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admitted.”) In March 1949, publishes “Sermon by Dr. Pep” in Partisan Review. In October publishes “The Jewish Writer and the English Literary Tradition” in Commentary . In Rome, meets Ignazio Silone, Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante. Evenings at Antico Caffè Greco. Story “Dora” appears in Harper’s Bazaar . In December visits London; in addition to publisher John Lehmann, meets Cyril Connolly, Henry Green and Stephen Spender.
     
    1950 Lectures in April at Salzburg Seminars. Visits Venice, Florence, Rome, Positano and Capri. Returns to America in September and settles with family in Queens, New York. “Italian Fiction: Without Hope” in The New Leader ; “Trip to Galena” in Partisan Review .
     
    1951 “Dreiser and the Triumph of Art” ( review of F. O. Matthiessen’s Theodore Dreiser ) in Commentary. Story “By the Rock Wall” in Harper’s Bazaar . In New York begins course of Reichian therapy with Dr. Chester Raphael. (“I turned into a follower of Wilhelm Reich and, for two years, I had this nude therapy on the couch, being my animal self. Which was a ridiculous thing for me to have done, but I was always attracted by these ridiculous activities.”) “Gide as Autobiographer” (review of André Gide’s The Counterfeiters ) in New Leader . “Address by Gooley MacDowell to the Hasbeens Club of Chicago” in Hudson Review (reprinted in Algren’s Book of Lonesome Monsters , edited by Nelson Algren). Second visit to Salzburg.
     
    1952 In spring term, lectures at Reed College and the Universities of Oregon and Washington. Meets Theodore Roethke and Dylan Thomas. Translates I. B. Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool” for Partisan , Singer’s first appearance in English. Bellow’s “Laughter in the Ghetto” (review of Sholem Aleichem’s The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son ) in Saturday Review of Literature. Reviews Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for Commentary ; Ellison and wife Fanny will be lifelong friends. In June, first residency at Yaddo, artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. In autumn, takes post at Princeton as Delmore Schwartz’s assistant and comes to know John Berryman, who will be among his greatest friends. (“What he mainly had on his mind was literature. When he saw me coming, he often said, ‘Ah?’ meaning that a literary discussion was about to begin. It might be The Tempest that he was considering that day, or Don Quixote ; it might be Graham Greene or John O’Hara; or [Maurice] Goguel on Jesus, or Freud on dreams. [ . . . ] There was only one important topic. We had no small talk.”) “Interval in a Lifeboat,” extract from Augie March, published in The New Yorker . Meets Sondra Tschacbasov, newly graduated from Bennington College and working as receptionist at Partisan . (“I could have gone out with Philip Rahv or Saul,” she would later recall. “I chose Saul.”)
     
    1953 “Hemingway and the Image of Man” (review of Philip Young’s Ernest Hemingway ) in Partisan . Bellow begins teaching at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Lives in nearby Barrytown on the estate of Chanler Chapman, son of eminent American man of letters John Jay Chapman. In July, second residency at Yaddo. In September, publishes The Adventures of Augie March to tremendous critical acclaim. (“My earlier books had been straight and respectable. As if I had to satisfy the demands of H. W. Fowler. But in Augie March I wanted to invent a new sort of American sentence. Something like a fusion of colloquialism and elegance. What you find in the best English writing of the twentieth century—in Joyce or E. E. Cummings. Street language combined with a high style. [ . . . ] I think The Adventures of Augie March represented a rebellion against small-public art and the inhibitions it imposed. My real desire was to reach ‘everybody.’ I had found—or believed I had found—a new way to flow . For better or for worse, this set me apart. Or so I wished to think. It may