fourth child, Solomon (later Saul), born on June 10 at 130 Eighth Avenue, Lachine.
     
    1918-19 Family moves from Lachine to Montreal. (“We lived on Saint Dominique’s Street, which is a good clerical name, but in addition you had old Reuben, who could barely walk, going to shul or coming from shul—and you had all kinds of people. Very strange people, most of them Yiddish speaking, in this neighborhood.”) Abram fails repeatedly at various enterprises. Solomon begins religious training. (“We were near the waterfront, on a long hill, and I used to go across the street to my rabbi. His name was Shikka Stein and he had a very Chinese look. [ . . . ] He taught me my Aleph Beis and then we began to read Breishis and it was wonderful. For one thing, these were all my relatives. Abrahams and Isaacs and Chavas and so forth. So yes, it was like a homecoming for me. I was four years old and my head was in a spin. I would come out of Shikka Stein’s apartment and sit on the curb and think it all over in front of my house.”) Speaks French in the street, Yiddish at home.
     
    1923 Following U.S. enactment of the Volstead Act banning sale of alcoholic beverages, Abram supports family by bootlegging liquor across the Canadian-American border. Aged eight, Solomon falls ill with peritonitis and pneumonia; six months of convalescence at Royal Victoria Hospital. (“I started to read in the hospital, where I spent a lot of time. They would come around with a cart [ . . . ] and you would pick some books; mostly they were foolish fairy tales, but sometimes there was a real book.”)
     
    1924 Abram goes to Chicago to work in bakery of cousin Louis Dworkin. Rest of family illegally enter U.S. to join him, arriving at Chicago on July 4. Residence in Humboldt Park. Family name now Bellow. (In subsequent years, brothers Maurice and Sam will again add the final s . ) Sol is enrolled in Lafayette School and Columbus Elementary. Abram widely entrepreneurial. (“My father owned various businesses, always very strange businesses. For instance, he sold wood to the Jewish bakeries of Chicago, as fuel. He had this bakery experience so he knew all the Jewish bakers in Chicago. Of course they wanted to buy from him. But for my father this involved going to the lumber mills in Michigan and Wisconsin and buying up the scrap wood, the reject wood, and bringing it to Chicago in freight cars and then selling it to his bakeries.”)
     
    1928 With Isaac Rosenfeld, Sol composes Yiddish send-up of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” (“I had a very close friend in Chicago