{"id":83173,"date":"2015-02-27T17:40:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T22:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83173"},"modified":"2015-02-27T17:46:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T22:46:37","slug":"the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saul_Bellow_signature.svg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A letter from Saul Bellow<\/a> to Jack Ludwig, circa February 1961. Ludwig and Bellow had met years earlier at Bard College, where they became close friends. Later, Ludwig began an affair with Bellow\u2019s second wife, Sondra. The romance was something of an open secret; asked at a party if he knew Bellow, Ludwig supposedly responded, \u201cKnow him? Hell, I\u2019m fucking his wife<\/a>.\u201d When at last Bellow learned of the affair, he wrote the letter below, which his biographer James Atlas calls \u201ca masterpiece of comic invective.\u201d The magazine in reference is <\/em>The Noble Savage<\/a>, which Bellow and Ludwig had founded in 1960.
<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Jack;<\/p>\n

I have tried very hard to avoid writing this letter, but I suppose there\u2019s nothing else to do now. Your phenomenal reply of February 4th forces me to tell you a few of the things I feel about your relations to the magazine and me, personally.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] I don\u2019t think you are a fit editor of the magazine. You have, in some departments, good judgment. I trusted your taste and thought you might be reliable as an editor, but you are too woolly, self-absorbed, rambling, ill-organized, slovenly, heedless and insensitive to get on with. And you must be in a grotesque mess, to have lost your sense of reality to the last shred. I think you never had much to start with, and your letter reveals that that\u2019s gone, too. <\/p>\n

In fact it\u2019s a fantastic document and I\u2019m thinking of framing it for my museum. You thought I\u2019d be at the boat to greet Keith? Which boat? I\u2019ve heard of no boat. You took Sondra\u2019s word for it that I was in Tivoli? Well, for several days with Adam I was there. But I was in New York a good deal of the time, and so were you, before Sondra arrived. And besides, why take Sondra\u2019s word for it? She and I exchanged no personal information. How would she know where I was? Did I write her that I would be at Tivoli? Without consulting me, you phoned John Goetz in Mpls to find out whether I was giving you an accurate account of the legal situation last Spring, but without a second thought you simply accept what Sondra tells you of my whereabouts. There seems to me to be a small imbalance here. Especially since we\u2019re not only colleagues buy \u201cfriends,\u201d and haven\u2019t seen each other in nearly a year. Pretty odd, isn\u2019t it. And if you had phone (and I believe you\u2019d have had the strength to resist my invitation to Tivoli) wouldn\u2019t I have come to New York to see you? In all this there is some ugliness, something, I don\u2019t want explained, though I\u2019m sure that as a disciple of the Hasidim and believer in Dialogue and an enthusiast for Heschel, and a man of honor from whom I have heard and endured many lectures and reproaches and whose correction I have accepted you have a clear and truthful explanation. All the worse for you if you are not hypocritical. The amount of internal garbage you haven\u2019t taken cognizance of must be, since you never do things on a small scale, colossal.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t do much good to see matters clearly. With the sharpest eye in the world I\u2019d see nothing but the stinking fog of falsehood. And I haven\u2019t got the sharpest eyes in the world; I\u2019m not a superman but superidiot. Only a giant among idiots would marry Sondra and offer you friendship. God knows I am not stainless faultless Bellow. I leave infinities on every side to be desired. But love her as my wife? Love you as my friend? I might as well have gone to work for Ringling Brothers and been shot out of the cannon twice a day. At least they would have let me wear a costume.<\/p>\n

Coventry, pal, is not the place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A letter from Saul Bellow to Jack Ludwig, circa February 1961. Ludwig and Bellow had met years earlier at Bard College, where they became close friends. Later, Ludwig began an affair with Bellow\u2019s second wife, Sondra. The romance was something of an open secret; asked at a party if he knew Bellow, Ludwig supposedly responded, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1900],"tags":[367,17205,182,657,1194],"class_list":["post-83173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-correspondence","tag-cheating","tag-jack-ludwig","tag-letters","tag-marriage","tag-saul-bellow"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSaul Bellow\u2019s Brutal, Hilarious Letter to a Disloyal Friend<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Say your friend is sleeping with your wife, and you find out. What do you say? Saul Bellow has exactly the words.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 27, 2015 \u2013 A letter from Saul Bellow to Jack Ludwig, circa February 1961. Ludwig and Bellow had met years earlier at Bard College, where they became close friends.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-27T22:40:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-02-27T22:46:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"419\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-27T22:40:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-02-27T22:46:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\"},\"wordCount\":673,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png\",\"keywords\":[\"cheating\",\"Jack Ludwig\",\"letters\",\"marriage\",\"Saul Bellow\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Correspondence\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\",\"name\":\"Saul Bellow\u2019s Brutal, Hilarious Letter to a Disloyal Friend\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-02-27T22:40:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-02-27T22:46:37+00:00\",\"description\":\"Say your friend is sleeping with your wife, and you find out. What do you say? Saul Bellow has exactly the words.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\",\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Dan Piepenbring\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Saul Bellow\u2019s Brutal, Hilarious Letter to a Disloyal Friend","description":"Say your friend is sleeping with your wife, and you find out. What do you say? Saul Bellow has exactly the words.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood by Dan Piepenbring","og_description":"February 27, 2015 \u2013 A letter from Saul Bellow to Jack Ludwig, circa February 1961. Ludwig and Bellow had met years earlier at Bard College, where they became close friends.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2015-02-27T22:40:37+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-02-27T22:46:37+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":419,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Dan Piepenbring","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Dan Piepenbring","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/"},"author":{"name":"Dan Piepenbring","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8"},"headline":"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood","datePublished":"2015-02-27T22:40:37+00:00","dateModified":"2015-02-27T22:46:37+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/"},"wordCount":673,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png","keywords":["cheating","Jack Ludwig","letters","marriage","Saul Bellow"],"articleSection":["Correspondence"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/","name":"Saul Bellow\u2019s Brutal, Hilarious Letter to a Disloyal Friend","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png","datePublished":"2015-02-27T22:40:37+00:00","dateModified":"2015-02-27T22:46:37+00:00","description":"Say your friend is sleeping with your wife, and you find out. What do you say? Saul Bellow has exactly the words.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/saul_bellow_signature.svg_.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/27\/the-stinking-fog-of-falsehood\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Stinking Fog of Falsehood"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8","name":"Dan Piepenbring","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Dan Piepenbring"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83173"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83178,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83173\/revisions\/83178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}