An Old Master in Soft-Covers

By Paul Gray

A THEFT by Saul Bellow Penguin; 109 pages; $6.95

When Saul Bellow finished the manuscript of A Theft, he sent it to his agent, who began the process of submitting it to magazines. So far, so ho-hum. Was there an editor on earth who would not preen at the prospect of publishing a novella by the Noble laureate? As it turned out, yes. Two publications, which the agent diplomatically refuses to name, rejected A Theft, saying the piece was too long, although one suggested a reconsideration would be in order if the author agreed to make some cuts. Thoroughly steamed, Bellow decided that his awkward offspring -- bigger than the bread boxes now in vogue in commercial magazines but shorter than a novel -- deserved to be presented to the world in an unconventional manner. And here it is: brand-new fiction by Saul Bellow, in paperback.

While this break with normal practices may not seem earthshaking to most people, those in publishing are walking gingerly, anticipating possible tectonic shifts. No one can recall a writer of Bellow's stature consenting to have his work issued as a paperback original. That method has traditionally been limited to certain classes of high-turnover genre fiction, such as westerns and romance, and, in recent years, to works by relatively unknown authors. Among the latter, Jay McInerney made his name with the paperback Bright Lights, Big City, and Richard Ford's cult reputation was considerably enlarged by his soft-cover novel The Sportswriter.

But original paperbacks still face stiff resistance. Most libraries will not buy them, because they may not stand up to repeated handling. Major book clubs prefer to select hard-covers. Authors have reason to be wary. Lower prices mean smaller royalties, although heavy sales can wipe out this disadvantage. But someone who publishes in this manner cannot expect a hefty sum for a paperback reprint.

Leaving aside its possible implications for the future of book marketing, Bellow's gambit is a piece of unambiguous good news. For a modest outlay, readers can buy an original work of art: a world-class author producing a tale that is both thoroughly typical and engagingly new. As always in Bellow's fiction, the important characters in A Theft are astoundingly vibrant and intelligent; they worry and talk brilliantly about "the big, big picture," i.e., life, and their moral place within it.

The new wrinkle is that Bellow's hero is a heroine. His past books have offered plenty of strong, sensual women, but they always revolved around a male, delighting or distracting him or simply existing as another hurdle on his path toward spiritual perfection. This time out, Clara Velde, an executive ; in a New York City publishing empire, the matron of a Park Avenue co-op, married four times and the mother of three daughters, rests securely at the center of her universe.

Her most luminous satellite is Ithiel ("Teddy") Regler, a foreign affairs expert slightly less renowned than Henry Kissinger but equally in demand for consultations in Washington and around the world. Teddy's Manhattan lawyer tells Clara: "He thinks no more about going to Iran than I do about Coney Island." When they were lovers in the '60s, Clara inveigled Teddy into buying her an engagement ring with an emerald stone, costing $1,200 that he could barely afford at the time. They did not marry each other, for reasons neither quite understands, but a small army of other people instead. "What a waste!" Clara marvels. "Why should there have been seven marriages, five children!"

Clara and Teddy keep in touch, soul mates if not literal ones, and she, ever busier and more independent, attaches talismanic significance to the emerald ring: "In it Ithiel's pledge was frozen." She loses it, grieves, collects the insurance and then finds it wedged under her bed. The next time it turns up missing, Clara knows it has been stolen.

Her immediate conclusion -- that the culprit is the Haitian boyfriend of her Austrian au pair girl -- will offend liberal sensibilities, especially since it turns out to be correct. Bellow has ruffled racial feathers before, notably in Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) and The Dean's December (1982), and his new heroine's thoughts will not heal those old wounds: "These people came up from the tropical slums to outsmart New York, and with all the rules crumbling here as elsewhere, so that nobody could any longer be clear in his mind about anything, they could do it." But Clara is here ruminating in anger and the natural resentment of a victim. In calmer moods, she can recall listening to Teddy Regler talk about the decline of civilization and privately disagreeing: "I don't actually take much stock in the collapsing-culture bit: I'm beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul."

Clara is not a racist, as she twice insists. She is engaged in a struggle that transcends boundaries of color and class: trying to live truly and honorably in a compromised world. She triumphs in the end, and so does her remarkable creator.