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0

nce a Nobel Prize for

Literature has been
awarded, the reci-
pient becomes a Nobel
laureate for life. However
distinguished the writer may
appear to be when the
Swedish Academy proffers its
accolades, most laureates ex-
perience subsequent declines
and few of us remember who
they are. It is therefore
heartening to watch a
laureate maintain into old
age the same force and drive,
the superb talent that
brought him fame earlier.
In The Bellarosa Connec-
tion (Penguin Books), paper-
back only, Saul Bellow offers
proof that he continues to be
in control of his art and craft.
Although just a novella, The
Bellarosa Connection is pack-
ed with Bellovian resonances.
While the plot is new, the nar-
rative recalls characters,
situations and ideas from a
half dozen earlier works, in-
viting comparisons that are
pleasing to the reader's sen-
sibilities. Additionally, the
story is funny, tender, and full
of wisdom.
Ibld in the first person by a
nameless narrator who is a
relative of the novella's pro-
tagonists, Harry and Sorella
Fonstein, The Bellarosa Con-
nection concerns itself with
Harry's decades-long futile ef-
fort to thank the man who
saved him from destruction in
the Holocaust. The man is
Billy Rose, the legendary
Broadway producer, among
whose off-Broadway produc-
tions, so to speak, was a tem-
porary underground opera-
tion based in Italy and osten-
sibly run by Rose's Mafia
friends to save European
Jews from extermination in
Hitler's death camps. Fons-
tein, a club-footed Polish Jew,
in jail in Italy, is mysterious-
ly brought into the network
and sent to Cuba via Ellis
Island.
Subsequently Fonstein
marries Sorella, his
employer's niece, comes to
Philadelphia and makes a for-
tune by inventing a better
thermostat. More than
anything else, he wants to
shake the hand of the man
who saved his life. Billy Rose
can't be bothered. If anyone
ever believed that Billy Rose
was anything but a jerk,
despite his philanthropies
and this Holocaust salvation
lark — his pleasure was not in
saving Jews but in outwitting

Saul Bellow

Hitler — Bellow sets the
record straight by making it

clear what a lowlife Bill Rose
really was.
After Harry's umteenth re-
jection by Rose, Sorella goes
into action. The climatic en-
counter between the
diminutive, effete Rose and
the 200 pound mannish tiger-
wife is the most delightful
episode in the book, but its
outcome only proves an old
tried and true Bellovian max-
in that however much we
must be our brother's keeper,
some of us, for whatever
reason, don't cotton up to the
idea. Rose doesn't want to
acknowledge what appears to
have been an act of
menschleikeit. It happened,
but in a world where
everything is relative, it was
just another random occur-
rence; and, as for gratitude,
who needs it!
Other old Bellow themes
are here: the conflict between
fathers and sons; the fate of
the Jews in the United States
(the real test, whether the
Jews can escape total
assimilation in Christian
America, is yet to come); the
refusal of the present to learn
from the past; the callowness
of youth; and the adversarial
strength of women.
Two other elements of the
story deserve to be mention-
ed. The heavy philosophizing
that marked Bellow's earlier
work is attenuated here, and
his allusions are primarily to
art and literature.
Shakespeare and George
Herbert are invoked and
there are frequent echoes of
Yeats. He is mentioned by
name; his memorable phrase
"the mackerel-crowded seas"
from "Sailing to Byzantium"
is quoted, and the narrator's