Both Esquire and the Atlantic Monthly had already decided the story was too long. Theft" had been accepted by The New Yorker. Meanwhile, he was waiting to hear whether "A Just then Saul was facing the final revisions on "A Theft," and he was wrestling with A Case of Love-a novel he would never finish. In the weeks before he delivered this talk, and for the remainder of that month-during the drive from Philadelphia to Vermont while exploring Dartmouth, where he was a visiting lecturer and later in Vermont where we were doing battle with the blackflies to lay in a garden-our conversation was about nothing but the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century. In the first week of May 1988 en route from Chicago to Vermont we stopped in Philadelphia, where Saul gave a lecture, "A Jewish Writer in America," for the Jewish Publication Society. I was there, for instance, when "The Bellarosa Connection" was born. When Rosie is ready for Saul's books, what memories will there be of Dad at his desk? And does memory need an assist? Will someone produce an accurate portrait of her father at work? Why not begin, I ask myself, with this little preface? To say for Rosie's sake, and for scores of others who will never see the man sitting down to write-this is how it was done. This morning, as I begin to write, I imagine Rosie the reader, a couple of decades deeper into the century. "Who's this, Naomi Rose? Who's the man in the picture?" And turning to point at Saul, she answered in that bell-like infant voice of hers that could be heard all through the store, "Dad, dad, dad." Now Dad was muffled in turtle fleece to the eyebrows, but his face emerged to give her a most delicious smile. I pulled Rosie out of her snowsuit and attempted to distract her with the dust jacket of Ravelstein. Now when Saul ducks into a bookstore, chances are he's going to be there for some time. The weather was ferociously cold-what the forecasters in these parts unaccountably describe as "blustery." To escape the icy wind we headed for the Brookline Booksmith. Green Cousins Zetland: By a Character Witness Leaving the Yellow House What Kind of Day Did You Have? Mosby's Memoirs Him with His Foot in His Mouth Something to Remember Me By Preface Yesterday my husband and I took our year-old daughter, Naomi Rose, for a stroll in the neighborhood. Lawrence A Silver Dish The Bellarosa Connection The Old System A Theft Looking for Mr. Saul Bellow - Collected Stories CONTENTS Preface by Janis Bellow Introduction by James Wood By the St.