Saul Bellow's Enigmatic Love (Essay‪)‬

On a summer afternoon I approached the old farmhouse where I was scheduled to meet my teacher, Saul Bellow. He sat on the porch in a rocking chair with a book in his lap. I was nervous about how he would respond to my stories. What else could I do but trip on the wooden stairs? He looked up and grinned in sympathy. He was fresh from a great novel's success. The Adventures of Augie March had just won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize, and I wondered why he would bother coming here to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont to teach. He was handsome as a movie star. Large brown eyes, wide mouth, head thrown back to enjoy his own laughter--an image familiar now from book photos. But then! He gleamed. The presence of "Saul," as we students democratically called him, added a giddiness to the already over-excited atmosphere, the boundless aspirations of writing students.