[Rarebooks] FS: Original Handwritten MANUSCRIPT by Nobel Prize Winner Saul Bellow

[Charles Agvent]

BELLOW, Saul. THE LAST ANALYSIS. HOLOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF SAUL BELLOW'S 
ONLY PLAY. First Edition. An undated early holograph version of Saul 
Bellow's only full-length play contained in a ledger-type notebook 
(8-1/4" x 11-3/8") with marbled paper boards and a black cloth spine. 
Bellow has subtitled this as "A Work in Progress." Acts I and II of this 
version are complete in 71 pages with 4 pages of preliminary material 
for an Act III, all handwritten by Bellow. The 1964 staged version was 
reduced to two acts. Bellow appears to have written out Acts I & II as a 
fair copy from previous versions and notes in preparation for completing 
the play with a new Act III. There are relatively few insertions and 
corrections in his text of the first two acts which take up about 75% of 
the notebook. The third act consists mostly of blank pages with 3 pages 
of rough notes and key speeches including what seem to be the climactic 
lines of his main character, the comedian Bummidge, who has been 
undergoing an obsessive self-analysis in the previous acts: "The world 
was never real for me. But now I see it's more real than I was. I never 
admitted that it existed. It always knew I was here (he goes around 
picking up objects & kissing them because they're real).... Now what is 
the theory. Not Momma's womb but my own empty heart?" Laid in to the 
notebook is a SIGNED typed 12-page fragment of an earlier version of the 
play, with Bellow's original title, THE CRASH PROGRAM, crossed out in 
ink and his new title, THE LAST ANALYSIS, written over it. Bellow 
manuscripts of this size and importance are seldom offered with most 
already housed in institutional collections. Near Fine and quite 
exceptional. (#013988)        $25,000.00

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/013988.JPG

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