At 84, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow seems, as one of his comically understating fictional characters might put it, to be doing O.K. He is, for openers, the proud father of a baby daughter, Naomi-Rose, born Dec. 23 last year to Janis Freedman, 41, the author's fifth wife. Seated in his office at Boston University and sporting a jaunty blue paisley ascot and rumpled suit, Bellow talks animatedly about the new arrival: "I think that she's much keener on entering into some connection with her parents than the boys were. [Bellow has three grown sons, the eldest 56, from previous marriages.] She picks up everything--you can watch her face while she's examining you silently, grinning a little bit. She imitates you."
Bellow understands that being a new parent at his age raises an inevitable if unstated concern, which he proceeds to address: "Well, my wife won't be lonely when I die. She'll have somebody." He also knows that fathering a child in his 80s has spurred considerable amazement among strangers and even his friends: "They try to kid me, but I say, 'Practice makes perfect.'"
Another reason for Bellow to celebrate is the appearance next week of his 13th novel, Ravelstein (Viking; 233 pages; $24.95). His pleasure in this new arrival, though, has been tinged with an annoyance. Most of the prepublication chatter about Ravelstein has pegged the book as a barely fictionalized account of Bellow's close friendship with Allan Bloom, his colleague at the University of Chicago and the author of the phenomenally best-selling The Closing of the American Mind (1987). When Bloom, whose writings made him a hero among conservatives, died in 1992, the cause was officially announced as liver failure. But Ravelstein, the alleged Bloom figure in Bellow's novel, appears as a largely closeted homosexual who contracts HIV and ultimately dies of AIDS-related illness. Needless to say, given this tabloid age, Ravelstein has already produced a lot of gossip.
The notion that his new novel is principally an outing or an expose of his dear friend upsets and frustrates Bellow: "This is a problem that writers of fiction always have to face in this country. People are literal minded, and they say, 'Is it true? If it is true, is it factually accurate? If it isn't factually accurate, why isn't it factually accurate?' Then you tie yourself into knots, because writing a novel in some ways resembles writing a biography, but it really isn't. It is full of invention. If there were no invention, it wouldn't be readable. Invention, freedom. If you need circumstances, you create them in your own mind. But it is obviously not a project for literal-minded people. Habitual readers of fiction have an inkling of that, but so many people do not. I get impatient."
So impatient that when the subject of Bloom and AIDS is raised, Bellow responds, "I'm sorry to see you getting me on this particular track because I don't want to be on it." All that he will say, without mentioning Bloom by name, is, "He said, 'I trust you to write this. I know it's going to be fiction.' He said, 'I'd like you to do this.'"