Ozick on Bellow ...

... Lasting Man. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The writer’s last brief words in this bountiful volume of letters, set down fourteen months before his death, should all at once break open the hidden-in-plain-sight code that reveals why Bellow stays:

[My parents] needed all the help they could get. They were forever asking, “What does the man say?” and I would translate for them into heavy-footed English. That didn’t help much either. The old people were as ignorant of English as they were of Canadian French. We often stopped before a display of children’s shoes. My mother coveted for me a pair of patent-leather sandals with an elegantissimo strap. I finally got them—I rubbed them with butter to preserve the leather. This is when I was six or seven years old.... Amazing how it all boils down to a pair of patent-leather sandals.